I debated how many stars to give. I profess as a teen (and I have not reread it since then, though I keep meaning to), I actually struggled to read through the whole thing in one go, even though there were large chunks of the story I quite enjoyed, the long travel sequences or 'hey look at my skill with languages' parts were not quite my thing. I primarily give it the rating it has because it handles its classic story much better than most of the rip-offs that come after it, although this will not be fully obvious until the ending, and actually has something interesting to say.

The ending is strangely realistic once you cut the fantasy part of 'They just tossed a ring into a volcano' away, and this is possibly because of Tolkien's view being so heavily colored by actual war. It is easy to come away after skimming the first parts of the series with an image of cutesy hobbits, who one imagines surely go home happy and victorious... but in the end this is not a happy-fluff novel, at least if I remember the ending correctly anyway, yet at the same time shows you don't need to go full on 'describe every bit of battlefield gore and rapine' unlike other certain reactionary (and frankly far more awful) works I can think of who seemed to think the problem with Tolkien was not enough gore, sex and misery.
They do not go home undamaged, Frodo does not 'get the girl' like in many fantasy Tolkien homages, and contrary to those who complain of black and white morality (though this book does have a fair deal of that) even Frodo is damaged by holding on to the ring for too long, which stands in for the temptation of power. There is not a lot of romance in this series (although you could make an argument for Frodo/Sam), which is fitting for a work about war, one of the things that makes it stand out as more realistic to me oddly enough. In a war with constant threat of death from above, your sex drive probably isn't going to be one of the first concerns on your mind (although I admit I'm not an expert on that and for some people it probably has the opposite effect - seek what thrills you can while you can, is not an uncommon mentality under threat). Here, war is terrible, not romantic, something that may leave you permanently damaged when you go play hero. This suits more a modern war than a medieval one, admittedly (until modern times, camps with trains of washer women were not unheard of, and war was glorified), which marks another difference between Tolkien and imitators and makes the fantasy strangely richer for it. (Tangently related: It's a weird fact that gorefests don't necessarily de-glorify war, and often the opposite.)

If you are curious about other human viewpoints, the religious undertones of the work may be a bonus, but this is a story that can be read without much thought toward religion at all. Having it (as well as a lot of the magic) largely be 'hidden' made it feel more like a fantasy version of the real world than works where gods actually constantly answer prayers, but like real world religion and magic if you think about it too much it will feel like a weak point - don't try to logic it.

I enjoyed the Hobbit more, which definitely did not have perfect heroes (they are thieves who aren't even that interested in slaying the dragon), but is still a much simpler work, although I feel it is also much better paced which is part of why I enjoyed it more and actually read it straight through as a kid. Nostalgia might also be a reason: my father would read it to me.