What I'm Missing from Books

Hello! In this journal of my thoughts I'm going to brain dump my thoughts on what I look for in books to give them five stars, as well as what they're missing that doesn't get them to that 5 star rating.

For starters, my ratings really come from how much of an emotional impact the books leaves on me. If I'm in a very deep unsettled rage or feel like I've been bored to death, it's probably not going to be a good sign. I'm in the mood to call out books so here we go: Ash Princess left me incredibly bored, A Court of Mist and Fury made me fall into a deep rage, and Serpent & Dove managed to do both. However, if the book managed to feel immense joy or, honestly, just a lot of traumatic grief then that means I probably cared a good bit about the characters and the story.

Other aspects of the story that will GREATLY reduce the rating are usual story beats that are just a little too problematic for my taste. This usually happens when there's a romance that is presented as the ideal romance and is actually incredibly problematic. And because I love dragging this book (mainly because it's hyped enough already), I'm going to use the example of Serpent & Dove. I'm going to be real here, if this book had NONE of these problems I'm about to mention, I would probably give it 2 stars instead of one. It was still incredibly boring and bland but it'd have an additional star because I at least read it. The problematic aspects consist of the relationship being presented in, what is supposedly supposed to set up an enemies-to-lovers story with what I assume is humor, but what really ends up being kind of disturbing if you think about it for just a few more seconds. The setup itself is also just ludicrus and has so many plot holes already: Lou, a witch, is forced into an arranged marriage with a witch hunter named Reid in order to protect the image of the witch-hunting church that Lou falsely accused of sexual assault. But don't you worry because marrying Reid will SAVE THE IMAGE OF THIS CHURCH. So already... it's not looking too hot. We've got the only black character named... Coco, the witches of color constantly referred to by their skin color while white characters are constantly referred to as "beautiful," overall kind of out of place and weird gender stereotypes, and just a whole lot of sexism disguised as progressiveness. I swear the biggest character arc for Reid in this story was learning that Lou had a pronoun and calling her "her" instead of "it." ... WWOOWOWOOOOOOO CAN WE POP SOME CHAMPAGNE FOR THIS GUY OVER HERE THIS IS A CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION!!! Anyways this overly long explanation of the surface-level problems with this book has led me to rate it 1 star. Did we need this long-winded explanation? No. No we did not. But these are just brain dump thoughts so they're going to keep going.

Now I have plenty of four star reads. In fact, probably most books I read will end up in the 3 to 4 star read category. On the higher end of my four star reads, I'm usually pretty in love with the story. But they're usually missing one aspect that's going to make the story really stick with me, and this is what would really bump it up to that 5 star rating: MESSAGES. I need SOMETHING that comes out of the book that opens my mind and that I can see opening the minds of others. I don't need the perfect book, but I need emotional connections and MESSAGES. Most books are missing the latter. They have great stories, great characters, and beautiful prose, but they're missing the messages that make the reader think a little harder, that make me want to apply these ideas to my own life, moments I can analyze for the deeper meanings that make me want to reread these stories. But I also need those emotional connections, that's why basically all Classics have been ruled out... also a lot of those are problematic and bore me to death anyways.

Does this mean every book needs to have great messages in it for it to be loved by others? Absolutely not. You see, people kind of only see in black and white and that if I have a preference, I think everyone else's preference is dumb... well that's okay. I'm here to ease your worries because this is just a preference and this doesn't mean that you can only rate a book 5 stars if the messages blow your mind as well. This is just what I need to see in order for my reads to hit that 5 star rating.

So what are some 5 star reads you may ask? Well here are some good ones (in no particular order and does NOT include everything):

Heaven Official's Blessing by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (MXTX)

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Let's take Heaven Official's Blessing as our example for today. When I first heard of this story, I was intrigued that it was a gay ancient Chinese fantasy story. I really hadn't read many of those if I'm going to be honest. However, I was actually afraid that the story would solely be romance and that would be honestly have probably not led me to read all 244 chapters of it. But I was BLOWN AWAY by the depth of the story. The novel does not actual revolve around the romance. Yes, the romance is important, but it's not THE STORY. The story is about Xie Lian and how he rose and fell, made horrible mistakes, rose and fell again, rose, and kept going. On top of the messaging, I sobbed my eyes out for hours during Arc 4, to this day the hardest chapters I've ever had to read (there are serious triggers for this entire book that I would suggest checking before picking it up).