Review Method

5-stars is a great book. As in, To Kill A Mockingbird great. Daughter of the Forest great. A book that I genuinely loved that, in my opinion, represents the best of its genre. It's often a book that I have read twice, back-to-back because I loved it so much the first time that I wanted to repeat the experience to confirm that it was a good I thought it was. I don't give a lot of 5-star reviews.

4-stars is a highly recommended book. It's above average. I really, really liked it. But, it didn't represent, to me, that level of achievement inherent in a 5-star read.

3-stars is a recommended book. This is a book that I liked, that I recommend people buy. It will probably have some flaws. Maybe there will be some grammatical problems, characters that aren't as convincing as in a 4-star read, but it's still a darned good read.

2-stars is a book that I don't recommend. I didn't enjoy it. The typos, grammatical errors, issues with plotting and pacing and characterization substantially detracted from my enjoyment and pulled me out of the story. The fact that I just didn't *like* a book doesn't mean I will give it a 2-star review. It has to be substantially flawed, in my opinion.

1-star is a book that should not have been published. It insults the reader's intelligence. It is so poorly written and unedited that the author has demonstrated contempt for his/her readers by clearly not caring about putting out a piece of work that has had no quality control whatsoever.

So, how do I handle reviewing books I didn't like? It depends on why I didn't like them. If a book is well-written for its genre, but just not my cup of tea, I'll probably give it at least a 3-star review but explain why I didn't really enjoy it.

A book that is very poorly written/edited (or is clearly unedited) should be reviewed truthfully for the benefit of prospective purchasers. We all have limited buying dollars. However, I don't think that personal attacks on the author are either helpful or persuasive.