Rating System – World of Bai

Throwback Thursday (Book Review): “A Type Of Hunger” By: Pamela D. Beverly

I found this book while I was scrolling through blogs and reading comments. Pamela has a few books available for people to read other than this one, one is even a children’s book that sounds so adorable! She published these books on her own and I am so excited to support her!

Title: A Type Of Hunger

Author: Pamela D. Beverly

Number of Pages: 132

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis

Nate is a man who values the idea of working hard to get the things in your life. When he loses his job unexpectedly he would rather keep it to himself instead of talk to his girlfriend and get some advice. This caused some issues in his relationship and they ended up breaking up due to the secrets. After months of searching for jobs and picking up temp work and scrounging every penny his health declines and serves as a major wake up call! Will he find a job? Will he come clean about his secrets?

Review

Pamela published this book all on her own which is so great! I love Indy authors! The only issue with this is that I found quite a few spelling and grammar errors that were very distracting when reading the book. However, you will run across these errors even in professional editing situations.

I really enjoyed the beginning of this book because she sets up her characters so well! However, towards the middle of the book it started to feel quite rushed and I missed some key elements to the story. I loved a lot of the ideas behind this story but with the book only being 132 pages I felt there was room to expand the storyline and add in some missed details. But overall this is a book and an author that you should really give a chance.

Pamela D. Beverly’s Blog

Buy The Book

I always feel like three stared books get a bad rep because it seems mediocre or just not good enough. This book is honestly worth the read! I am just giving it a three star rating right now because of the many grammar and spelling errors along with the fact that it was really short and felt rushed. However, maybe you are looking for a really quick read, this book would be a great option for you.

Please check out my rating scale here to better understand why this book received this rating.

Rating Scale

Throwback Thursday (Book Review) “Get A Life Chloe Brown” By: Talia Hibbert

Welcome back to another Throwback Thursday book review. This week I want to highlight a two star read of mine. Once again this review might be controversial because everyone seems to love this book! “Get a Life Chloe Brown” is highly talked about and I have came across some really amazing reviews from other readers that made me want to pick this book up, so I ordered it on amazon and immediately dove into it.

Synopsis

Chloe Brown has Fibromyalgia which causes chronic pain, tie that together with being dumped by a fiancé and you get a girl who stays at home to protect her health and feelings. However, after a near death experience she puts together a list, not a bucket list but a “Get a Life List”. On this list are a few items such as; ride on a motorcycle, go camping and a few things to the extreme of have meaningless sex. However, one thing was not on that list and it was to fall in love.

Rating

⭐️⭐ / 5 Stars

Review

This book I felt was way over hyped as I saw so many five star reviews. This I feel is a big reason I couldn’t get into it and maybe if I picked this up with zero expectations I would have enjoyed this a bit more. However, after this book I really don’t see myself picking up the other two books in this series.

It took me a very long time to get into this read because it was very slow to start out. I also did not feel any kind of connection with Chloe other than being Plus size and having some health issues. The characters didn’t jump out at me for any particular reason and the relationship felt quite forced. It was a lot of off and on with feelings and it was rough to sit through. However sometimes you did like the relationship and it could be cute at times so I guess I am at a toss up with that.

From other peoples reviews I was expecting some major spicy scenes, don’t get me wrong, there were a few scenes that peeked my interest but not as many as I thought there would be I guess. However sometimes in books with spicy scenes use some interesting choice descriptive words that leave you feeling more awkward than interested, this book was not one of those. I felt quite comfortable with the words Talia used to describe these scenes, so I applaud that!

The main reasons this got a low rating of two stars would be;

I struggled to finish the book
I did not love the characters relationship
Chloe wasn’t very relatable in my eyes
Chloe got on my nerves more often than not

These points are highlighted in my previous post called “My Rating System” Follow this link to check that out. https://worldofbaiblog.com/2021/06/14/my-rating-system/

Have you read this book/series? If so what were your thoughts? Maybe I have been a bit harsh on this book.

My Rating System

When I started reading and rating my books I had no reference to look back on to base my scale. I mostly went off of what I felt. Some of my 4 or 5 star books probably could have been lower ratings but I feel bad giving an author who worked so hard to write a book anything below a 4 even if the book truly deserved a lower rating. I feel like everyone rates books differently so what I think is a 4 star read might be a 3 star for you based on our different criteria, I do wish that there was an official rating scale everyone followed but sadly that will stay a dream. With that being said I am FINALLY giving myself an official rating guideline to follow.

One to two star reads are books that I could barely finish.

Three star reads are books that are good but wouldn’t be recommended.

Four and five star reads are books I am left thinking about and would recommend.

If I don’t finish a book I will not rate it because I feel like that is unfair to the author in my personal opinion.

Let’s dive in deeper!

One Star

⭐️

This book did not keep me interested, I found myself struggling to finish the book and had to practically force myself to get through it. I did not feel connected to the characters or they did not build as much as I feel they should have. I found the book too predictable and drawn out. Maybe there wasn’t enough showing but too much telling of the story.

Example

Two Stars

⭐️⭐️

I finished this book but really did not enjoy what I was reading. A character really got on my nerves, the plot felt unoriginal or boring and maybe parts of the book just felt distracting such as; many grammar/spelling errors, plot holes and things just got too jumbled.

Example

Three Stars

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

This was a good book but I wasn’t in love with it. I probably won’t be recommending this book to anyone because it didn’t leave me with something amazing to talk about. I might have found something about it that left me wondering why it was even there in the first place. Maybe it was a slow build and left me underwhelmed, these are probably books that were overhyped.

Example

Four stars

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

This is a book that I would recommend however there were probably just some small details that were missing or the ending was just kind of meh. I was left wanting just a little more from this read or it wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for and had played out in my mind. This book played out more like a movie in my head and the characters stood out.

Example

Five stars

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

I absolutely loved this book and either found nothing wrong with it or there were minor issues that I can live with and forget about. This is a book that I can’t stop talking about and I find myself recommending it to everyone I come across. Maybe I can’t put the book down and I fly through it or throughout the day I find myself thinking of the book and craving to sit down and read.

Example

In conclusion, one and two star reads I will not be recommending to anyone and I will probably be unhauling them soon, a three star read was good but if I see someone posted a three star rating I might be questioning the book on my TBR pile, and last but not least four and five star ratings will be getting recommended and I might just talk you ear off about them!

Do you use a similar rating system or is yours different? Do you rate DNF books? What are some of your overall thoughts?