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The Best Reviewed Fiction of 2022

Featuring jennifer egan, emily st. john mandel, ian mcewan, celeste ng, olga tokarczuk, and more.

We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically acclaimed books of 2022, in the categories of (deep breath): Fiction; Nonfiction; Memoir and Biography; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature; and Literature in Translation.

Today’s installment: Fiction .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf) 28 Rave • 9 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan Read an interview with Emily St. John Mandel here

“In  Sea of Tranquility,  Mandel offers one of her finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet, but it is her ability to convincingly inhabit the ordinary, and her ability to project a sustaining acknowledgment of beauty, that sets the novel apart. As in Ishiguro, this is not born of some cheap, made-for-television, faux-emotional gimmick or mechanism, but of empathy and hard-won understanding, beautifully built into language … It is that aspect of  Sea of Tranquility, Mandel’s finely rendered, characteristically understated descriptions of the old-growth forests her characters walk through, the domed moon colonies some of them call home, the robot-tended fields they gaze over or the whooshing airship liftoff sound they hear even in their dreams, that will, for this reader at least, linger longest.”

–Laird Hunt ( The New York Times Book Review )

2. The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (Scribner)

27 Rave • 13 Positive • 11 Mixed • 4 Pan

“… a dizzying and dazzling work that should end up on many Best of the Year lists … The Candy House requires exquisite attentiveness and extensive effort from its readers. But the work and the investment pay off richly, as each strain and thread and character reverberates in a kind of amplifying echo-wave with all the others, and the overarching tapestry emerges as ever more intricate and brilliantly conceived. Enacting the book’s dominant metaphor, Egan is presenting a version of Collective Consciousness: the blending and extension of selfhood across shared experience and identity. One of the book’s most fascinating implications, less patent but pervasive, is how this alternative model of perception does and doesn’t undermine traditional notions of literary consciousness …

As we follow the pebbles and crumbs Egan so cannily lays out, readers may feel at times as disoriented or wonderstruck as children making their way through a dark forest, at others electrifyingly clear-sighted, ecstatically certain of the novel’s wisdom, capacious philosophical range, truth and beauty. Charged with ‘a potency of ideas simmering,’ The Candy House is a marvel of a novel that testifies to the surpassing power of fiction to ‘roam with absolute freedom through the human collective.’”

–Pricilla Gilman ( The Boston Globe )

3. Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett (Riverhead)

26 Rave • 10 Positive • 1 Mixed

“ Pond is so unusual, and so unsettlingly pleasurable, that I thought it would be greedy to hope Bennett’s new novel, Checkout 19 , would be better. Lucky me: it is … Bennett is too committed to the oddity and specificity of her again-nameless narrator’s ideas to ever fall into the worn grooves of other people’s. Indeed, the novel is explicitly committed to the privacy of thought … Not many people are able to live this way; not many women or working-class characters get written this way. For the rooted among us, reading Checkout 19 can be utterly jarring. It is a portrait, like Pond; it’s also a call to come at least a little undone. Yes, really. It really is.”

–Lily Meyer ( NPR )

4. The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, trans. by Jennifer Croft (Riverhead)

26 Rave • 9 Positive • 4 Mixed • 1 Pan

“ The Books of Jacob is finally available here in a wondrous English translation by Jennifer Croft, and it’s just as awe-inspiring as the Nobel judges claimed when they praised Tokarczuk for showing ‘the supreme capacity of the novel to represent a case almost beyond human understanding.’ In terms of its scope and ambition, The Books of Jacob is beyond anything else I’ve ever read. Even its voluminous subtitle is a witty expression of Tokarczuk’s irrepressible, omnivorous reach … The challenges here—for author and reader—are considerable. After all, Tokarczuk isn’t revising our understanding of Mozart or presenting a fresh take on Catherine the Great. She’s excavating a shadowy figure who’s almost entirely unknown today …

As daunting as it sounds, The Books of Jacob is miraculously entertaining and consistently fascinating. Despite his best efforts, Frank never mastered alchemy, but Tokarczuk certainly has. Her light irony, delightfully conveyed by Croft’s translation, infuses many of the sections … The quality that makes The Books of Jacob so striking is its remarkable form. Tokarczuk has constructed her narrative as a collage of legends, letters, diary entries, rumors, hagiographies, political attacks and historical records … This is a story that grows simultaneously more detailed and more mysterious … Haunting and irresistible.”

