Ratings Guide

This is our guide to what we aim to keep as a straightforward, simple ratings system for books.

Each book on the website is assigned a rating and a detailed explanation for why it received that rating.

The four main ratings are None, Mild, Moderate, and High. There is also a fifth (rarely used) category called DIRT. Note that each rating is color-coded so you can identify each with a glance: green for none, yellow for mild, orange for moderate, red for high, and black for DIRT.

(We also now assign "Rapid Ratings" to books we don't have time to read; those could receive any of the four main ratings. Read more on the blog post about it.)

Our Ratings System

Red = High

A HIGH rating (like a movie R) is for books that contain roughly over five or six uses of strong profanity, explicit sexual details ("open-door," or pages devoted to specifics), gory violence, or any other strongly vulgar content; sometimes the books we’ve rated have some harsh themes that alone require at least the moderate or the high rating (we try to explain why and in as much detail as possible without making the review itself unreadable).

Orange = Moderate

In a MODERATE (like PG-13), profanity might include a lot of the "moderate" expletives (like those that start with a, s, b, etc.) and up to five occurrences of the “f” word (referred to usually as “strong language”). Sexual references might include some details at several points throughout the book, but not longer, detailed "open-door" scenes. Violence could be fairly detailed, with some blood and guts or some harshness.

Yellow = mild

MILD (compare to a PG rating) means you may see occurrences of the tamest bad words, like those that start with d or h, plus perhaps a few moderate ones. No strong profanity (“f” word). Sexual references might occur but nothing explicit (think of these as "closed-door" scenes). Violence might be part of the plot, but there won’t be many gory details. Book reviews showing this rating are pretty family-friendly and clean books.

Green = None

NONE means the reviewed book contains no offensive language (or virtually none — maybe one or two uses of mild language), no sexual references, and no violence. These books are family-friendly, wholesome, clean books for all ages. Like G-rated book reviews.

Dirt= Don't invest reading time

There’s also a fifth category into which we rarely assign books: DIRT (Don’t Invest Reading Time). This rating is not reflective of the quality of the writing. It's simply a note that the reviewer chose not to finish the book because it was already clear early on that it would earn a HIGH rating. If you’re using this site to find clean books, you would most likely not want to invest reading time either. With the more recent addition of the "Rapid Rating," the DIRT rating is now even less used.