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17 book review examples to help you write the perfect review.

It’s an exciting time to be a book reviewer. Once confined to print newspapers and journals, reviews now dot many corridors of the Internet — forever helping others discover their next great read. That said, every book reviewer will face a familiar panic: how can you do justice to a great book in just a thousand words?

As you know, the best way to learn how to do something is by immersing yourself in it. Luckily, the Internet (i.e. Goodreads and other review sites , in particular) has made book reviews more accessible than ever — which means that there are a lot of book reviews examples out there for you to view!

In this post, we compiled 17 prototypical book review examples in multiple genres to help you figure out how to write the perfect review . If you want to jump straight to the examples, you can skip the next section. Otherwise, let’s first check out what makes up a good review.

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What must a book review contain?

Like all works of art, no two book reviews will be identical. But fear not: there are a few guidelines for any aspiring book reviewer to follow. Most book reviews, for instance, are less than 1,500 words long, with the sweet spot hitting somewhere around the 1,000-word mark. (However, this may vary depending on the platform on which you’re writing, as we’ll see later.)

In addition, all reviews share some universal elements, as shown in our book review templates . These include:

• A review will offer a concise plot summary of the book. 
• A book review will offer an evaluation of the work. 
• A book review will offer a recommendation for the audience. 

If these are the basic ingredients that make up a book review, it’s the tone and style with which the book reviewer writes that brings the extra panache. This will differ from platform to platform, of course. A book review on Goodreads, for instance, will be much more informal and personal than a book review on Kirkus Reviews, as it is catering to a different audience. However, at the end of the day, the goal of all book reviews is to give the audience the tools to determine whether or not they’d like to read the book themselves.

Keeping that in mind, let’s proceed to some book review examples to put all of this in action.

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Book review examples for fiction books

Since story is king in the world of fiction, it probably won’t come as any surprise to learn that a book review for a novel will concentrate on how well the story was told .

That said, book reviews in all genres follow the same basic formula that we discussed earlier. In these examples, you’ll be able to see how book reviewers on different platforms expertly intertwine the plot summary and their personal opinions of the book to produce a clear, informative, and concise review.

Note: Some of the book review examples run very long. If a book review is truncated in this post, we’ve indicated by including a […] at the end, but you can always read the entire review if you click on the link provided.

Examples of literary fiction book reviews

Kirkus Reviews reviews Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man :

An extremely powerful story of a young Southern Negro, from his late high school days through three years of college to his life in Harlem.

His early training prepared him for a life of humility before white men, but through injustices- large and small, he came to realize that he was an "invisible man". People saw in him only a reflection of their preconceived ideas of what he was, denied his individuality, and ultimately did not see him at all. This theme, which has implications far beyond the obvious racial parallel, is skillfully handled. The incidents of the story are wholly absorbing. The boy's dismissal from college because of an innocent mistake, his shocked reaction to the anonymity of the North and to Harlem, his nightmare experiences on a one-day job in a paint factory and in the hospital, his lightning success as the Harlem leader of a communistic organization known as the Brotherhood, his involvement in black versus white and black versus black clashes and his disillusion and understanding of his invisibility- all climax naturally in scenes of violence and riot, followed by a retreat which is both literal and figurative. Parts of this experience may have been told before, but never with such freshness, intensity and power.

This is Ellison's first novel, but he has complete control of his story and his style. Watch it.

Lyndsey reviews George Orwell’s 1984 on Goodreads:

YOU. ARE. THE. DEAD. Oh my God. I got the chills so many times toward the end of this book. It completely blew my mind. It managed to surpass my high expectations AND be nothing at all like I expected. Or in Newspeak "Double Plus Good." Let me preface this with an apology. If I sound stunningly inarticulate at times in this review, I can't help it. My mind is completely fried.

This book is like the dystopian Lord of the Rings, with its richly developed culture and economics, not to mention a fully developed language called Newspeak, or rather more of the anti-language, whose purpose is to limit speech and understanding instead of to enhance and expand it. The world-building is so fully fleshed out and spine-tinglingly terrifying that it's almost as if George travelled to such a place, escaped from it, and then just wrote it all down.

I read Fahrenheit 451 over ten years ago in my early teens. At the time, I remember really wanting to read 1984, although I never managed to get my hands on it. I'm almost glad I didn't. Though I would not have admitted it at the time, it would have gone over my head. Or at the very least, I wouldn't have been able to appreciate it fully. […]

The New York Times reviews Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry :

Three-quarters of the way through Lisa Halliday’s debut novel, “Asymmetry,” a British foreign correspondent named Alistair is spending Christmas on a compound outside of Baghdad. His fellow revelers include cameramen, defense contractors, United Nations employees and aid workers. Someone’s mother has FedExed a HoneyBaked ham from Maine; people are smoking by the swimming pool. It is 2003, just days after Saddam Hussein’s capture, and though the mood is optimistic, Alistair is worrying aloud about the ethics of his chosen profession, wondering if reporting on violence doesn’t indirectly abet violence and questioning why he’d rather be in a combat zone than reading a picture book to his son. But every time he returns to London, he begins to “spin out.” He can’t go home. “You observe what people do with their freedom — what they don’t do — and it’s impossible not to judge them for it,” he says.

The line, embedded unceremoniously in the middle of a page-long paragraph, doubles, like so many others in “Asymmetry,” as literary criticism. Halliday’s novel is so strange and startlingly smart that its mere existence seems like commentary on the state of fiction. One finishes “Asymmetry” for the first or second (or like this reader, third) time and is left wondering what other writers are not doing with their freedom — and, like Alistair, judging them for it.

