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Originally Posted by laurla
That's way more thought than I put into it... which is why I don't write reviews very often - I rate a book almost solely on that book alone and not in any comparison to other books. Sometimes in a series, I might think about how much I enjoyed it vs the previous books, but in general my rating comes from how much I enjoyed the book and it's very similar to Blossom's scale. If the editing is not very good, that will usually only affect my rating if it takes me out of the story - so it would have to be pretty bad. Plot, of course, is considered but only in so much as it works to create a good story for me. If it's an unbelievable plot but the author made it work for me, I'll probably still rate it higher. If it's too unbelievable and I'm rolling my eyes throughout the book, then well, not so high a rating.
But it seems the thing that affects me the most is depth of character/depth of story. If it feels like I've just skimmed along, that will keep me from enjoying a book and I'll end up rating it lower. Sometimes the overall story-line will keep me interested enough that I'll keep reading, but I always feel like I'm missing something from the characters - like WHY they are feeling or doing what they are doing. Mimi Barbour's Vegas series is like that for me. Things happen too fast between the H/h and I don't feel the 'insta love' between the characters. Can't really put my finger on it because I tend to like the insta love trope, but it's not really working here. We do get to see inside their heads, but something's missing for me. I really just feel like everything is on the surface. But, I do want to know what happens, so I'll likely finish the series. They are short reads at least...  And I'l probably give them 3 stars because I didn't hate them, I was interested in the outcome, but I didn't love the characters either. |
Well, there are some books where if I like the characters a lot it is enough to nudge it over the edge to the higher star rating despite plot issues. This is where the half star would come in for I think. But all-in-all I think I'm happier with only 5 stars to choose from. I never rated my books before I got Calibre or even for the first year or so I had Calibre. But then my library started really growing and it seemed the easiest way to tell at a glance the read from unread (this was before custom columns were introduced). Plus my memory is not as good as it used to be and the ratings help with the year-end poll at AAR
