Reading is an essential part of being a writer. Reviewing a book (or play, or poem) can not only add to the pleasure of reading, but for a writer is an essential way to reflect on what did and did not work in the text (and then steal what worked).
I have two ulterior motives for writing this article. First, I would really appreciate more reviews for my novel Vile. If this post inspires you to write a sentence or two it would help me out. Go on. Click the link. I promise it won’t bite.
Second, this month I am branching out into book blogging! Writing about what I am reading will be a good form of reflective learning, and seems like a really nice community to join. I have been talking to lots of other book bloggers and here I will try to put together my thoughts ready to start publishing reviews this week.
So, how do you write a good review?
What is the purpose of a book review?
A book review helps a potential reader know if they should buy the book or not. Thus, your audience is not the author, peer review, academic scholars: the reviews I am talking about in this post are basically a form of honest advertising.
This means the first thing you must do is make it easy for the reader to find the book. If you are reviewing on Amazon or Goodreads, this is already taken care of. If you are reviewing for a blog, then put a picture of the book cover, the title, the author, and a link to where it can be bought at the top of the review.
How do you start a review?
A review should start with a simple synopsis. This is not the same as the book blurb. For a start, it needs to be much shorter – if your review entices the reader, they will go and read the blurb themselves.
A short synopsis ideally reads very much like a hook: a farm boy, a smuggler and a princess set off in a broken down spaceship to save the galaxy from the evil empire and its planet destroying space station the Death Star.
Why is this good (disregarding the quality of the writing, it is a review not literary fiction)? It lets us know the protagonists, it lets us know what they are up against and gives us an idea of the genre.
Also, importantly, it avoids spoilers. Most people hate spoilers. Let people who love spoilers look somewhere else.
How long should your review be?
An amazon review can happily be about the length of a tweet. For Goodreads, feel free to go longer but remember people are scrolling through reviews not flipping through a book. Your book blog may work best between 300-500 words, as that is a nice length for keeping the reader’s attention: they are looking for something to read, not looking to read a review.
That being said, I am a naturally verbose creature, so as I’m not likely to stick to those rules I can’t tell you that you must. However, as a starting point, these are not bad.
Update 13 May: The Insanity that is #bookstagram and a 300 word limit.
Because the world is a totally nonsensical place, one of the very most popular places for reading book reviews is on an app designed for sharing and commenting on photos exclusively from your mobile phone.
Yep. Instagram. By any sane measure (obviously meaning by measure, as the only person I consider sane) a terrible means to share reviews, but the customer is king and lots of people get reviews via #bookstagram.
This creates two problems.
First, getting your review up there. Writing it with your thumbs on your phone is a bad idea. In the end, I emailed the review to myself and copy pasted it under the photo. Which worked fine and wasn’t too stressful.
But it did reveal a second problem.
Instagram has a 2200 character limit on comments, which works out as about 300 words. When I posted my review I lost about two paragraphs and I still needed to make space for hashtags. No problem (lots of swearing), but the result was different reviews on the blog and on Instagram.
As you can see, this gives you two options if you want to make use of #bookstagram (and you should, I got a good response and my Instagram presence is tiny.)
Option 1 is to deliberately do what I did accidentally: write a full review for your blog and a trimmed down 300 word review for instagram.
Option 2 is keep a strict 300 word limit for your reviews, which keeps things consistent and your reviews concise.
There’s no particular strong argument one way or the other, just be aware that if you use Instagram you need to review at under 2200 characters.
(PS. If anyone has a suggestion to speed up instragram posting that doesn’t involve me recoding the desktop app (I CAN do it, but I’m lazy and don’t want to), please leave a comment!
Should you talk about the author?
The next thing you may want to include are some details about the author. This is useful if the book is part of a series (particularly if it is not the first in a series!), or if the writer has some special quality or experience that enhances the book. For example, knowing the Maurice Druon is a renowned historian in his field tells us something important about his Accursed Throne series of historical fiction.
