It's in the Stars - Or Why I Don't Give Ratings on My Blog

 

Here we go, my 2nd discussion post as part of the 2016 Discussion Challenge hosted by Feed Your Fiction Addiction and It Starts at Midnight.   My first one was all about if teens are really as dumb as we think, and will expect what happens in books to be real life.  You can go read my thoughts and then share what you think on that one HERE.   Today I want to talk about giving ratings to the books I read.  

I admit that I often go look at the stars or ratings that other blogs give sometimes before I read the actual review.  And whenever I finish a book I always give it a star rating on Goodreads. And if I leave a review on Barnes and Noble or Amazon, I give star reviews there too.  But here on my blog, ever since I quit just copying my reviews from Goodreads, I've not bothered to put the rating in the post.  

I'm not sure exactly why. But here is what I came up with when I tried to think about it a little more.  I feel like rating systems are often hard to use.  A lot of time I LOVE a book, but I know maybe it isn't the most well written, or maybe the story itself is really silly and superficial.  And maybe then I feel weird leaving it a 5 star review, when a book that was really well written and on a very deep subject, I didn't enjoy even though I feel like I should have because of what book it is, I would only leave a 3 star review.  Examples.  I love Twilight.  

I know that supposedly it is written horribly.  But to me, the writing grabbed me, and I couldn't put it, or any of the others in the series down.  To me, that is a good story, and it is well written.  A book I could not stand and had to force myself to get through, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night,

I know that really I should have thought it was a great book. Right?  I mean the character is autistic, and of course it didn't read like something I am used to, and it shouldn't read easy because it was written the way they would think and they think differently.  Another book that I couldn't even finish, yet so many people talk about what a great, profound book it is, is Dante's Inferno.  I was bored to tears.  And didn't finish it.  

Another issue.  I have a friend who is self publishing. And while I do like her stories, and enjoy reading them.  I often feel maybe it isn't as fair to compare it to traditionally published books that have editors that are paid to make sure it is done well.  Or if there is a book that I can see why other people really liked it, but I just didn't really care for it, I hate to mark it down, because then it is my opinion, not necessarily whether it is a good book or not.

On Goodreads, you can't do half-stars, and there are some books that I don't want to give them a 2, or a 3, but honestly they don't really rate as a 3 or 4.  So that is another thing I think of.  And then sometimes the sites tell you what each star stands for.  On Amazon the ratings go:  1 star - I hate it, 2 stars - I don't like it, 3 stars - It's okay, 4 stars - I like it, 5 stars - I love it.  But sometimes I give books a 4 that I loved, because they had issues that kept me from giving them a 5.  On Goodreads they are different:  1 star - did not like it, 2 stars - It was okay, 3 stars - liked it, 4 stars - really liked it, 5 stars - it was amazing.  On Barnes and Noble:  1 star - poor, 2 stars - below average, 3 stars - good, 4 stars - very good, 5 stars - excellent.  

Okay, so those are my reasons for why I am not big at rating on my blog.  I know a lot of other blogs have their own rating systems, and they show what each star means on the side bar of their blog.  I do like that method for sure.  But for me, I think I just like to talk about the book on my blog and tell what I do and don't like about it.

What do you think of my reasons?  What do you think of ratings?  Please, leave me some discussion below. 

