I know you’re not supposed to read your reviews, but I do anyway, just like how you’re not supposed to drive with only one hand on the wheel or trick or treat after age seventeen. We’re not supposed to do it; we do it anyway.

I was looking at my Goodreads for The Name and the Key and noticed a sizeable drop in the score–someone gave me a 2-star review who also marked the book as a DNF–my first Did Not Finish. Ouch. Going to take a moment for me to get over that one.

In the meantime, here’s what I personally noticed about Goodreads scoring:

• 1a, 2s, and 3s knock scores down; 3s only bring scores up if your score was bad to begin with
• 4s keep scores the same unless your score was bad to begin with; in that situation, scores go up
• 5s are what truly bring a score up

This is not a scientific or officially stated Goodreads practice. It’s just something I tended to see after watching over my Goodreads scores. Only getting 5s can truly move the dial.

I reviewed my scores and reviews, and I currently have 15 four star ratings and 8 five-star ratings. This is really good. I’m hoping to get more five stars, though…and I’m not sure how. I was reading over the 4-star reviews, pretty much who were ARC readers who signed up for review copies, and they said overwhelmingly positive things about it. Some of them went out of their way to tell me through email or private messaging that they absolutely loved the book.

So…why were all those glowing four star reviews not five stars? This lead me to go down the rabbit hole of research.

On Goodreads, the ratings system goes like this:

1 Star: Didn’t like it
2 Stars: It was OK
3 Stars: Liked it
4 Stars: Really liked it
5 Stars: It was amazing

However, even Goodreads users don’t quite agree with these rankings, and have their own definitions for their choice of star ratings. From a cursory glance, people rate books four stars if the book enriched them in some way and they found it enjoyable, but five stars means the book transcended the genre or the reader experience in some way.

In terms of my own Goodreads rating system (or rating system in general), I mostly award four stars to books I liked and enjoyed. I don’t award five stars very often, but when I do, it’s not just about liking the book or the prose or the characters–the actual reading experience is something memorable and pleasurable in and of itself.

According to Rare Birds Books,

When I finish a book and discover it’s a new favourite, it’s really more of a feeling that’s occurring, which is annoying because those pesky feelings are notoriously hard to put into words. 

It’s a feeling that I’ve been changed in some way, even a small one. It’s a feeling of understanding with the characters and their world, as if what I’ve just read has captured a humanness I hadn’t noticed before or had forgotten. 

This makes sense to me and kind of speaks to my own experience. The feeling that I get, of being changed, is highly pleasurable, so if a book makes me feel good in that way, I will call it a keeper. (I usually read books as eBooks first, and if they get five stars from me, I buy a hard copy of it to add to my permanent library).

Here’s a checklist from Beware the Reader for a book to be rated 5 stars:

I MUST FEEL!

I MUST FORGET THE WORLD

I MUST LOVE THE CHARACTERS AND THINK THEY ARE REAL

I MUST DISCOVER SOMETHING NEW, OPEN MY EYES

I MUST DROOL ON THE WRITING

I think a lot of this makes sense and goes with my feelings, too…except drooling on the writing. Unless the prose annoys me (usually in the form of the narrative voice), I don’t actually care if the prose is all that lush or staccato. It just has to move along.

So, after doing some light research on this topic, I can say that despite the glowing remarks from my readers, I must not have quite gotten to the point where they felt transcendence of some kind, despite loving the book. I seem to be very close in that regard, but not quite.

It’s not like I can rewrite the book to please others, anyway. What’s done is done. It’s my only hope that I can find more readers who connect with the book and feel inclined to leave positive reviews, be they fours or fives.