Instead of a thumbs up and thumbs down rating, I will rate my books with “Fire” and “Rain”.
Fire: 3-5 stars.
Rain: 1-2 stars.
Fire books are the books I would recommend to others. They were enjoyable, hot, fast-paced, has good characters and relationships, etc.
: Books that basically are my favorite. They were extraordinarily written, offered something new and interesting, left me with a takeaway, and books I just could not put down. They also made me pretty emotional.- : These were books that were still very very good and I’d recommend to others in a heartbeat. They were still written well and had good characters. However, they weren’t special or striking to me. They were missing that extra something. I would definitely still reread them, though.
: I give three star reviews for two different reasons. The first is if the writing was good, the characters were fine, but the entire book was just meh. It was either overdone, or I didn’t connect to it, but was still a well-written book. The second reason is if the writing severely held the book back from achieving a higher score. The plot might have been truly special, but I couldn’t handle the writing, and that made it unenjoyable. I try to make a distinction in my reviews between which three star review it is. I’d be more likely to reread the first type than the second type.
Rain books are books I did not enjoy. They were cooled off, passive, not exciting, or just overall boring.
: These are books I would not recommend to others. The writing is usually pretty bad, the characters are dry, and the plot is odd paced. They are books I didn’t enjoy really at all while reading.- : I rarely give a one star review. These are reserved for books I DNF, because I rarely DNF, so if I did, the book must have truly been bad (in my opinion of course).
Fire and Rain Books 