Despite its title, “Asymmetry” comprises two seemingly unrelated sections of equal length, appended by a slim and quietly shocking coda. Halliday’s prose is clean and lean, almost reportorial in the style of W. G. Sebald, and like the murmurings of a shy person at a cocktail party, often comic only in single clauses. It’s a first novel that reads like the work of an author who has published many books over many years. […]

Emily W. Thompson reviews Michael Doane's The Crossing on Reedsy Discovery :

In Doane’s debut novel, a young man embarks on a journey of self-discovery with surprising results.

An unnamed protagonist (The Narrator) is dealing with heartbreak. His love, determined to see the world, sets out for Portland, Oregon. But he’s a small-town boy who hasn’t traveled much. So, the Narrator mourns her loss and hides from life, throwing himself into rehabbing an old motorcycle. Until one day, he takes a leap; he packs his bike and a few belongings and heads out to find the Girl.

Following in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac and William Least Heat-Moon, Doane offers a coming of age story about a man finding himself on the backroads of America. Doane’s a gifted writer with fluid prose and insightful observations, using The Narrator’s personal interactions to illuminate the diversity of the United States.

The Narrator initially sticks to the highways, trying to make it to the West Coast as quickly as possible. But a hitchhiker named Duke convinces him to get off the beaten path and enjoy the ride. “There’s not a place that’s like any other,” [39] Dukes contends, and The Narrator realizes he’s right. Suddenly, the trip is about the journey, not just the destination. The Narrator ditches his truck and traverses the deserts and mountains on his bike. He destroys his phone, cutting off ties with his past and living only in the moment.

As he crosses the country, The Narrator connects with several unique personalities whose experiences and views deeply impact his own. Duke, the complicated cowboy and drifter, who opens The Narrator’s eyes to a larger world. Zooey, the waitress in Colorado who opens his heart and reminds him that love can be found in this big world. And Rosie, The Narrator’s sweet landlady in Portland, who helps piece him back together both physically and emotionally.

This supporting cast of characters is excellent. Duke, in particular, is wonderfully nuanced and complicated. He’s a throwback to another time, a man without a cell phone who reads Sartre and sleeps under the stars. Yet he’s also a grifter with a “love ‘em and leave ‘em” attitude that harms those around him. It’s fascinating to watch The Narrator wrestle with Duke’s behavior, trying to determine which to model and which to discard.

Doane creates a relatable protagonist in The Narrator, whose personal growth doesn’t erase his faults. His willingness to hit the road with few resources is admirable, and he’s prescient enough to recognize the jealousy of those who cannot or will not take the leap. His encounters with new foods, places, and people broaden his horizons. Yet his immaturity and selfishness persist. He tells Rosie she’s been a good mother to him but chooses to ignore the continuing concern from his own parents as he effectively disappears from his old life.

Despite his flaws, it’s a pleasure to accompany The Narrator on his physical and emotional journey. The unexpected ending is a fitting denouement to an epic and memorable road trip.

The Book Smugglers review Anissa Gray’s The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls :

I am still dipping my toes into the literally fiction pool, finding what works for me and what doesn’t. Books like The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray are definitely my cup of tea.

Althea and Proctor Cochran had been pillars of their economically disadvantaged community for years – with their local restaurant/small market and their charity drives. Until they are found guilty of fraud for stealing and keeping most of the money they raised and sent to jail. Now disgraced, their entire family is suffering the consequences, specially their twin teenage daughters Baby Vi and Kim.  To complicate matters even more: Kim was actually the one to call the police on her parents after yet another fight with her mother. […]

Examples of children’s and YA fiction book reviews

The Book Hookup reviews Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give :

♥ Quick Thoughts and Rating: 5 stars! I can’t imagine how challenging it would be to tackle the voice of a movement like Black Lives Matter, but I do know that Thomas did it with a finesse only a talented author like herself possibly could. With an unapologetically realistic delivery packed with emotion, The Hate U Give is a crucially important portrayal of the difficulties minorities face in our country every single day. I have no doubt that this book will be met with resistance by some (possibly many) and slapped with a “controversial” label, but if you’ve ever wondered what it was like to walk in a POC’s shoes, then I feel like this is an unflinchingly honest place to start.

In Angie Thomas’s debut novel, Starr Carter bursts on to the YA scene with both heart-wrecking and heartwarming sincerity. This author is definitely one to watch.

♥ Review: The hype around this book has been unquestionable and, admittedly, that made me both eager to get my hands on it and terrified to read it. I mean, what if I was to be the one person that didn’t love it as much as others? (That seems silly now because of how truly mesmerizing THUG was in the most heartbreakingly realistic way.) However, with the relevancy of its summary in regards to the unjust predicaments POC currently face in the US, I knew this one was a must-read, so I was ready to set my fears aside and dive in. That said, I had an altogether more personal, ulterior motive for wanting to read this book. […]

The New York Times reviews Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood :

Alice Crewe (a last name she’s chosen for herself) is a fairy tale legacy: the granddaughter of Althea Proserpine, author of a collection of dark-as-night fairy tales called “Tales From the Hinterland.” The book has a cult following, and though Alice has never met her grandmother, she’s learned a little about her through internet research. She hasn’t read the stories, because her mother, Ella Proserpine, forbids it.

Alice and Ella have moved from place to place in an attempt to avoid the “bad luck” that seems to follow them. Weird things have happened. As a child, Alice was kidnapped by a man who took her on a road trip to find her grandmother; he was stopped by the police before they did so. When at 17 she sees that man again, unchanged despite the years, Alice panics. Then Ella goes missing, and Alice turns to Ellery Finch, a schoolmate who’s an Althea Proserpine superfan, for help in tracking down her mother. Not only has Finch read every fairy tale in the collection, but handily, he remembers them, sharing them with Alice as they journey to the mysterious Hazel Wood, the estate of her now-dead grandmother, where they hope to find Ella.

