Personal Philosophy

How Many Stars? My Book Review Criteria.

Stars vary based on the reviewer’s interests, reading history & life experience. Sample/Fiction: The Heart Doctor by Dupont & Johnson.

The problem

I had purchased numerous books for my Kindle and written reviews before I came up with standards for the stars. Like everything else, there was a learning curve.

The first thing asked for when entering the review is a rating by number of stars - one is awful and five is wonderful, highly recommended. How do you assign them on a consistent basis, unrelated to the genre or classification?

How do you decide on stars?

Star criteria
I had to come up with some standards. As it turns out, fiction and non-fiction standards are different. Since I read mostly fiction, here are my standards. Non-fiction will be in another article.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Wonderful. I will most likely reread it.

The book is exactly what I expected, whether romance or science fiction. First, the story has to be believable and exciting, given the setting.

I should be able to identify empathetically with a character in some way - feel or think like the character. It can be a man, woman, or as in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, the cat, poor thing.

The writing style should pull me from chapter to chapter with a fascinating story. The book is hard to put down.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Very good. I will probably reread some parts.

Something prevented five stars, often the writing style, structure, or the story is missing something. Maybe I could not identify with a character.

For example, one romance novel turned out to be mostly a mystery. I had to push myself through the first half of the book, but the second half was 5-star material, which pulled it up to 4 stars.

⭐⭐⭐Okay, easy to finish. No desire to reread any part of the book.

Parts were good, but the book was inconsistent or irritating in some way. Like a movie where the hero is brilliant until the…