What does giving a 5 star review mean to you?

I'll start by saying that I don't think there's specifically a wrong answer to this question. Opinions are opinions after all! But I've been thinking about this lately, and it makes me wonder if places like Goodreads should have sub-categorical ratings instead of just overall 1-5 stars, with any nuance being required elaboration within the comments.

For me, there are three types of books that I'd be willing to review 5 stars.

1. A genuine literary masterpiece. In every sense of the word, from technical writing and basic grammar all the way through engaging plot development and continuity, obviously a book that truly hits every single mark is deserving of a 5 star review. An example of this for me personally would be Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.

2. This one is almost always nonfiction-geared. Something that presents new, profound, helpful, or otherwise important information in an accurate and digestible way for the general public (or a targeted industry-specific public). How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan hits this button for me.

3. For lack of a better term, vibes. This is the kind of book that can be technically lacking in some way (or several ways), but the execution of the book overall keeps me so locked-in that I can completely forget about the parts that may be lacking from an academic-level standpoint. This is obviously the most subjective of my 3 criteria here, and if I'm ever assigning a book 5 stars for this reason, I'll be sure to address how/why in my review. A perfect example of this for me is Rabbits by Terry Miles. Technically speaking, it's pretty objectively bad. There are plot holes/continuity issues galore, the prose and dialog are trivial/basic, and the ending is pretty rushed. But despite all of that, I LOVE the idea behind it, and I tore through it in just a few sessions because I just NEEDED that next dopamine hit once each chapter ended lol. I know it's trash, but I had so much fun along the way that I just didn't care.

I think plenty of people probably wouldn't be willing to give a book that falls under category 3 a 5 star review, because if technical writing falls short, it can't justify 5 stars for them. And I don't think that's explicitly wrong, because for those people a lack of good technical writing can genuinely make their reading experience worse. And in those cases if that's your reality, I could see something like a 3 star review being appropriate as long as you liked the story despite its technical miscues. I do think that this type of reader/reviewer is also the most likely to read something like ACOTAR or Fourth Wing and come to Reddit with a chip on their shoulder wondering why people flock to those books when there's "better" fantasy out there. Obviously not all people who review this way do that, but if you DO do that, I believe you're this type of reader haha.

Overall, making sub-categorical ratings a thing on Goodreads probably wouldn't do a whole lot to change the general landscape of the reviews there. But I'm definitely curious what the consensus is on 5 star reviews that fall under my category 3 above, and how many people are for/against it for their own style of reviewing.