“The Hazel Wood” starts out strange and gets stranger, in the best way possible. (The fairy stories Finch relays, which Albert includes as their own chapters, are as creepy and evocative as you’d hope.) Albert seamlessly combines contemporary realism with fantasy, blurring the edges in a way that highlights that place where stories and real life convene, where magic contains truth and the world as it appears is false, where just about anything can happen, particularly in the pages of a very good book. It’s a captivating debut. […]

James reviews Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight, Moon on Goodreads:

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown is one of the books that followers of my blog voted as a must-read for our Children's Book August 2018 Readathon. Come check it out and join the next few weeks!

This picture book was such a delight. I hadn't remembered reading it when I was a child, but it might have been read to me... either way, it was like a whole new experience! It's always so difficult to convince a child to fall asleep at night. I don't have kids, but I do have a 5-month-old puppy who whines for 5 minutes every night when he goes in his cage/crate (hopefully he'll be fully housebroken soon so he can roam around when he wants). I can only imagine! I babysat a lot as a teenager and I have tons of younger cousins, nieces, and nephews, so I've been through it before, too. This was a believable experience, and it really helps show kids how to relax and just let go when it's time to sleep.

The bunny's are adorable. The rhymes are exquisite. I found it pretty fun, but possibly a little dated given many of those things aren't normal routines anymore. But the lessons to take from it are still powerful. Loved it! I want to sample some more books by this fine author and her illustrators.

Publishers Weekly reviews Elizabeth Lilly’s Geraldine :

This funny, thoroughly accomplished debut opens with two words: “I’m moving.” They’re spoken by the title character while she swoons across her family’s ottoman, and because Geraldine is a giraffe, her full-on melancholy mode is quite a spectacle. But while Geraldine may be a drama queen (even her mother says so), it won’t take readers long to warm up to her. The move takes Geraldine from Giraffe City, where everyone is like her, to a new school, where everyone else is human. Suddenly, the former extrovert becomes “That Giraffe Girl,” and all she wants to do is hide, which is pretty much impossible. “Even my voice tries to hide,” she says, in the book’s most poignant moment. “It’s gotten quiet and whispery.” Then she meets Cassie, who, though human, is also an outlier (“I’m that girl who wears glasses and likes MATH and always organizes her food”), and things begin to look up.

Lilly’s watercolor-and-ink drawings are as vividly comic and emotionally astute as her writing; just when readers think there are no more ways for Geraldine to contort her long neck, this highly promising talent comes up with something new.

Examples of genre fiction book reviews

Karlyn P reviews Nora Roberts’ Dark Witch , a paranormal romance novel , on Goodreads:

4 stars. Great world-building, weak romance, but still worth the read.

I hesitate to describe this book as a 'romance' novel simply because the book spent little time actually exploring the romance between Iona and Boyle. Sure, there IS a romance in this novel. Sprinkled throughout the book are a few scenes where Iona and Boyle meet, chat, wink at each, flirt some more, sleep together, have a misunderstanding, make up, and then profess their undying love. Very formulaic stuff, and all woven around the more important parts of this book.

The meat of this book is far more focused on the story of the Dark witch and her magically-gifted descendants living in Ireland. Despite being weak on the romance, I really enjoyed it. I think the book is probably better for it, because the romance itself was pretty lackluster stuff.

I absolutely plan to stick with this series as I enjoyed the world building, loved the Ireland setting, and was intrigued by all of the secondary characters. However, If you read Nora Roberts strictly for the romance scenes, this one might disappoint. But if you enjoy a solid background story with some dark magic and prophesies, you might enjoy it as much as I did.

I listened to this one on audio, and felt the narration was excellent.

Emily May reviews R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy Wars , an epic fantasy novel , on Goodreads:

“But I warn you, little warrior. The price of power is pain.”

Holy hell, what did I just read??

➽ A fantasy military school

➽ A rich world based on modern Chinese history

➽ Shamans and gods

➽ Detailed characterization leading to unforgettable characters

➽ Adorable, opium-smoking mentors

That's a basic list, but this book is all of that and SO MUCH MORE. I know 100% that The Poppy War will be one of my best reads of 2018.

Isn't it just so great when you find one of those books that completely drags you in, makes you fall in love with the characters, and demands that you sit on the edge of your seat for every horrific, nail-biting moment of it? This is one of those books for me. And I must issue a serious content warning: this book explores some very dark themes. Proceed with caution (or not at all) if you are particularly sensitive to scenes of war, drug use and addiction, genocide, racism, sexism, ableism, self-harm, torture, and rape (off-page but extremely horrific).

Because, despite the fairly innocuous first 200 pages, the title speaks the truth: this is a book about war. All of its horrors and atrocities. It is not sugar-coated, and it is often graphic. The "poppy" aspect refers to opium, which is a big part of this book. It is a fantasy, but the book draws inspiration from the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Rape of Nanking.

Crime Fiction Lover reviews Jessica Barry’s Freefall , a crime novel:

In some crime novels, the wrongdoing hits you between the eyes from page one. With others it’s a more subtle process, and that’s OK too. So where does Freefall fit into the sliding scale?

In truth, it’s not clear. This is a novel with a thrilling concept at its core. A woman survives plane crash, then runs for her life. However, it is the subtleties at play that will draw you in like a spider beckoning to an unwitting fly.

Like the heroine in Sharon Bolton’s Dead Woman Walking, Allison is lucky to be alive. She was the only passenger in a private plane, belonging to her fiancé, Ben, who was piloting the expensive aircraft, when it came down in woodlands in the Colorado Rockies. Ally is also the only survivor, but rather than sitting back and waiting for rescue, she is soon pulling together items that may help her survive a little longer – first aid kit, energy bars, warm clothes, trainers – before fleeing the scene. If you’re hearing the faint sound of alarm bells ringing, get used to it. There’s much, much more to learn about Ally before this tale is over.

