 Hello, hello, everyone. My name is Laura. This is my channel, Laura's Little Library, and welcome to today's video where I will be doing the Star Ratings book tag. It's originally created by Jane. Over at the bookaholic, I will have the video linked down below in the description along with links to all of my social media. And while you're down there, you can go ahead and click the subscribe button I post on Sundays and Wednesdays. I'm really excited to do this tag, so I feel like this is such a great way to better understand how I write books. You know, I talk about the rating I give it and why, but I don't really talk about my structure of the ratings themselves. So I thought this was just such a fun, clever tag, and I really wanted to do it. So the first question is based on what do you rate the books? I personally rate them on two major things, but also they can be persuaded one way or another by other minor things. So I am a plot-driven reader. So I will mostly rate it on the plot of the book and the world building slash magic system is if it's a fantasy. If it's something that is if the plot is interesting and unique, it will be rated higher versus if it's like a very generic plot, something that wasn't super interesting, then it will most likely be rated lower just because it captured my attention less. The book has strong world building or a really cool magic system that always helps as well. Otherwise, the other major thing that I write my books based off of is my emotions and my response to it. So if it's a book that I was very emotionally invested in, like I was like super happy or super excited or like worried for the characters, like that is going to create a lasting effect and that is going to help me rate the book higher. Even if there are some things that like weren't quite as good, maybe the writing wasn't super strong or the character development could have been better. If I'm still emotionally involved in the book, I'm going to overlook those things and still give it a higher rating. When it comes to character, most of the time bad characters will lower the rating, but good characters will just kind of not lower the rating. Question number two, do you give half star ratings? Yes, I do. I generally only do one through five with half star. I don't really go into 0.25 or 0.75. Maybe I'll do it on story graph. If I'm like super indecisive between like a 3.5 and four, maybe I'll give it a 3.75. But I really don't ever use anything more specific than a half star. But yeah, I will definitely use half star ratings because full stars, you know, there's a lot to earn a full star, but there's also a lot to lose or a lot that can lose a star. But if it doesn't quite go one way or another, like, I want to be fair. That's the only hard thing about good reads is that they don't do the half stars. So it's it's a little tricky sometimes. Question number three, how long does it take you to rate a book after you finish it? This is an interesting question because what happens for me is I generally rate the book twice. So I will like finish the book, I'll close the covers and I'll be like, OK, what am I going to rate it? And that rating will almost always be higher than the rating I go with because I just finished the book. I'm emotional. I'm excited. I am thrilled most of the time. And then I'll give it a little bit of time to just kind of be like, OK, now that the initial emotion of the end of the book has worn off, what were things I liked about it? What were things I didn't like about it? And then I will find a more balanced rating. I think of like, OK, well, I ended up really enjoying this. But there are also these things that, you know, now that I've taken time to think about it, I didn't like as much. So I will come up with a rating for that. And then if those ratings are different, like if my emotional rating is significantly higher than like the logical rating that I give it, sometimes I'll average them or I'll do some sort of compromise or maybe I won't give it the lowest rating because this emotional still needs to be taken into account in the overall rating. So I'll maybe like do it one step up. And that's how I'll even things out. So if I finish a book and I'm like, oh, my word, that's like a four or four five star read and then I sit there and I think about it. I'm like, no, no, that's more like a three star read. Actually, I really didn't enjoy this. And I forgot about this thing at the beginning and this didn't make sense. So then maybe I'll bump it up to like a three point five star. So I still have that half a star of like finishing the book with all the enjoyment. But I still need to take into account everything about the book. Question number four, do you ever feel bad giving a low star rating? Sometimes not super often, though, if it's a low star rating, then it did something to deserve the low star rating. I just don't I don't give out low star ratings, like low star being two and below. I don't give two and below if it's something that was just like. OK, like there is something that made me not rated a three star. Three stars average, good, you know, maybe I'd recommend it. But anything below it, there's something that causes it to be like below. Maybe there are a lot of like writing issues or a plot hole or something. So then I don't feel bad giving it that rating. The only time I would feel bad giving it that rating is as if I know there were other people that very much enjoyed the book and just didn't quite see the things that I saw in it. Then I'll be like, I'm sorry, I give one of your favorite book two stars. I I don't think that says anything about you. I just we had different enjoyments and different things out of the book. So I feel a little bad, but that's not going to make me change it or do anything about it. Question number five, do you change your star ratings? If yes, do you usually change it to a higher or lower rating? Well, as I said, kind of before I do change them. But I don't necessarily change them on a social media. Once I've like once I've posted it to the world, that's generally what it stays. Very, very, very little does it ever change once I've made it known to public. So like if it's on Goodreads, very unlikely that I will change it. The only reason I would change it on Goodreads is if it's a half star, but I can't, you know, do half stars. So maybe I'll like if it's a three point five star, maybe I'll put it as a four star because of rounding. But then if I sit