Everbound (Everneath #2) by Brodi Ashton

This is only my 6th book I've read for my September is for Sequels Challenge, out of the 12 I had hoped to read.  :-(  I think, I guess that I will be happy if I meet my same amount that I read last year, which was 8.  It just seems that September gets so busy that I don't get to read as much as I planned.  And probably now that I've been making sure I blog every day as part of my summer blogging goal, sometimes when I get on here to blog, then I go check the other blogs I follow and comment or enter giveaways, and I spend more time online than I planned, and end up with less time to read before I must get to bed.  Oh well.  It is what it is.  Now that summer is officially over, I won't stress about blogging every day.  Only reviews, and other posts I have scheduled.  If I do have time I may do others, but for now that is the plan.  And, on with the review!  I was lucky enough to win an e-book copy of this a while back, and didn't get to it until my September challenge.
This book was a quick one to get back into.  There was a little bit of a recap of what happened, Jack went to the tunnels for Nikki at the end of the first one, so as you would expect, Nikki is now looking for a way to get back down there and save him.  And until she can, she is doing what she can to help keep him alive, the way he did for her, she dreams every night of him.  In order to get back to the Everneath, she knows that she will need Cole, whether she likes it or not.  Her first plan is to just steal a hair from Cole, and use that to get into the Everneath on her own to find Jack.  Which she tries, and when it doesn't work out so well, Cole saves her before the other everlivings down there, as well as the queen, can catch her.  Cole can see that she is determined to get back to Jack, so he finally agrees to help her.  It is obvious that Cole loves her, but Nikki doesn't know how much is real, and how much is just that he wants her to help him take over the Everneath by becoming the queen.  But she knows that Jack is her true love, even as she has feelings for Cole as well.  Like many 2nd books in a series, this one has a journey.  The journey is through the Everneath, to try to get to the tunnels to find Jack.   In a sense there are parts like Dante spoke about, different levels/rings.  And there is the river to cross, and the Elysium fields, etc.  So the journey seems to bring Cole and Nikki closer together even as Jack seems to become more and more distant in Nikki's dreams.  We learn more about the Everneath, and the Everlivings, as well as what it takes to get humans down there, and how the Shades actually do what they do.  The end, wow, it was a twist!  Can I say I didn't quite see what happened?  I knew that something was up with how the findings from the search ended up.  Just didn't see that happening.  So, now, don't know how I'll wait till 2014 to read it!

Misfit by Jon Skovron

This is another egalley I received from Abrams Publishing on Netgalley.com. This book will not be published till August 1st, but it will be on my staff recommendations as soon as it is. The main character is Jael. Jael has never really fit in at any school, but she's moved all her life, almost every two years if not more often, so it hasn't been that big of a deal. She lives with just her father because her mother is dead. Her father is a bitter ex-priest who used to perform exorcisms. Her mother was a demon. So Jael is a half breed. Because of her father's days of being a priest, she has always gone to Catholic schools. Because of being a half breed, her life is in danger from demons who believe in pureblood only, kind of like Voldemort and his hate of mudbloods. But here, it seems that the few half breeds in the past actually could cause problems for demons. Some of them may sound familiar to you, Perseus, and Merlin. The Perseus connection will draw in some Lightning Thief fans I think. So until she's turned 16, and her father gives her a necklace from her mother, Jael doesn't know much about her mother, her father has kept it from her in an effort to save her, as well as out of his feelings of betrayal and sadness of the death of his wife. He tells Jael not to put the necklace on. But even having the necklace, Jael begins to have vivid dreams which are actually flashbacks to the history of her mom and father. And she begins to learn about her past, and what it means to be half demon.

As with all of these types of books, all Jael really wants is to be a normal teen, which she's been unable to do with all the moving they've done throughout her life. She'd finally felt like she was somewhere she fit in, and now it seems she may have to move again to stay alive. I won't give away anymore of the book, except for the first demon she meets, well, let's say you'll really like his character, I did.

I really liked this book. I love the different look at ancient demons and how they weren't necessarily "evil" in what they were doing. I like the change in the view of hell, even how they go so far as to say it is not actually like Dante's version. (That could be because I was unable to get through Dante's Inferno I hated it so much). I really liked the story, liked the characters, and the look back at history. There was even a retake on the story of Samson, and I really liked it! I feel like the story really leaves off for a series of sequels. I don't know if there will be, and I guess the fact that it hasn't even been published means there are no hints about a sequel yet, but I'm hoping for it! I even sent a question to the author on his website asking him about this.

Great book! Read it when it comes out!