How to Write a Great Book Review
A few tips & tricks to make the process (mostly) painless
Like any type of writing, there’s an art to composing book reviews. As the former Book Reviews Editor for one of the longest-running online magazines still in publication (Bewildering Stories), as well as a book review contributor to various journals, I’ve written a number of reviews and I very much enjoy doing so. I wanted to share a few tips and tricks to show you how to make the process easy and relatively painless.
Unless you’re writing reviews for a publication like the New York Times, you have a certain leeway about how you write reviews. You want to give feedback about the books you’ve read in a way that’s both informative and fun to do. The key function of a book review isn’t just in letting the reader know what the book’s about, but also to infuse it with your opinion about the book — what you liked and disliked, as well as particular parts of the story that you feel would interest a reader who’s just like you.
Parts of a Book Review
There are several key components to a compelling review, and here are a few of them. I’ve…
