Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted with Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Book Nook Bits has hosted since April 2022, with Dini at Dini Panda Reads as co-host from February 2025.
Like last week, this is a prompt from back in February when I took a hiatus from blogging. Our lovely LTB co-hosts are currently on a hiatus themselves, so it seemed like a good opportunity to pick some of these up!
Let’s Talk Bookish 27th February:
Reading Star Ratings
Prompts: This topic is inspired by Krysta @ Pages Unbound who posted about it earlier this year. How do you read star ratings from other bloggers/readers? Do you consider star ratings seen on a book blog, Bookstagram, or BookTok differently than ratings on sites like Goodreads? How much does a star rating affect your decision to purchase/borrow/read a book and does it depend on whom/where the star rating comes from?
I think this is an interesting question because star ratings really are so subjective. Like, I might rate a book 3 stars because I liked it well enough, but maybe had one too many flaws for me, but another blogger might use 3 stars to mean disliked. I think we can all agree that 5 and 1 are pretty much universal, but the middle bits are often a little more tricky! It’s also why I think authors need to be careful about putting too much stock into star ratings. Not to mention, whereas on certain platforms you want to find the 5 stars, when it comes to books I typically much prefer when books have somewhere between a 3.5 and just under 5 star rating. All 5s seems awfully suspicious!
I don’t think I particularly take into account, for example, difference between a blog and Goodreads. Likely because the ratings I use on my blog tend to be the same as those I use on Goodreads. However, I do consider ratings different on somewhere like Storygraph, which allows for more nuance with the use of half stars.
For me, if I think something falls somewhere in the middle (ie a .5), I typically round up. So a 3 might actually be a 2.5, a 1 might really be a 0.5, etc. And I appreciate that Storygraph allows for that. So if I’m looking at something that uses those kind of numbers, I’m going to consider it differently than somewhere like Goodreads which only uses whole numbers. Nothing is wrong with either system, but I think if I see a rating on Goodreads that’s 4.3 average, I can guess a lot of people have rated it a 4 or 5 with the odd rating dipping below that, but if I go to Storygraph and it’s closer to 3, I know that in reality, it’s probably more of a 3 star rating overall than a 4.
A star rating can impact whether or not I want to read something. I also try to weigh it up against the amount of reviews, but if I see ratings from people I trust who I know have similar tastes, that’ll impact my decision. If something has a really low rating and a lot of reviews, I’ll be unlikely to pick it up. That said, I always try and read some reviews, too. If a book has (for example) an average rating below 3, I’ll check if it has any 5 star reviews, and read some of them alongside some 1 and 2 star reviews. I think that’s where the biggest thing lies with star ratings for me – it helps me identify reviews to read.
So it’s a mix, really! I guess I do consider star ratings differently depending on where they are and who they come from, but I don’t tend to pick books based on star ratings alone. They might tilt from a yes to a no or vice versa, but that’s usually coupled with other things like recommendations, reviews, and whether the book actually sounds like something I’d enjoy! And yes, I’ll definitely take a star rating into account more if it comes from someone I trust, but I tend to be like that with reviews in general.
If you took part in this LTB back in Feb, feel free to drop your link below.
Unwrapping Words 