A few years ago I began a quest of weeding through the plethora of romance novels (mostly regency and historical fiction as they are my favorites) to find only the cleanest and most sweet so that I might recommend them to my friends. I derived my own rating system based on four points:
* A letter rating such as those given to movies (G, PG, PG-13 etc.)
* A series of initials representing undesirable content in the book such as {L} for Language, {BS} for unsavory or offensive Back Story, {SM} for Subject Matter, and, possibly, my favorite, {TMP} for Too Much Passion :) That one gets used quite a bit. Usually with these I will give some short explanation as to why it received that label.
* A 1-5 star overall rating according to how much I liked the story, writing style etc with everything taken into account
* And finally, whether or not I could recommend the book to others...including my mother (who has very similar standards for books that I do). Sometimes I tag a book as easily recommendable, recommendable with an explanation, hesitantly recommendable or not recommendable at all!
That being said, I have very, very low tolerance for anything that makes me feel uncomfortable. As a matter of fact, one of my undesirable content categories is {UM} for Uncomfortable Moments. Anything that would make me blush (and I blush at the drop of a hat) including references to anatomy, bodily functions and the like receives that rating. I reserve the right to not explain these moments in my reviews if doing so would make me uncomfortable :)
I purposefully do not give the standard book review and retell the story in a nutshell. You can easily find that on Amazon, the back of the book itself or any other book reviewer's site. My purpose is to help you determine if it's a book you would enjoy reading based on its level of cleanliness.
I have reviewed over 70 authors and approx. 180 books exactly this way in a notebook for the last 3 years or so. I thought it was finally time to start putting my findings out there so others could benefit from them if they so desired.
I hope this blog is helpful to you in choosing which books should fill your precious free time :)
* A letter rating such as those given to movies (G, PG, PG-13 etc.)
* A series of initials representing undesirable content in the book such as {L} for Language, {BS} for unsavory or offensive Back Story, {SM} for Subject Matter, and, possibly, my favorite, {TMP} for Too Much Passion :) That one gets used quite a bit. Usually with these I will give some short explanation as to why it received that label.
* A 1-5 star overall rating according to how much I liked the story, writing style etc with everything taken into account
* And finally, whether or not I could recommend the book to others...including my mother (who has very similar standards for books that I do). Sometimes I tag a book as easily recommendable, recommendable with an explanation, hesitantly recommendable or not recommendable at all!
That being said, I have very, very low tolerance for anything that makes me feel uncomfortable. As a matter of fact, one of my undesirable content categories is {UM} for Uncomfortable Moments. Anything that would make me blush (and I blush at the drop of a hat) including references to anatomy, bodily functions and the like receives that rating. I reserve the right to not explain these moments in my reviews if doing so would make me uncomfortable :)
I purposefully do not give the standard book review and retell the story in a nutshell. You can easily find that on Amazon, the back of the book itself or any other book reviewer's site. My purpose is to help you determine if it's a book you would enjoy reading based on its level of cleanliness.
I have reviewed over 70 authors and approx. 180 books exactly this way in a notebook for the last 3 years or so. I thought it was finally time to start putting my findings out there so others could benefit from them if they so desired.
I hope this blog is helpful to you in choosing which books should fill your precious free time :)
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