I find that a five star rating on a book doesn’t actually answer my questions. Yes, its a good book, but is it interesting? Does it capture your attention? Does it need a warning: this book will make you cry? So I invented an 8 criteria scoring system.

Hook value, curious nipple quotient, plot and predictability ratings, series score, recommendation value, genre score and emotion warning are those 8 values. What do I mean by these criteria?

• HOOK VALUE: All books must capture my attention within the first chapter. Books that I’m on the fence about after that get until the fifth chapter to ‘hook’ me. I call this the hook value. Rated on a scale of 1-5 where 5 is first line, 4 is first paragraph, 3 is first chapter, 2 is first 5 chapters and 0 holy shit I cant do this it hurts. 1 doesn’t exist. books that take more than 5 chapters to hook me deserve to be shot. 0 will always be a decimal score to let you know at what point I gave up.
• CURIOUS NIPPLE QUOTIENT: This score relates to the quality of the proofreading and editing process. How bad is the grammar, and not just in a ‘there, their and they’re’ sense. Did you know that there are three different homonyms (words that sound like another) of peaked? I was reading an erotic romance novel when I was stopped in my tracks by piqued nipples. To be piqued is literally to become curious, peeked is to be spied or seen briefly and peaked is to come to a point. I’d seen plenty of peaked nipples and even peeked some before; but never had I ever come across curious nipples. That was when I knew I was in a whole new world of poorly edited books. This score measures how much garbage you have to wade through to actually find the story. An exclamation mark in this category instead of a number indicated that the book title and blurb were not the text of the book received. Rated on a scale of 1-5 where 5 is awesome and 1 is shit.
• The PLOT RATING paired with the predictability score, rates the story the author is trying to tell and the way they told it, the character progression. This is a fairly personally arbitrary number. Relies on my personal opinion of the book rather than an objective one. Rated on a scale of 1-5 where 5 is awesome and 1 is shit.
• PREDICTABILITY RATING, paired with the plot score, is where I score how predictable the plot is. Like in murder mysteries how quickly did you work out who killed the victim? Romances generally score worse because you know they’ll end up together before you open the cover, but that’s why we read them. Rated 1-5 where 5 is last chapter, 4 is last quarter of book, 3 is the third quarter of the book, 2 is the second quarter of the book and 1 is the first quarter.
• The SERIES SCORE will tell you how well this title fits with other books in the same series. The first number tells you what number in the series the title is. The second number is the rating of whether you need to read the previous books to understand the title. Ratio score. 1 to 5 where 5 is awesome and 1 is shit.
• RECOMMENDATION VALUE is a personal opinion. Would I recommend reading this book to actual people I know? Is it a book which has prompted me to ask myself ethical questions of myself and others? Is this something that would make a good conversation topic at dinner parties? Is it something that has/will stick with you for some time after you have finished the book? Rated on a scale of 1-5 where 5 is awesome and 1 is shit.
• GENRE SCORE is where I tell you how well it fits in the genre the publisher assigned it numerically and give you a new genre it fits in best. I’m constantly updating my genre authority list (library technical term for list of official genres I’m allowing myself to call things) and every genre is identified by a five letter code. Rated 1-5 where 5 is awesome and 1 is shit.
• EMOTION WARNING is where I give you a short sentence on how the book left me feeling after I finished it. If the book messed with my insides along the way I will let you know. So you know what to expect. This is also where you will find trigger warnings is needed.