I got burned buying a trilogy with a good rating on goodreads. I only read the first 1.5 books and didn't bother after that.
It sucked and when I looked again later it had a more relevant rating. I think the initial score was gamed by bots.

So now I download from Anna's archive and if it's as good as I expected based on ratings then I pay for it, which I've done most recently for Children of Time.

Thankfully I live somewhere where I can download legally.