One of the things readers consistently tell us they like are our sensuality ratings. They’ve been a part of AAR since its inception and we think they help readers find books they love. We’ve not revised them, however, in quite some time and, with the trend towards more sex and more graphic sex in romance, we feel we may need to.
Here are our current definitions:
Kisses: Kisses only. Many of these books are quite simply “sweet.”
Subtle: No explicit sensuality. Kissing and touching, but physical romance is described in general terms or implied. The emphasis is on how lovemaking made the characters feel emotionally, and not on graphic description.
Warm: Moderately explicit sensuality. Physical details are described, but are not graphically depicted. Much is left to the reader’s imagination.
Hot: More explicit sensuality. Sex is described in more graphic terms. Hot books typically have more sex scenes and are more likely to depict acts beyond intercourse.<
Burning: Extremely explicit sensuality – these books are often erotic romances or flatout erotica.
We’ve thought about narrowing the system down–this would only be for 2017 and beyond–to Subtle, Warm, and Hot. We’ve also considered leaving the four of the five levels in place and getting rid of Burning.
We’d like your input. What would work for you?
Thanks!
Dabney Grinnan
Impenitent social media enthusiast. Relational trend spotter. Enjoys both carpe diem and the fish of the day.
As a longtime AAR visitor (since 2004!), the sensuality ratings may appear meaningless for today’s releases, but they mean something to me–they are essentially part of the AAR brand. And I know what they mean within the context of this site and its community of readers. Changing the ratings–changing the common language of this site–for a new set of readers/books who might not even visit AAR can come across as saying we Romancelandia veterans are irrelevant!
I think that’s actually a great point, NoirFemme. I’ve been an AAR reader since the early about 2006 and am accustomed to the review scheme here. It’s nice when a site has a history and brand and changing too much can alienate long-time readers.
As a reader, I appreciate the distinctive sensuality ratings. It makes it much easier to choose what books I will read, and also to recommend books to friends based solely on a review I read at AAR. I think if you change the ratings I will be less likely to make those suggestions because I won’t feel as confident about it.
I appreciate the distinctions you make. For instance, I don’t think I have read many with a burning rating…generally not my thing. So while I may read the review, the burning designation makes me more careful in my final decision. And I appreciate that – it’s one reason why I use the website (and have for 20+ years).
I admit, as a reviewer, it’s become harder for me to differentiate between Hot and Burning. What I consider Burning is now actually only rated Hot. So I suppose it’s all a matter of things being relative to the reader.
I personally define the different between Warm, Hot and Burning as follows:
Warm – fairly traditional sex described mostly in ambiguous terms, focusing on feelings and sensations rather than the physical act.
Hot – various forms of mainstream sex acts that are more graphically described, with the addition of things like dirty talk and explicit descriptions and use of slang for body parts.
Burning – anything considered out of the mainstream, sex-wise. BDSM, multiple partners, erotica, etc. would all be considered Burning to me.
I do think we need to keep categories for Kisses/No Sex and Subtle. I’ve read books with a single kiss. The sex isn’t even subtle-it’s non-existent. For me, Subtle would also be know as “closed the bedroom door” books where the sex is heavily implied but not at all described.
I agree with this. When I rate books, I use similar criteria for warm and hot. I don’t think I’ve ever reviewed a book I’d consider burning, although I have read a few.
This is a great breakdown of the various ratings. I use the same scale.
My rules for grading run in a similar fashion!
I guess I feel as long as a reviewer is consistent and, in the case of Burning, explains why it’s Burning, I’m inclined to keep it. I think Warm is the most useless one currently.
I’m really pleased this discussion is happening and it’s interesting to get the reader’s perspective, because from a reviewer’s perspective, sensuality ratings are difficult. As is obvious, I tend to be pretty laid back, and would find it difficult to find a book I’d rate as Burning. It would have to have a lot of kink and be pretty much all sex all the time for me to use that rating and that, to my mind, is erotica rather than romance, anyway. And that would be indicated in the review itself and in the review type on the page.
Such ratings are very subjective, but if they’re to be at all useful to our readers, we have to try to achieve some sort of consistency. At the present time, a book gets rated warm if it has sex scenes that take place between two people regardless of sexual orientation or explicitness of language (and as I said upthread, what language IS explicit these days?) and in which there are no kinks – no toys, bondage, BDSM, three-ways etc. etc.
I know there are some pretty “dark” romances (and I hesitate to use that definition) out there which venture into taboos like rape and incest. Maybe those are the books I might consider Burning if I had the desire to read them.
