How I Read Heat on Bloodthorn

The flames at the bottom of a review are not decoration.

Every review on this blog carries a flame number from 0 to 5. People ask what it means, so here it is in one place.

I set the number after I have read the whole book, never from the blurb or the tags. It measures how much sexual content is on the page and how graphic it gets.

A 0 means no sexual content at all. A 1 is a closed door: the scene fades to black and you fill in the rest. A 2 or a 3 is on the page but not highly graphic, or graphic but rare, so you get a scene or two and not a steady diet. A 4 or a 5 is frequent and explicit throughout.

Content warnings are listed separately at the end of every review, because heat and darkness are two different questions. A book can be a 1 on flames and still be hard to read.

If you read at a different level than I do, use the number as a map, not a verdict. I would rather you skip a book on purpose than meet a scene you did not ask for.

Bloodthorn · suvienur.com