Discussion: A Real 5 Star Book v A Fake 5 Star Book

Discussion posts are a new-ish thing for me.  I'm doing them every Thursday, and I have posts planned for the next month or so.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topics, so please comment!  If you're interested, my last two discussion posts were Get To Know Me and In Defense of Historical Romance.

So what do I mean by a real 5 star book?  Are there imaginary books getting five stars?  Nope.  Basically, there are some books that I review that I feel actually deserve five stars for no reason other than the book itself as a stand alone piece of art.  There are other books I read, though, that, because of some outside reason, get five stars, too.

Let me point out the example that really made me think about this: Heroes of Olympus.  Sure, I really, really liked them.  But did I love them?  Do I think about them constantly?  Did they affect me in some profound way?  Books three and four and parts of book five, sure, but the whole series?  No, I didn't actually love it that much.  Yet I ended up giving all the books in the series five stars.  And that's not really fair, is it?

But why do I do this?  Well, mostly it's because I'm a fangirl.  Actually, that's the whole reason.  I totally respect the author, and I absolutely adore the Percy Jackson series.  And I'm rather fond of the Kane Chronicles as well.  Just the fact that these books are written by one of my favorite authors and related to one of my favorite series gave it five stars.

So, that's what I mean by a fake 5 stars.  After finishing that series and writing the reviews, I really started thinking about them.  I won't go back and change the ratings, because it's a lesson to be learned.  I want to really move away from these kinds of reviews.  So, if this ever comes up again, you'll probably see me give something two ratings.  One being the actual rating that it deserves and one being the fan-rating I've given it.

Hopefully, in the future, my reviews will be more objective.

Do you ever have this problem?  Please let me know!