I think I go along with the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” brigade. I find the ratings about right for my reading requirements. I do look out, though, for indications that books are M/M romances as these don’t particularly appeal to me though I always read the reviews and have read a few – just not what particularly pushes my buttons as I sometimes feel a bit voyeuristic myself when I read them. The current system seems to have worked for many years so I am happy with it though I can see a case for periodic review and consideration, asking newer AAR members/visitors what they think as time and tastes move on.
I have to question just WHY we have the ratings system. Is it so that readers who want to avoid sex scenes can find out what they are getting into? Or conversely, is it so that readers who are in the mood for a hot rather than warm read can find a book to fit that criteria? I think If you know the reason people are paying attention to the ratings, it helps you know just how to rate them.
Both!
If you want to see examples of what we currently consider Warm and Hot, just look at reviews from 2017.
We have used Burning four times this year. Here’s one Haley gave that rating to:
https://allaboutromance.com/book-review/midtown-masters-by-cara-mckenna/
That’s a book I’ve actually read and quite honestly, I’d have rated it Hot. It’s got voyeurism, various discussions of sexual acts and an mmf threesome … but I still wouldn’t call it burning. I suppose in my mind, burning is more about sex for sex’s sake – out and out erotica if you will, which this book isn’t.
I freely admit to being fairly laid back about these things – it takes a lot to shock me!
I could also not, in all honesty, rate the vast majority of historical romances published these days any higher than warm; the same goes for the few CR books I’ve read or listened to. Elizabeth Hoyt regularly uses the “c” word in her books, and I still can’t rate them higher than warm.
I wouldn’t have rated that one burning either, I didn’t find it overly kinky. The Kit Rocha books are definitely hotter than that, and I rated Beyond Surrender as Hot. And, this is why we are having this discussion!
See my review of Kristen Ashley’s The Deep End for a book I think makes the burning rating utterly necessary (in fact, I would have gone stronger if we had it).
https://allaboutromance.com/book-review/the-deep-end-by-kristen-ashley/
I don’t know if my opinion could help, but here it goes. I think kiss and subtle sould be merged, and hot and burning as well. So it would be something like subtle / warm / hot.
What is important for me is to know if a book is erotica or just a very hot romance, and that’s something I usually see in the ‘genre’ label and not in the level of sensuality. I think that some of the oldest reviews today would have a different level of sensuality, but that’s something that we all know, don’t we?
Anyway, if you don’t change anything in the end, it’s OK with me as well.
I agree with you – mostly. I still think there’s a difference between kisses and subtle, because in a book rated subtle, sex happens even if it’s not graphically described – someone upthread mentioned historical mysteries such as those by Deanna Raybourn, where the sex is implied which might need a subtle rating. Kisses means just that – kisses only and no sex, on or off the page. So I’d argue for Kisses, Subtle, Warm and Hot, with hot replacing the old Burning category.
Except that we never use the Burning category and if we lose it we have no way to let readers know that the sex in a book is way way more explicit than 99.9% of the books we review…..
Since majority fall under Warm, is it possible to distinguish it further or bump it to Hot? When authors use euphemisms on the reproductive body parts, I would treat them Warm. When there’s dirty talk or slang words to the body parts, I’d call them Hot. I realize using different words doesn’t automatically make them feel hot. It can still be subjective and depends on the author’s delivery. I guess the choice of words help distinguish them a little bit? Nowadays, since hot is the trend, I smile when I read flowery euphemisms…
With this, I would still vote to keep Burning. They can help distinguish from my definition of Hot.
Despite the changes in writing styles over the past decade or so I like the system as is. In particular, there remains a very significant difference between the “hot” and “burning” categories.
To date the discussion has been largely theoretical. It might be helpful to discuss how we would classify particular books in order to determine whether there is any consensus about their classification.
I second this; I really don’t think it’s possible to come up with a good subjective classification system without basing it on actual examples. If we had a list of say ten or fifteen books with differing approaches to sexual content, each briefly described, we could see if there’s general consensus in how they should be classified.
Personally I think “Warm” should be two different categories and everything else should be the same, but a) I’m a splitter, and b) I might change my mind if the discussion were less theoretical.
I like the current definitions. They’re well-defined and make sense.
Speaking for myself, personally, I’d leave the system “as is.” It’s working very well despite the change in heat levels of the books being published and reviewed here. Even if most books that used to fall in the “hot” category are falling in the “warm” category these days, there’s a big leap between “hot” and “burning.”