there and I think, well, but there's a reason I don't want to give it a four star. Maybe I'll bump it down to three on Goodreads when in actuality, the rating of three point five will stay the same. I've never changed a rating in a review on Instagram or on YouTube or TikTok or any of the other social media story graph. I don't change my ratings generally because I put so much thought into them once they are done, they are done. And if they get changed, it's generally within five minutes of making the initial rating. So not really. Question number six, what makes a book a five star rating to you? Kind of depends on like the genre of the book a little bit. So like a fantasy of, which is my favorite genre, a five star rating is a little bit more logical as well as a little bit of emotional. So it's going to be amazing world building, great system. Awesome plot, you know, and like good writing. Like if it's going to be five stars, it needs to have some level of good writing, but it doesn't need to be the best writing in the world. Characters are definitely something that can tip it from like a four or four point five to a five star. But again, there's also that emotional aspect to it as well. I need to be excited or emotional by the end of it. And then with like non fantasy, it's a little bit trickier just because I read for creativity and escapism. So if I'm escaping into a contemporary where it's literally based in our world, it's going to take a lot more effort for it to be a five star read. And that's going to be more about avoiding tropes that I hate as well as having it be more unique. If you have like a contemporary romance that has this plot that already sounds pretty interesting and I haven't heard anything like it. It's it's in a good probably four star range. If it's executed well and the writing or the narration and the main character are done super well, then it's a good contender for a five star. It just needs to like make sure that there are no miscommunication tropes, like no love triangles, just things things like that. Like it I've been trying to be more willing with five star reads. So I don't give out like one or two a year, but at the same time, I'm still not going to like just hand out five star reads whenever, like there's still going to be something that has to be earned. If that makes sense at all. And then the reverse of that question, number seven, what is a one star rating for you? I do not hand out one star ratings very often. It is more likely that the book is going to get a two star rating. One stars. I didn't quite DNF it, but I should have. One stars are books with terrible writing. Characters that just piss me off. No creativity or unique factor about it. And something that like actively makes me me frustrated. Or like I said, I should have DNFed it. If I finish a book and it was OK, like I'm not a fan, probably a two star because like it's a book. It was written. And there's probably at least one positive element that I can find DNFs I don't rate. Or if I truly hated the book that I DNFed, I will rate it a one star. Because if I don't rate it, then it doesn't change the ratings at all. And if it's a DNF most of the time, you know, it's not fair to read the book. But if I had something like maybe it's a misrepresentation or it's something that is handled wrong within a book, I will specifically rate it one star to bring the ratings down because it is a book that should not be read for a very serious reason. So I don't give out a lot of one stars. And if I do, that's that's almost worse than just not rating it. And then the final question, question number eight. How does your star rating system work? As I kind of briefly mentioned earlier in the video, one stars don't don't touch it. Just don't even think about touching it. Two stars, this book was published. It's not good, but it could be worse. But I still wouldn't wouldn't want to talk about it. There's still the potential it's going to wind up on my worst books of the year list. Three stars is like a huge there's a huge gap between like two and three stars. Because three stars like this was an average book. The writing was OK. The characters were fine. The plot happened. It was decent, you know, I like I would probably recommend it. If it's it's kind of one of those like if the book sounds interesting to you and I gave it three stars, still read it because you might enjoy it more than I did. But there was nothing really super special about the book that made me like want to rate it higher. Four stars are kind of this conflicted area of it was better than good. But it wasn't amazing or phenomenal. Like four stars, I'm more likely to rate book three stars and then four stars. I read a lot of really good book four stars. Again, I read a lot of books that have good world building, good magic systems. Four stars, even if like the rest of the book was kind of meh. So four stars are the most flexible in terms of my ratings. And then obviously five stars is like this is amazing. Everyone needs to read it. I love it. I might even reread it. I don't generally reread. But if I do, the only rereads I would probably do are my five star books. Actually, that would be an interesting video. Re-reading five stars and seeing if I would still rate them five stars. Comment down below. That sounds like an interesting video vlog to you. That's just kind of how it works. Most books are going to end up being somewhere between the three and like the four four point five star range. I feel like my yearly averages are always just somewhere between three and four because most books are just like somewhere between good and great. But it's not one way or another. Thank you all so much for watching this video. Like I said before, all of my bookish social media is down below. Feel free to follow me and I will probably follow you back. I post on Sundays and Wednesday. So while you're down there, make sure you hit the subscribe button and hit the bell to be notified as well. Give this video a thumbs up if you'd like to check out the original video down below by Jane. Comment down below anything about your five star ratings, how you figure them out. If you even still do start ratings, I know a lot of people are like moving away from it. I personally right now find it to be pretty helpful, but like that is not the case with everyone. So like let me know if you still use a five star rating. But yeah, until I see you all in the next video, I wish you happy reading.