Kirkus Reviews reviews Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One , a science-fiction novel :

Video-game players embrace the quest of a lifetime in a virtual world; screenwriter Cline’s first novel is old wine in new bottles.

The real world, in 2045, is the usual dystopian horror story. So who can blame Wade, our narrator, if he spends most of his time in a virtual world? The 18-year-old, orphaned at 11, has no friends in his vertical trailer park in Oklahoma City, while the OASIS has captivating bells and whistles, and it’s free. Its creator, the legendary billionaire James Halliday, left a curious will. He had devised an elaborate online game, a hunt for a hidden Easter egg. The finder would inherit his estate. Old-fashioned riddles lead to three keys and three gates. Wade, or rather his avatar Parzival, is the first gunter (egg-hunter) to win the Copper Key, first of three.

Halliday was obsessed with the pop culture of the 1980s, primarily the arcade games, so the novel is as much retro as futurist. Parzival’s great strength is that he has absorbed all Halliday’s obsessions; he knows by heart three essential movies, crossing the line from geek to freak. His most formidable competitors are the Sixers, contract gunters working for the evil conglomerate IOI, whose goal is to acquire the OASIS. Cline’s narrative is straightforward but loaded with exposition. It takes a while to reach a scene that crackles with excitement: the meeting between Parzival (now world famous as the lead contender) and Sorrento, the head of IOI. The latter tries to recruit Parzival; when he fails, he issues and executes a death threat. Wade’s trailer is demolished, his relatives killed; luckily Wade was not at home. Too bad this is the dramatic high point. Parzival threads his way between more ’80s games and movies to gain the other keys; it’s clever but not exciting. Even a romance with another avatar and the ultimate “epic throwdown” fail to stir the blood.

Too much puzzle-solving, not enough suspense.

Book review examples for non-fiction books

Nonfiction books are generally written to inform readers about a certain topic. As such, the focus of a nonfiction book review will be on the clarity and effectiveness of this communication . In carrying this out, a book review may analyze the author’s source materials and assess the thesis in order to determine whether or not the book meets expectations.

Again, we’ve included abbreviated versions of long reviews here, so feel free to click on the link to read the entire piece!

The Washington Post reviews David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon :

The arc of David Grann’s career reminds one of a software whiz-kid or a latest-thing talk-show host — certainly not an investigative reporter, even if he is one of the best in the business. The newly released movie of his first book, “The Lost City of Z,” is generating all kinds of Oscar talk, and now comes the release of his second book, “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” the film rights to which have already been sold for $5 million in what one industry journal called the “biggest and wildest book rights auction in memory.”

Grann deserves the attention. He’s canny about the stories he chases, he’s willing to go anywhere to chase them, and he’s a maestro in his ability to parcel out information at just the right clip: a hint here, a shading of meaning there, a smartly paced buildup of multiple possibilities followed by an inevitable reversal of readerly expectations or, in some cases, by a thrilling and dislocating pull of the entire narrative rug.

All of these strengths are on display in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Around the turn of the 20th century, oil was discovered underneath Osage lands in the Oklahoma Territory, lands that were soon to become part of the state of Oklahoma. Through foresight and legal maneuvering, the Osage found a way to permanently attach that oil to themselves and shield it from the prying hands of white interlopers; this mechanism was known as “headrights,” which forbade the outright sale of oil rights and granted each full member of the tribe — and, supposedly, no one else — a share in the proceeds from any lease arrangement. For a while, the fail-safes did their job, and the Osage got rich — diamond-ring and chauffeured-car and imported-French-fashion rich — following which quite a large group of white men started to work like devils to separate the Osage from their money. And soon enough, and predictably enough, this work involved murder. Here in Jazz Age America’s most isolated of locales, dozens or even hundreds of Osage in possession of great fortunes — and of the potential for even greater fortunes in the future — were dispatched by poison, by gunshot and by dynamite. […]

Stacked Books reviews Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers :

I’ve heard a lot of great things about Malcolm Gladwell’s writing. Friends and co-workers tell me that his subjects are interesting and his writing style is easy to follow without talking down to the reader. I wasn’t disappointed with Outliers. In it, Gladwell tackles the subject of success – how people obtain it and what contributes to extraordinary success as opposed to everyday success.

The thesis – that our success depends much more on circumstances out of our control than any effort we put forth – isn’t exactly revolutionary. Most of us know it to be true. However, I don’t think I’m lying when I say that most of us also believe that we if we just try that much harder and develop our talent that much further, it will be enough to become wildly successful, despite bad or just mediocre beginnings. Not so, says Gladwell.

Most of the evidence Gladwell gives us is anecdotal, which is my favorite kind to read. I can’t really speak to how scientifically valid it is, but it sure makes for engrossing listening. For example, did you know that successful hockey players are almost all born in January, February, or March? Kids born during these months are older than the others kids when they start playing in the youth leagues, which means they’re already better at the game (because they’re bigger). Thus, they get more play time, which means their skill increases at a faster rate, and it compounds as time goes by. Within a few years, they’re much, much better than the kids born just a few months later in the year. Basically, these kids’ birthdates are a huge factor in their success as adults – and it’s nothing they can do anything about. If anyone could make hockey interesting to a Texan who only grudgingly admits the sport even exists, it’s Gladwell. […]

Quill and Quire reviews Rick Prashaw’s Soar, Adam, Soar :

Ten years ago, I read a book called Almost Perfect. The young-adult novel by Brian Katcher won some awards and was held up as a powerful, nuanced portrayal of a young trans person. But the reality did not live up to the book’s billing. Instead, it turned out to be a one-dimensional and highly fetishized portrait of a trans person’s life, one that was nevertheless repeatedly dubbed “realistic” and “affecting” by non-transgender readers possessing only a vague, mass-market understanding of trans experiences.

