I like this rating system by ashleytylerjohn of LibraryThing (https://www.librarything.com/profile/ashleytylerjohn) that I have also adopted:
(Note: 5 stars = rare and amazing, 4 = quite good book, 3 = a decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful.) ( )

Fletcher Neihart was born on Pell station. His mother was stranded there when her ship had to suddenly leave. Fletcher has been scuttled from foster home after foster home, never quite fitting in anywhere until he meets two Downers, the natives of the world below Pell. Melody and Patch give him something no human has seen fit to give: unconditional love. He works hard to get into the ground studies program. Just as he has gotten his first chance down below station, his mother's ship, Finity's End, reclaims him. His experience is stationer. Can he fit in with youth who are technically his age mates, but are experentially younger thanks to jump space? What sort of double game is the Old Man (captain) playing as he seems to return to life as a merchanter? ( )

Finity's End by CJ Cherryh. This book is from the Union-Alliance series and is set twenty years after the Company Wars. A Merchanter ship (named Finity’s End) is going back to its old trading while trying to reduce the black market trading. While the high end wheeling and political dealing is taking place the ship continues its attempt to get a child back from Pell Station that had been left behind during the war. Fletcher Neihart is retrieved and must deal with the situation of a coming to age story set in this post war era. This is a well set up story with details in depth. There are even cultural issues dealt with between the alien race called Downers from the world Downbelow, which Pell Station orbits. ( )

In Finity's End, Cherryh re-uses her formula of the main character trying to fit in on a Merchanter starship. Here, though, the narrative really succeeds in a way that Tripoint or Rimrunners did not, largely on the strength of some brilliantly-written characters. The main character, Fletcher, is a 17-year-old orphan who has had a rough life and the accompanying cynicism, but while he is certainly a bit rough around the edges, he is honestly trying to make something out of his life, and exhibits a surprising amount of maturity about his life situations. It was also a lot of fun to get in the head of JR, a young ship's officer who's given the task of trying to acclimate Fletcher--despite a lot of resistance from both Fletcher and the other crew members, he treats everyone with an earnestness and professionalism that you see so rarely in authority figures. As always, Cherryh blends the larger political picture with the smaller narrative of the story, and the balance is hit perfectly in this book. I really enjoyed this one; it may be my favorite of Cherryh's works that I've read so far. ( )

A story of a coming of age.