Thank you, everyone, SO much for showing me so much love on launch day! As much as I love to read and review books, this site is really for you! The book community is one of the best I have ever been a part of and it's all for the love of reading. Reading is bringing everyone from different backgrounds and interests together and it's really a beautiful thing when you think about it.
In my last blog I introduced you to myself and what you might expect from this site. Today I want to talk about my rating and review process.
Here is how I rate my reads based on stars.
On most reviewing platforms, you can't give half stars, so I base my stars on whole. Sometimes if a book is just in between two stars, in my descriptions I will give my true star rating and add halves.
1 Star - I can never NOT finish a book, no matter how much I don't like it. I will always push through and finish it. I do this to get the full story. My 1 star ratings will be for those books, I wish I never read.
2 Stars - When I give 2 stars, they are barely a step above 1. I still wish I didn't read the book, but there were elements in the book that intrigued me enough and I had hope that it would get better.
3 Stars - This is the most neutral as neutral can get when it comes to rating a book. The story wasn't terrible, but there was nothing that wowed me. I could have lived without reading it, but I didn't feel like I wasted my time.
4 Stars - When I rate 4 stars, you can guarantee that I really liked the book. An in between of like and love. There might just be a couple of things I wish were different. This tends to be my most common rating.
5 Stars - The more I rate books, the tougher I am getting with my ratings. It will take a lot for me to give out 5 stars now. The book has to really blow me away and I will think about it for quite a while.
The popularity of "spicy" books is increasingly growing. What's considered a spicy book? A book with some sort of sexual content, usually in romance books. Here is how I rate my spicy books based on peppers.
This is a new rating system I am starting this year. This might change the more that I rate since it is still new to me. These pepper ratings will be just a base line and in my reviews I will go into more depth of why I gave the pepper I did.
1 Pepper - Zero description, but it was implied that some sort of sexual encounter happened.
2 Peppers - Figuring out what 2 peppers would be was the most difficult for me and where I make the cut off. Most of these ratings will still be implied, but with just a tiny bit more detail or maybe just one sexual encounter in the whole book.
3 Peppers - For those who like books with a little bit of spice, but not over the top, these will be the ratings you want to look for from me. There is detail enough that you can visualize what is happening, but not so detailed it makes you feel like you have to look away.
4 Peppers - This is as detail as detail can get. These scenes will not be for the faint of heart and might make you sweat. While the details will be over the top, it does not consume the whole story. They are moments in the book to help with the overall plot.
5 Peppers - As far as details go, 4 and 5 peppers are going to be the same. The only difference will be how much the book revolves around these spicy scenes. These books are meant to be all sexual content, all the time.
Now that we got the stars and peppers out of the way, let's talk about my descriptive reviews! I post all my reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, and Instagram. These reviews can be very vague because I don't like to write about any spoilers. I personally don't like to read any reviews with spoilers, so I didn't want to write them that way. These reviews are more about my feelings as I read the book.
Now that I have this blog, I will also be posting reviews here, but these will be in a different format. I will share my general review, but I will go more in depth with these reviews and more than likely spoilers will be in the blog. So if you do not want to see spoilers of the book, I suggest skipping that part of the post. (I will put a **SPOILER WARNING** before I start talking about that part of the review.)
Please remember that these reviews are based off of my own opinions and my preferences. I always encourage you to read a book for yourself to make your own review. What I might not like, you might love and vis versa.
Thank you for Reading!
Alison Shane Reads
Currently Reading: The Professional by Kresley Cole