In the intervening decade, trans narratives have emerged further into the literary spotlight, but those authored by trans people ourselves – and by trans men in particular – have seemed to fall under the shadow of cisgender sensationalized imaginings. Two current Canadian releases – Soar, Adam, Soar and This One Looks Like a Boy – provide a pointed object lesson into why trans-authored work about transgender experiences remains critical.

To be fair, Soar, Adam, Soar isn’t just a story about a trans man. It’s also a story about epilepsy, the medical establishment, and coming of age as seen through a grieving father’s eyes. Adam, Prashaw’s trans son, died unexpectedly at age 22. Woven through the elder Prashaw’s narrative are excerpts from Adam’s social media posts, giving us glimpses into the young man’s interior life as he traverses his late teens and early 20s. […]

Book Geeks reviews Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love :

WRITING STYLE: 3.5/5

SUBJECT: 4/5

CANDIDNESS: 4.5/5

RELEVANCE: 3.5/5

ENTERTAINMENT QUOTIENT: 3.5/5

“Eat Pray Love” is so popular that it is almost impossible to not read it. Having felt ashamed many times on my not having read this book, I quietly ordered the book (before I saw the movie) from amazon.in and sat down to read it. I don’t remember what I expected it to be – maybe more like a chick lit thing but it turned out quite different. The book is a real story and is a short journal from the time when its writer went travelling to three different countries in pursuit of three different things – Italy (Pleasure), India (Spirituality), Bali (Balance) and this is what corresponds to the book’s name – EAT (in Italy), PRAY (in India) and LOVE (in Bali, Indonesia). These are also the three Is – ITALY, INDIA, INDONESIA.

Though she had everything a middle-aged American woman can aspire for – MONEY, CAREER, FRIENDS, HUSBAND; Elizabeth was not happy in her life, she wasn’t happy in her marriage. Having suffered a terrible divorce and terrible breakup soon after, Elizabeth was shattered. She didn’t know where to go and what to do – all she knew was that she wanted to run away. So she set out on a weird adventure – she will go to three countries in a year and see if she can find out what she was looking for in life. This book is about that life changing journey that she takes for one whole year. […]

Emily May reviews Michelle Obama’s Becoming on Goodreads:

Look, I'm not a happy crier. I might cry at songs about leaving and missing someone; I might cry at books where things don't work out; I might cry at movies where someone dies. I've just never really understood why people get all choked up over happy, inspirational things. But Michelle Obama's kindness and empathy changed that. This book had me in tears for all the right reasons.

This is not really a book about politics, though political experiences obviously do come into it. It's a shame that some will dismiss this book because of a difference in political opinion, when it is really about a woman's life. About growing up poor and black on the South Side of Chicago; about getting married and struggling to maintain that marriage; about motherhood; about being thrown into an amazing and terrifying position.

I hate words like "inspirational" because they've become so overdone and cheesy, but I just have to say it-- Michelle Obama is an inspiration. I had the privilege of seeing her speak at The Forum in Inglewood, and she is one of the warmest, funniest, smartest, down-to-earth people I have ever seen in this world.

And yes, I know we present what we want the world to see, but I truly do think it's genuine. I think she is someone who really cares about people - especially kids - and wants to give them better lives and opportunities.

She's obviously intelligent, but she also doesn't gussy up her words. She talks straight, with an openness and honesty rarely seen. She's been one of the most powerful women in the world, she's been a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, she's had her own successful career, and yet she has remained throughout that same girl - Michelle Robinson - from a working class family in Chicago.

I don't think there's anyone who wouldn't benefit from reading this book.

Hopefully, this post has given you a better idea of how to write a book review. You might be wondering how to put all of this knowledge into action now! Many book reviewers start out by setting up a book blog. If you don’t have time to research the intricacies of HTML, check out Reedsy Discovery — where you can read indie books for free and review them without going through the hassle of creating a blog. To register as a book reviewer , go here .

And if you’d like to see even more book review examples, simply go to this directory of book review blogs and click on any one of them to see a wealth of good book reviews. Beyond that, it's up to you to pick up a book and pen — and start reviewing!

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The Words That Remain

Stênio Gardel Bruna Dantas Lobato (Translator) New Vessel Press ( Jan 17, 2023 ) Softcover $16.95 ( 160pp ) 978-1-954404-12-0

Stênio Gardel’s slim novel The Words That Remain includes fragments of sentences, memories, and moments, recounted by an aging, illiterate gay man whose struggle for self-acceptance leads him from self-hatred to finding a chosen family.

Raimundo’s first love, Cicero, wrote him a letter when they were both seventeen and living in rural Brazil. They planned to escape to the city to live and love each other openly, but Cicero abandoned Raimundo on the day of their escape, leaving the letter instead. Beaten by his father and forced to leave home, Raimundo’s next few decades were spent doing manual labor with occasional excursions to have sex with men. In all that time, he never read the letter.

The narrative is not linear, but dips in and out of periods in Raimundo’s life with a focus on his time with Cicero, his years working on the trucks, his chosen family late in life, and his present-day life, with time spent learning to read and write. Because the timeline skips around, there is an impermanent and voyeuristic quality, as if looking at a photo album of Raimundo’s life while he narrates. The sentences run on, with phrases, pieces of conversations, and clauses piling on top of one another, separated only by commas. This style replicates the fuzziness of memories while conveying highlights in action and conversation. In the end, the years that passed allow Raimundo to arrive at the point where he can read and respond to the letter, though its value has changed.

