There has been a lot of conversation around rating books over on bookstagram lately and I thought I'd write a post about why I have decided to stop rating them in my instagram reviews. I say Instagram because I also add reviews to Amazon and Goodreads so will still be using a star rating over there (because you have to but also because it's helpful for me to keep track of!)
There are actually a few reasons why I don't like giving star ratings anymore, so I'll go into them below.
First of all, about a month ago I saw a review on bookstagram that gave a book I'd been looking forward to three stars, now to me three stars is not a good review. I'm not sure why or when I came to this conclusion but if I enjoy a book, it's automatically at least a four-star read. So, when I was reading this review it was largely positive and I couldn't believe it had only been given three stars but that the reviewer had enjoyed it. This made me realise how personal star ratings are! My three-star is probably the equivalent of someone's one star and another person's five-star.
And then you take into consideration personal taste. I read a book a few months ago that just wasn't for me. It was beautifully written, great plot, pacey, excellent characters - I couldn't fault it, but I still did not enjoy it. I ended up deciding not to give it a star rating because preference wise it was about a two but the book itself was probably a 4.5 so how do you explain the disparity? I didn't want to give a book I didn't enjoy such a high rating, but I also didn't want to give a well-written book a low rating - so I gave it neither and haven't looked back since!
That being said I know a few people love star ratings and I'm not suggesting I'll never bring them back but for now I am enjoying not having to rate them (it actually takes me longer to decides star rating than it does to write the review sometimes!).
[originally posted Apr 12, 2021]