However, unless it brings something extra to your review you probably do not need to say anything here. Book reviews are better short and to the point – it is not a college essay or a literary critique.
Why should you talk about themes in the book?
Your synopsis tells us what the story is, but it does not tell us what the story is about. Talking about themes in the book – overcoming heartbreak, fighting against injustice, class-warfare in the inner city – does not just give the reader a much clearer idea if they will enjoy book (after all, a princess destroying a space station could be anything from a Pratchett comedy to a Banks dystopia!).
More importantly, this is your place to insert your personality into your review. What struck you? What made you care/not care about this book? Was there something you loved? Something you hated?
The internet is full of book reviews and the thing that sets you apart is, well, you. You are the interesting thing in this review. Readers look for reviewers who have similar tastes to them. That way, if they are generally interested in the same sort of things you are, they can have more confidence that they should buy a book you like.
How did the book affect you? Why did you read it, and how did you feel afterwards? How did it relate to your preferences and interests?
Did it provoke an emotional response? Emotions are always worth mentioning – did you laugh or cry? Get fed up and have to put the book down? Find it difficult to sleep? Find it difficult to put the book down, even though you had work in the morning?
Oh, and avoid spoilers. Have I mentioned that already?
Should I include quotes from the book?
Sometimes this can be an especially useful way to highlight something that strikes you about the novel. In a review I’m writing at the moment, I quote a pun the author uses as an example of how the book is just loaded with something not far from Dad jokes (although as it happens there about as far from Dad jokes as they could be, but you’ll have to read the review to know why). Another example is The Hunger Games series, which I think are great books but contain some of the most hilarious examples of bad grammar that you will find in professionally published literature
But unless it makes a specific, helpful point, do not bother. Keep your review to the point. If you can. when talking about you like, give specific examples – character development, use of setting, whatever. Keep it in the abstract, so as to avoid spoilers, but tell us why.
Should I talk about how the book could have been improved?
Almost certainly not. Remember that the review is for the reader, not the author. Do not bother with how it could have been improved – readers do not care, and you’ll only make the author cry. Equally, don’t suck up to the author and talk about how great they are. Waste of words. You are writing for the reader. It is too late for the author to do much about the book, and the most likely outcome from these fragile, butterfly like creatures is that your criticism convinces them they are terrible and must never write again.
What else should I add?
Why you should (or shouldn’t) read it. What sort of reader would enjoy it, and when – is it a holiday read, a train read, a sofa read, a serious red to keep you up all night.
If you do not like it, think about why you do not like it – what is it about the book which makes you wish you had not read it. Try to be balanced here and ALWAYS write a hit sandwich – start and finish with something positive. This makes the author feel better (not that important) and also makes you look like a balanced, thoughtful reviewer (much more important, as if you are capable of showing both the good and the bad you are proving the readers can have confidence in your writing and that you aren’t just a book troll.)
Do not be afraid to inject humour. But do be kind. When raising criticism keep it subjective: I feel, I thought, etc… rather than objectively declaring something is shit. Karma has a way of coming round quickly on the internet, and while there is a market for people who are arseholes online is that really who you want to be?
How should I finish?
There are two crucial things to include finishing your review.
First, what other books/writers are similar to this book. It is hard to understate how useful this is to a prospective reader. It may be the most influential factor.
Seriously. The thing that is most likely to make someone by a book is because it says it is like another book they like.
Second, do you recommend this book and to whom? Somebody out there will like it, so if you can think of someone then do. Perhaps the only exception to his are the awful OCR/Google Translate pieces of crap that get stuck on amazon all the time. Feel free to call those as shit as you like.
Third, proofread and spellcheck. Write your review in your preferred word-processor and try to make your writing look more professional than mine (an agreeably low bar). Once again, this will make you more credible to the reader.
How many stars to give?
We are going to get a bit sciency now, but how to know what a reader understands from a number of stars awarded is summarised at the end.