An LGBTQ+ novel from Brazil, The Words That Remain is about the damage that brutality, illiteracy, and widespread homophobia do to self-love and happiness; it also illustrates the resilience of wanting to love and to be loved and accepted by oneself.

Reviewed by Monica Carter January / February 2023

Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

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10 Reasons To Be Glad from Joyce Meyer’s New Book Finding God’s Will For Your Life

Make melody in your heart to God!

Paul instructs us in Ephesians 5:19 to “Speak out to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, offering praise with voices [and instruments] and making melody with all your heart to the Lord.”

I often find myself unintentionally humming a song that is in my heart, a song I have learned at some time. Recently, I caught myself humming the same tune for almost a week. It was a Christmas song, but it was not Christmastime. I was simply making melody in my heart. This is another way to jump- start your gladness. You can make melody in your heart on purpose, or if you have developed the habit of doing it, you may just find yourself singing or humming without having purposed to do so. I love it when I catch myself humming a tune, because I know it means that joy resides in my spirit.

10 REASONS TO BE GLAD

1.) Be glad your name is written in heaven and that you will spend eternity there with the Lord (Luke 10:20).

2.) Be glad you never have to be filled with the poison of hatred, because God gives you the grace to forgive those who hurt you (Colossians 3:13).

3.) Be glad you can develop and maintain a positive attitude in all things (Ephesians 4:23).

4.) Be glad you can be patient. Being impatient only frustrates you and never makes things happen faster (Psalm 37:7).

5.) Be glad that God is always with you. You are never alone (Deuteronomy 31:6; Matthew 28:20).

6.) Be glad you are loved unconditionally every moment of your life (Romans 8:35– 39).

7.) Be glad the Helper (the Holy Spirit) lives in you and helps you anytime you need help (Romans 8:11, 26– 27).

8.) Be glad you have a home, food, clean water, and clothing, because many people in the world don’t have these things (Philippians 4:19).

9.) Be glad you can help others, because when you do, it will make you happy (Proverbs 11:25).

10.) Be glad that God works all things together for your good because you love Him and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).

Our thoughts affect every area of our life— especially our words, attitudes, and actions. If we think about what we do have and are thankful for it, we will be glad. But if we think about what we don’t have and the problems we are facing, we will be sad, angry, and filled with self- pity. We can intentionally redirect our thoughts to the things of God and invite Him to help us. We don’t have to think about and meditate on whatever falls into our minds. The Word of God tells us that we can choose thoughts that produce and add to our gladness (Philippians 4:8).

Never forget that God’s will for us is to serve Him with gladness.

Download 5 Prayers & Bible Verses for When You’re Seeking God’s Will Below.

Finding God's Will for Your Life

by Joyce Meyer

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Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss with Hope and Purpose Hardcover – March 14 2023

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• Print length 304 pages
• Language English
• Publisher TarcherPerigee
• Publication date March 14 2023
• Dimensions 14.91 x 3.05 x 21.67 cm
• ISBN-10 0593421701
• ISBN-13 978-0593421703
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ TarcherPerigee (March 14 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593421701
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593421703
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 397 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.91 x 3.05 x 21.67 cm
• #522 in Grief & Bereavement (Books)
• #1,802 in Personal Transformation (Books)
• #3,824 in Personal Transformation in Self-Help

About the author

Colin campbell.

Colin Campbell is a writer and director for theater and film. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Seraglio, a short film he wrote and directed with his lovely and talented wife, Gail Lerner. He has taught Theater and/or Filmmaking at Chapman University, Loyola Marymount University, Cal Poly Pomona University, and to incarcerated youth through The Unusual Suspects. He is currently developing a one person show titled, Grief: A One Man ShitShow. He lives in Los Angeles and sometimes Joshua Tree.

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Finding Beauty in the Chaos, and God in Cherry Blossoms

Tracing his path from homelessness to proud parenthood, the writer Carvell Wallace recounts a lifetime of joy and pain in his intimate memoir.

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By James Ijames

James Ijames is the author of the Pulitzer-winning play “Fat Ham” and an associate professor of theater at Villanova University. His next work, “Good Bones,” arrives at the Public Theater this fall.

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ANOTHER WORD FOR LOVE: A Memoir by Carvell Wallace

Memoirs are one of the great gifts given to American literature by Black writers. From the autobiographical poetry of Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley to the harrowing narratives of Frederick Douglass, the self-refracting fieldwork of Zora Neale Hurston and the political life of Barack Obama, they have mined their own stories to uncover something fundamental about our experience as Black people.

The writer and podcaster Carvell Wallace’s new memoir, “Another Word for Love,” arrives with great beauty, teeth and vulnerability. Wallace, now 49, has spent his late-blooming journalism career writing bold and intimate profiles of artists like Michael B. Jordan and Viola Davis, as well as more personal pieces, such as one on the cultural significance of Black horror that I think about and carry with me daily. He now turns his pen to his own life with the same poetic sensitivity and complexity.

“Another Word for Love” is arranged in short chapters across three sections: “Loss,” “God” and “Reunion,” each of which functions as a sacrament of sorts. In the first, our hero endures all manner of separations, endings and disappearances, each one deforming and re-forming him. In many ways, he and his mother grow up together — bouncing between temporary living situations, sometimes sleeping in motels and cars. Often, she would go on dates just to bring home doggy bags: “cold salty half-chewed steaks, gummy fries, rock hard cakes and chewy slices of garlic bread. It was like eating from a very nice trash can. I gorged myself whenever I could.”

Other times, Wallace recalls sating his hunger by eating from a stick of butter, relishing “the warm recklessness of it.” There are periods when he is sent to live with aunts or uncles in Pennsylvania and several days spent alone in a Los Angeles apartment because his mother is in jail for writing a bad check. (“I would say it was the ending of my childhood but I hate clichés even when I use them.”)

