An Independent Book of the Month

‘Five Stars’ Ian Hislop

'A very interesting book' Marina Hyde, The Rest is Entertainment

'A vivid and at times unnerving portrait of how we live' The Times

‘A fun and fascinating look at one of those things we all do’ Jonathan Ross

‘The history of modern life we didn’t know we wanted’ Giles Coren

‘Breezy and enjoyable’ Independent

‘(A) romp through our consumer landscape. Fascinating’ Mail on Sunday

The story of how – and why – the world has come to rely on star ratings for almost everything.

The world has come to rely on star ratings for almost everything. From Trustpilot to Google Reviews, eBay to Etsy, from doctors to teachers to politicians to toilets to books and culture, every facet of modern life has been distilled down to an online measure from one to five stars.

In Rate This Book journalist and critic Benji Wilson – who both rates and gets rated as part of his job – looks at how star ratings have become as much a part of modern discourse as language itself. We rate everything, we get rated and a dropped star here or there can make or break products and people. The importance of a five-star rating has seen the system gamed so that, ironically, an emblem of trust can no longer be trusted. Reviews are now used as both bait and blackmail.

But how did we get here? How has the pandemic and a corresponding lack of human connection increased our reliance on a number between one and five for our understanding of the world? And what has this reliance on something so reductive done to our ability to assess things for ourselves?