I am currently tinkering with my Best of the Year List and this got me thinking. There are at least two books that I gave 4 stars (Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo and Grief Cottage by Gail Godwin) to but that I am still thinking about, while there are two 5 star books that have not really stuck with me. I am going to talk about why am considering changing my 4 star ratings to five stars and then I will try to talk about my thoughts on changing ratings a bit more in-depth.
Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo
The longer I stew over this book and the more reviews I read, the more I adore this book. I have already bought it to look pretty on my shelves and I am very tempted to read it again, which is always a sign of how much I love a book.
Ayobami Adebayo has created wonderfully flawed characters that have stuck with me. I find myself wondering what might have happened to them after the events of the book.
I am so very much looking forward to whatever she will write next.
Grief Cottage by Gail Godwin
This is a different case. I adored this book, and it is one of my favourite reads of the year. However, I remember exactly why I gave it four instead of five stars: the ending did not work for me.
But, the first 90 % of this book were just utter perfection and I remember being completely swept up in this story of grief and family and somehow moving on.
I often find that my initial thoughts on a book change over time, either because I cannot stop thinking about it and it keeps on growing on me or because after a while I cannot quite recollect why I enjoyed it so much in the first place. Sometimes I go back and change my rating, sometimes I don’t. In this case, I will probably go back before the end of the year to change my rating of Stay With Me to five stars because that book just shines so much in my memory.
Star ratings are highly subjective anyways; they depend on my mood and on the books I read immediately before or after; I have genre preferences; sometimes I talk myself into changing a rating while writing my review.
There are downsides to changing a rating: what if my memory just sucks and I was right the first time I rated the book? Also, shouldn’t past me’s thoughts be allowed to just stand without being changed? Another thing I keep thinking about, what about the people who agreed with my first rating? What if my new rating does not reflect their thoughts anymore? But then again, I do mostly write my reviews for myself…
My thoughts are complicated, as is often the case. What are your thoughts? Do you ever go back and change a rating? Do you even go back and change reviews? Let me know if I am the only one who often feels conflicted.
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