He also recounts struggles with substance abuse — by the time he got to college in New York in the early ’90s, he was hiding vodka in his water bottles — all while reminding us how easy it is to continue to function even within the grips of addiction: “The secret is that I was slowly rotting from the inside. … I didn’t want anyone around me to know that secret because it was mine, it made me who I was, and so I sealed the secret in, spackled it shut inside me with weed, acid, red wine, white wine, Pacifico, mushrooms and whatever else I could get my hands on.”

The second section examines our notions of capital-G God — the God in small things and the God in each of us. Wallace tells of interviewing a reporter who recounts memorable encounters with both Mister Rogers and a wanted terrorist. The two writers enter into a meditation on reporting as “a kind of human experience, a practice of being present. No need to judge. All the judging had been done.” This presence is a gift we can give to even the worst people in the world.

Looking for the divine, Wallace finds it in everything from the cosmic pull of the moon to the similarities of the markings created on a body struck by lightning and the ones endured by an enslaved man from an overseer’s whip — “the way each line splits the flesh, cleaving it into two, spreading outward in a fractal pattern of trauma.” The scars are treated here as a thing one can examine, touch, cover and soothe.

Which is the leading thematic impulse of the final part: the healing practice of reunion. Wallace describes a posthumous letter he received from his Aunt Trudy, its delivery delayed until after her death by a mistaken ZIP code, in which she tells him she loves him and misses him and can’t wait to meet his newborn son. “Maybe I had forgotten when I was a little man, I meant something to someone the way my son meant something to me,” he reflects. “I was gorgeous, people wanted to hug me and care for me. I was loved.”

There are meditations on cherry blossoms, a very stylish school picture (come on, wide lapels!) and being asked by his son about the best day in his life (it involves a beach in Mexico, moonlight, Coke in a bottle). Each anecdote continues to move the reader and implore us all to remember to connect — connect, connect, connect. The loss explored in the first section finds a beautiful conclusion in the final one and, most exquisitely, in a postscript that brings the entire experience into focus.

All memoirs are personal, but I am bowled over by how personal “Another Word for Love” felt to me. One line in particular continues to resonate: “A lot of things, I have learned, can be true at once. That is how I have survived.” Amen. This book is funny and heartbreaking, religiously vivid and lovingly open.

ANOTHER WORD FOR LOVE : A Memoir | By Carvell Wallace | MCDxFSG | 272 pp. | $28

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How ‘Scarface’ started slow but conquered the world

In “The World Is Yours,” critic Glenn Kenny writes about the making of a remake starring Al Pacino.

Tony Montana, an uncouth, narcissistic, swaggering outsider, fought his way to the inside, rose to the top and then burned everything down in a violent, paranoia-driven attempt to retain power. Any prescient resemblance to a now-omnipresent political figure was strictly coincidence. The fictitious Miami drug lord played by Al Pacino in Brian De Palma’s controversial crime thriller “Scarface” (1983) suffered a bloody execution in the film’s over-the-top, practically balletic concluding gun battle.

A similar fate nearly befell the movie itself, an ambitious, nearly three-hour remake of the Howard Hawks noir classic from 1932. De Palma’s version, made for between $25 million and $37 million (depending on who you ask), took in less than $5 million at the box office on opening weekend. It elicited some snarling reviews — Pauline Kael called it a “crude, ritualized melodrama” — and was assailed by charges of racial stereotyping.

But unlike its Cuban-born protagonist, the film lived to see another day and subsequently became a bestseller on video, inspiring generations of hip-hop artists, spawning popular video games and enjoying a theatrical rerelease on its 35th anniversary. Its best-known catch phrase — “Say hello to my little friend,” uttered by Montana while brandishing his AR-15 with a jury-rigged grenade launcher attached during that cataclysmic final shootout — will apparently live on forever. (Most recently, it’s the title of a new comic novel by Jennine Capó Crucet about a character who aspires to be Montana-like.) Even in today’s Little Havana, posters, T-shirts and wall clocks emblazoned with Montana’s face or the “Scarface” movie poster are as ubiquitous as guava pastries.

The genesis, creation and afterlife of “Scarface” make for a fascinating, surprisingly complex tale, engagingly told by Glenn Kenny in “ The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface .” Kenny, a New York-based critic who has also written a making-of book about another notable crime film, Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas,” and a study of one of that movie’s stars, Robert De Niro, offers what amounts to a hybrid full-length biography of a movie. Drawing from new and old interviews, he offers extensive stage-setting and pop-culture context, along with thoughtful film analysis, sections that feel like oral history and a few extended detours.

“Prohibition invented the American gangster movie,” Kenny writes. Similarly, President Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs paved the way for the likes of the “Scarface” remake. The cocaine cowboys from the land of “Miami Vice,” an international crossroads for drug distributors, replaced the Chicago-based Italian American bootleggers and gun runners of the Hawks movie.

The ’83 “Scarface” got its start thanks to Pacino, who decided he wanted to star in a remake after seeing the Hawks film for the first time. “He was struck by its real, positively grand feeling and especially by [Paul] Muni’s tremendous performance,” according to Pacino biographer Andrew Yule. The actor then contacted his old friend Martin Bregman, a producer with whom Pacino had worked on “Serpico” and “Dog Day Afternoon.” Sidney Lumet, director of both of those films, signed on and made the suggestion to give the story a Miami-and-cocaine makeover before leaving the project, reportedly over creative differences: He had planned to focus on the story’s political aspects — the cocaine wars, the alleged involvement of the CIA and the DEA in the drug trade, and the impact of all the above on the relationship between the United States and Cuba. Enter De Palma, who “had this idea about turning it into an opera … that it should be bigger than life,” as Pacino said during a public appearance last year. Oliver Stone, tapped to write the screenplay, went to Paris to work in relative seclusion. He envisioned Montana as an industrious businessman who just happened to operate on the wrong side of the law. As the Oscar-winning director of “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July” told Kenny: “Tony Montana is the ultimate, ultimate free-market proponent. Sort of the Milton Friedman of cocaine economics.”

