A star rating tells you almost nothing about a romance book. Two five-star reads can be a closed-door slow burn and an explicit enemies-to-lovers dark romance — completely different books, identical rating. If you actually want to remember what you liked about a book, you need two more fields Goodreads was never built for: spice (heat) level and tropes. You can track both with a plain spreadsheet or with a purpose-built app — here's how to do either.
Why the 5-star system fails romance readers specifically
Goodreads' data model — title, author, star rating, shelf, review — was built in 2007 for general fiction and hasn't fundamentally changed. It works fine if all you want is "did I like it." It falls apart the moment you want to answer more specific questions a romance reader actually asks: Was this too spicy for a public transit read? Did I like it because it was slow burn, or because it was fated mates? Am I actually reading more villain-romance than I realized? None of that lives in a star rating.
The three things worth tracking beyond a star rating
- Spice / heat level. A 0-5 scale is the BookTok-community standard: 0 is closed-door (no on-page intimacy), 5 is as explicit as it gets. Tracking this per book means you can filter your TBR by mood later, or just remember why a book surprised you.
- Tropes. Enemies to lovers, slow burn, fated mates, only one bed — tropes are often the actual reason a book worked for you, more than genre or plot. A year of trope-tagged reading tends to reveal your taste far more precisely than "I like romance."
- Mood. Cozy, dark, funny, tense — the emotional register of a book, independent of genre. Two enemies-to-lovers books can feel completely different depending on mood.
Option 1: a manual spreadsheet
If you don't want another app, a spreadsheet gets you most of the way there. Set up one row per book with these columns:
- Title / Author
- Star rating (keep this — it's still useful, just not sufficient alone)
- Spice (0–5)
- Tropes (comma-separated, pick from a fixed list so it stays filterable — don't freeform it every time)
- Mood (one or two words)
The discipline that makes this work is picking your trope and mood vocabulary once, up front, and reusing it — a spreadsheet with 40 unique one-off trope spellings ("enemies2lovers," "enemies to lovers," "E2L") is useless for filtering later. Keep a short, fixed list taped to the top of the sheet.
Option 2: a purpose-built app
The tradeoff with a spreadsheet is friction — updating five fields on your phone mid-read is annoying enough that most people stop after a few books. This is the actual reason spice/trope tracking exists as a dedicated app feature in a few newer reading trackers, Everlune included: a spice meter (tap-to-rate flames, same interaction as a star rating), a curated trope list you tap instead of typing, and mood tags — all filled in as part of finishing a book, not as separate homework.
The other advantage of doing this in an app rather than a spreadsheet is what happens at the end of the year: instead of manually pivot-tabling your own data, you get it back automatically — your average spice level, your most-tagged tropes, your mood palette across everything you read.
A starter trope list
If you're setting up your own system, this is a reasonable starting vocabulary — trim or extend it to match what you actually read:
enemies to lovers · friends to lovers · rivals to lovers · slow burn · fated mates · forbidden love · second chance · love triangle · grumpy × sunshine · only one bed · forced proximity · fake dating · marriage of convenience · morally grey · found family · chosen one · court intrigue · fae · dragons · vampires · dark academia · star-crossed · age gap · villain romance · secret royalty
Frequently asked
What is a spice rating for a book?
A spice (or heat) rating measures how explicit a romance book's intimate content is, usually on a scale like 0–5 — from "closed door" (no on-page scenes) to "scorching" (very explicit). It's a BookTok/romance-community convention that mainstream trackers like Goodreads don't have a built-in field for, so readers track it manually or with a purpose-built app.
Why doesn't Goodreads track spice levels or tropes?
Goodreads' data model dates back to 2007 and covers title, author, rating, shelf, and review — it was never designed around romance-specific conventions like spice/heat level, tropes, or mood. Readers work around this with tags, custom shelves, or a dedicated romance-tracking app.
What tropes should I track when logging romance books?
Common ones worth tagging include enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, slow burn, fated mates, forced proximity, only one bed, fake dating, morally grey, found family, and second chance romance. Tracking them over a year of reading tends to reveal a much clearer picture of your taste than a star rating alone.
Everlune has spice, tropes, and mood built in
A tap-to-rate spice meter, a curated trope list, and mood tags — filled in as part of finishing a book, then rolled up into your year in review automatically.
Download on the App Store