The economist David Harvey developed the theory of “tending towards limits.” When a law or system of rules puts limits (The maximum cost of petrol £1.00 per gallon, the minimum wage is £7 per hour), this distorts the way people decide how to price petrol, wages, sweets, books, etc, etc…
In its simplest form the market will tend towards limit. Petrol that was being charged at less than a £1 will increase to a £1. People with wages of £8 per hour will find their pay must suddenly be cut to £7
This an empirically demonstrable phenomenon (and, of course, it doesn’t quite work as I’ve described), but it’s impact on our decision making is a fundamental part of our psychology. This can have all sorts of interesting consequences for, well, everything, especially if you study behavioural economics.
In book reviewing, the consequence has been pretty straightforward: grade inflation.
Most reviews work on a five-star system. In a logical world, 3* would mean “that was a perfectly good book”, 4 “I really liked this book” and 5 “This may be one of the best books I’ve ever read.” Conversely, 2* would be “This isn’t a very good book, I didn’t like it”, and 1*, as the lowest score available, should mean “this is an abomination that should never have been put into print.
This is not what stars mean in a book review.
Now, 1* and 2* means this book was REALLY bad. 3* means “this book was bad, I didn’t like it.” 4* means “this was a pretty good book, it had some flaws but overall I liked it.” 5* means “This was a good book.”
Now, the way YOU feel about stars may feel different. But when the reader sees a three-star review that you meant to mean “Yeah, this is pretty good, give it a try”, the reader sees three stars and skips directly to another book review.
Does this make any logical sense? Not really. Is it the way human brains work? Ask any psychologist or behavioural economist and they will say “yep, people are bonkers.”
So, my recommendation for stars is as follows:
1*: There is something deeply wrong to the point of fraudulence in this book (e.g. I am still searching for an English translation of Dogra Magra and I was SO ANGRY when the one I found was google translated then published.)
2* This is a really bad book. Do not read it.
3* I did not like this book. Sure, read the review, maybe it will work for you – but I do not recommend it.
4* This was a fairly good book. There were some issues, which I have talked about in my review, but if it is your sort of thing then give it a try.
5* I liked this book. It may not be my favourite book or a great piece of literature, but I suggest you read it.
Does this mean there will be a heavy bias in your reviews towards 4* and 5*. Probably. Try not to worry about it. The bottom line is 5* just isn’t what it used to be (like when they changed A-Level grades in Britain so my A’s now aren’t as good as the A* that didn’t exists when I did my studies! Not that I, em, got many A’s. I was a late bloomer academically.)
There are two exceptions here.
First, some people get a kick out of writing bad reviews. There is an audience for that, and if you get your kicks from slagging off peoples work then I am not going to try to stop you from hanging out with the trolls on reddit (there are lots of lovely people on reddit as well, by the by). But, if you will forgive me for saying so, there are better ways to be a person than to spend your time slagging people off.
Second, if you consistently award lower stars for good books then loyal readers will get used to it and know, for example, that if you give 4* then the book was a great book. That is totally fine and sticking to your guns is admirable. However, building up an audience that will understand your style is difficult to achieve and will take time. So, unless, you have strong convictions on this subject, I recommend following my star guideline. Err on the side of more stars.
Hang on, what is the real purpose of a book review?
The most important thing about writing a book review is that you get the pleasure of writing about literature. If you do not like doing that, for God’s sake don’t write a book review. If you do enjoy writing reviews, but don’t want to do it the way I have described – do it differently.
Break the rules. This is your blog. You get to write the review how you want.
The purpose of a book review is to have fun. All that other stuff about helping readers find books they will enjoy is true. But first, have fun.
I hope this was a useful read. I will publish my first book review as a baby book blogger, and I hope you enjoy it. You can tell me then how many of my own rules I have broken 😊 A big thank you to everyone from the book connectors group on Facebook who helped me write this article.
Image by Dariusz Sankowski from Pixabay