I like the system “as is.” (Although I’d change kisses to sweet, perhaps.) My own preference is for “warm” reads and I’ll read “kisses” and “subtle” at times (usually for mysteries and rom-com). I’ll also go for “hot” if the story sounds really interesting. But “burning” reads just turn me off, as does any kind of kink. I prefer full disclosure in blurbs and ratings, thank you very much!
If we were to keep the categories, how would you describe each one?
I like the rating system the way it is. Sometimes I am in the mood for burning and sometimes I’m just wanting something hot. Maybe it’s my age, but there’s a pretty big difference in those two categories for me.
But I think that’s part of the issue – with the way heat levels have increased, I don’t think there IS much difference between “hot” and “burning”. I’m speaking personally here, and not on behalf of AAR – if warm covers sex between two consenting adults, regardless of language, variety of sexual positions or frequency of occurrence, how can you then differentiate between hot and burning? To my mind warm covers everything you’ll find in a mainstream romance novel. With hot, you’re moving into erotic romance territory, which makes burning somewhat redundant.
For me personally, burning is a book that strikes me as all about kinky sex, really that the point of the book is tons of very non-traditional sex.
Is that perhaps closer to erotica than erotic romance? I confess I’m not a great reader of either, so I’ll readily admit to not having much experience of those genres. But I still think that whatever our “highest” rating ends up as, that’s the one that includes the kinky stuff.
I think the problem really is that there is pretty much no difference these days between “hot” and “warm”. As reviewers, this comes up in discussion often and I’m in favour of whichever one we choose being the one that shows the book contains one or more sex scenes between two people that doesn’t involve the kinky stuff. It would cover a broad spectrum, it’s true, but I don’t see how we can really differentiate. Do we say if the author uses the word “fuck” the rating has to be hot? Or if there are three or fewer sex scenes it has to be warm? Because as far as I can tell those are the only distinctions we’re really talking about – language used and frequency. And using those sorts of yardsticks makes no sense to me,
I would keep both kisses and subtle, because subtle is useful for books which contain non-explicit sex scenes.
After that though, I’d have warm for the vast majority of romances that have sex scenes between two people (regardless of sexual orientation) with no kinks. The language used may be explicit – although what IS explicit these days? I hear all of it on a daily basis on school playgrounds!
Then hot for everything else – BDSM, threesomes and other kinks. I would imagine that anyone picking up an erotic romance knows what they’re in for!
OR – most romances these days contain sex scenes, so maybe it’s easier to identify those that DON’T have them than those that do. With my Editor-in-Chief hat on, I input every review that goes up at AAR and I would guess something like 85% of them are rated ‘warm’. Maybe we should keep kisses and subtle (to identify the no sex/non explicit titles) and ditch the others.
I would strongly disagree with your first suggestion, as it seems to be saying that anything with kink in it is by definition hotter than vanilla sex. Some of the dryest, more boring and mechanical sex scenes I’ve read have been in kinky erotic romance, and some of the hottest have involved nothing but missionary sex! Now, I would love to have kink ratings (I seem to be encountering more and more BDSM in books where you wouldn’t be able to guess it just by reading the back cover, and it’s really not my thing), but that might be impractical to implement!
This is the problem with ratings like this overall; one man’s meat is another mans’ poison, so to speak.
Like you. I’ve read sex scenes which I’d describe as having the excitement level of “like watching paint dry” which other people have found very titillating. We can’t control that, but what we can do is give readers an idea of what they are likely to find in the book – a rating of hot will indicate there are elements other than “vanilla” sex; as to whether the reader will find it hot or not, well, that’s a personal thing and isn’t predictable.
I am always a fan of simplifying, but if the old system is working then perhaps stick with it. I’m a huge fan of romance books, the sexier the better so love your Hot and Burning ratings!
I like them as they are.
I like the system as is. All of the categories make sense to me.
I agree!
I agree with Samantha’s thoughts above. “Kisses” and “Subtle” categories seem nearly the same and so if AAR wanted to get rid of one of these, that would make the most sense to me.
I suppose “hot” and “burning” could also be conflated too though.
I think the vast majority of romances I read fall into the “warm” category, though lots of romantic mysteries from authors like Deanna Raybourn seem more in the “subtle” category.
I dunno…not sure why the original list and descriptions wouldn’t still be relevant. If any two really are asking to be merged, IMO it’s the kisses/subtle categories. And then possibly updating/redefining ‘warm’.
But, to be fair, I guess I could give a pass on switching burning to just hot, as long as you continue to delineate between true erotica, erotic romance, and just generally hot trad. romance.