Bookish Discussion; Have I gone soft?

There comes a time in a reviewers “career” (let’s call it that, even though this is just for fun), I think most of us start doubting the ratings we’re giving. I’ve had SO many discussions about how I rate, why I rate one book with 5 stars and another with 2. The more books I read the more I realize that 40/100 books can’t be 5-stars. There has to be at least something that makes a book feel “less” than others.

When I first started to write reviews I read a lot of weird things. But I always compared the books to the feelings The Hunger Games gave me back when I was 14, laying in my bed for four days straight, devouring everything about the books. The “wiser” I got the more I realized that you can’t rate every book based on another book, it doesn’t work like that – because a non-fiction book won’t be anything like The Hunger Games, so therefore I kind of “gave up” that way of rating. So now I kind of take it on the feelings I get as I read the book.

A five star book for me, is a book that I can’t lay down, it’s a book I almost read from cover to cover. It’s a book with complex characters and a story I’ll never forget. It’s a book that I want to immediately re-read, and it’s a book that I’ll recommend to EVERYONE. Since about May of 2016 I’ve only rated five books 3 or lower, and out of 32 books, 24 of them has been a 4 or higher.

So have I gone soft? I don’t think so. The books I read are mostly books I know are highly rated. I rarely read books that has ratings below 3.8 on Goodreads, and since I mostly read Fantasy or Science Fiction (YA of course), which are my two favorite genres, I think it kind of says something about the books I generally read and why they are rated the way they are. I rarely read non-fiction because I often find them boring, and therefore, whenever I read non-fiction they rarely get anything above a “3”, and all though that’s more of a personal opinion; I also think that reviews are personal.

A review is a personal opinion of the book, a personal indication to how good a book is. If I really like YA sci-fi with a dash of romance, the YA sci-fi will probably get a higher rating than, let’s say a biography. So, have I gone soft? Neh, I think I’ve just been incredibly lucky to be able to actually read some of the best books out there. But I am going to be tougher. I’ve decided that I need to be in order to give you guys the best possible reviews I can.