Kenny spikes his entertaining narrative with plenty of amusing, frequently insightful observations and anecdotes about the world that made “Scarface” and the world that “Scarface” made. That notorious death-by-chainsaw scene, which caused novelists Kurt Vonnegut and John Irving to walk out of preview screenings? It was inspired by Stone’s discussions in the Bahamas with real-life Gangland types. The Pacino-fueled rumor that De Palma’s pal Steven Spielberg “had a crack” at shooting a portion of the final symphony of gunfire? Never happened, De Palma says. The movie’s continuing hold on hip-hop artists? Montana “makes things happen. Things don’t just happen to him, and he really is a self-made man,” music critic Harry Allen explains.

“The World Is Yours” isn’t the first book-length examination of “Scarface”; Nat Segaloff’s “Say Hello to My Little Friend” was published last year, following Ken Tucker’s “Scarface Nation” in 2008. But Kenny’s book comes off as authoritative, the final word on the subject. At least for now.

Philip Booth writes about film and music, including in his Substack newsletter, “ Culture Pop: Sound & Screen .”

The World Is Yours

The Story of Scarface

By Glenn Kenny

Hanover Square Press. 320 pp. $32

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What are 'the kids' thinking these days? Honor Levy aims to tell in 'My First Book'

Leland Cheuk

What are the kids thinking these days? That seems be to the question behind the publication of My First Book , the buzzy debut story collection by Honor Levy.

The 26-year-old writer was the subject of a viral profile in The Cut , earlier this month, in which she described the praise she received for her story "Good Boys" on The New Yorker website as "not undeserved" and demurred when asked whether she's the voice of her generation. Social media discourse and the inevitable backlash aside, Levy's first book is an amusing, if uneven, take on growing up white, privileged, and Gen Z, the first generation to completely be born after the existence of the internet.

Readers won't find meticulously plotted story arcs, fleshed-out characters, emotional epiphanies, or any other earmarks of conventional literary fiction. Most of Levy's stories run fewer than 12 pages and feel like very long flash fiction, written in a voice dense with the chaotic patois of the internet. In her strongest stories, Levy channels the blitzkrieg of contradictory micro-observations we absorb from social media, video games, and doomscrolling to create the absurd, incomprehensible cacophony that anyone born after 1997 had to grow up enduring. These stories seem to ask: How can anyone expect a well-adjusted adult to rise from all this noise?

In "Internet Girl," the main character is 11 and very online, and Levy's portrayal of her narrator's interiority is both compellingly satirical and frighteningly plausible. She writes:

"It's 2008, and my dad gets laid off and everything is happening all at once. All at once, there are two girls and one cup and planes hitting towers and a webcam looking at me and me smiling into it and a man and a boy and a love and a stranger on the other end. All at once, there are a million videos to watch and a million more to make. All at once it's all at once. It's beginning and ending all at once all the time. I'm twenty-one. I'm eleven. I'm on the internet. I'm twenty-one."

Another strong piece is "Love Story," the collection's opener, which is about a boy and a girl having an online relationship that seems to consist entirely of texting and sending pics of their bodies to each other. Levy poignantly captures the girl's vulnerability. "Little girl lost can't even find herself," Levy writes. "Pictures of her naked body are out there everywhere, in the cloud floating, and under the sea, coursing through cables in the dark. It's so dark."

Levy smartly skewers late capitalism in "Halloween Forever," about a young woman trying to survive a surreal and drug-filled Halloween night in Brooklyn. She meets a "boy from Stanford dressed as a cowboy," who, when sufficiently coked-up, muses about the romance of the Wild West and how "The West was freedom...just like the internet originally was!" The narrator is skeptical:

"Freedom is the stuff of dreams and nightmares only and our free market doesn't make us free people, but the cowboy doesn't care. Silicon Valley must have burrowed itself deep into his brain underneath that hat. He is probably afraid of blood, or social media, or something stupid. My drink is seventeen dollars."

As the collection progresses, the unique blend of the satirical and the poignant gives way to a more essayistic approach to storytelling. In "Cancel Me," which is about cancel culture, the characters — a young woman and two "Ivy League boys with kitten-sharp teeth and Accutane-skin," all of whom have experienced cancellation for murky reasons — gradually fade into a series of observations about wokeness that aren't much different or more insightful than what one might find on X or Reddit.

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"Z Was For Zoomer," which runs more than 50 pages, seems to be a continuation of "Cancel Me," except the two male "edgelords" — someone on an internet forum who deliberately posts about controversial or taboo topics to appear edgy — are named Gideon and Ivan instead of Jack and Roger. Just as in "Cancel Me," the narrator's relationship with the men is never defined and doesn't progress. Character-driven narrative takes a back seat to dashed-off, inch-deep lines like "Identity is a Swedish prison, comfortable but you still can't leave."

It should also be mentioned that these stories won't pass the most permissive of racial Bechdel tests. The number of non-white references in this 200-page book won't go past one hand, unless you count the few references to anime and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. The milieu of Honor Levy's fiction is undeniably white and privileged, but her best stories exaggerate that milieu to great satirical effect. Perhaps her second book will contain more of them.

Leland Cheuk is an award-winning author of three books of fiction, including the latest No Good Very Bad Asian . His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and Salon , among other outlets.