–Ron Charles ( The Washington Post )

5. Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart (Grove)

27 Rave • 5 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan

“… moving … Stuart writes like an angel … masterful … if Stuart has not departed much from the scaffolding of his debut novel, he has managed to produce a story with a very different shape and pace … The raw poetry of Stuart’s prose is perfect to catch the open spirit of this handsome boy, with his strange facial tics … The way Stuart carves out this oasis amid a rising tide of homophobia infuses these scenes with almost unbearable poignancy … Stuart quickly proves himself an extraordinarily effective thriller writer. He’s capable of pulling the strings of suspense excruciatingly tight while still sensitively exploring the confused mind of this gentle adolescent trying to make sense of his sexuality …

The result is a novel that moves toward two crises simultaneously: whatever happened with James in Glasgow and whatever might happen to Mungo in the Scottish wilds. The one is a foregone calamity we can only intuit; the other an approaching horror we can only dread. But even as Stuart draws these timelines together like a pair of scissors, he creates a little space for Mungo’s future, a little mercy for this buoyant young man.”

6. Lessons by Ian McEwan (Knopf)

23 Rave • 10 Positive • 4 Mixed • 3 Pan

“Nobody is better at writing about entropy, indignity and ejaculation—among other topics—than Ian McEwan … One of McEwan’s talents is to mingle the lovely with the nasty … McEwan can make a reader feel as though she has bent forward to sniff a rose and received instead the odor of old sewage … McEwan’s use of global events in his fiction tends to be judicious and revealing … These all serve as reminders that history is occurring. And maybe some readers do, in fact, require that reminder. But Roland is so passive that one gets the sense he’d be exactly the same guy in any other century, only with a different haircut … One way to read Lessons is as a self-repudiation of the maneuver at which McEwan has become virtuosic. More authors should repudiate their virtuosity. The results are exciting.”

–Molly Young ( The New York Times )

7. Either/Or by Elif Batuman (Penguin Press)

18 Rave • 12 Positive • 3 Mixed Read an interview with Elif Batuman here

“The book gallops along at a brisk pace, rich with cultural touchstones of the time, and one finishes hungry for more. I reread The Idiot before reading Either/Or and after almost 800 cumulative pages, I still wasn’t sated. Batuman possesses a rare ability to successfully flood the reader with granular facts, emotional vulnerability, dry humor, and a philosophical undercurrent without losing the reader in a sea of noise … What makes a life or story exceptional enough to create art? What art is exceptional, entertaining, and engaging enough to sustain nearly a thousand pages? Selin’s existential crisis within the collegiate crucible haunts every thoughtful reader … The novel stands on its own as a rich exploration of life’s aesthetic and moral crossroads as a space to linger—not race through. Spare me sanctimonious fictional characters locked in the anguish of their regretful late twenties and early thirties: May our bold heroine Selin return to campus and stir up more drama before departing abroad again.”

–Lauren LeBlanc ( The Boston Globe )

8. Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (Penguin)

21 Rave • 5 Positive • 4 Mixed

“Stunning … One of Ng’s most poignant tricks in this novel is to bury its central tragedy…in the middle of the action. This raises the narrative from the specific story of a confused boy and his defeated father to a reflection on the universal bond between parents and children … Our Missing Hearts will land differently for individual readers. One element we shouldn’t miss is Ng’s bold reversal of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. It is the drive for conformity, the suppression of our glorious cacophony, that will doom us. And it is the expression of individual souls that will save us.”

–Bethanne Patrick ( The Lost Angeles Times )

9. Trust by Hernan Diaz (Riverhead)

22 Rave • 3 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan Read an interview with Hernan Diaz here

“[An] enthralling tour de force … Each story talks to the others, and the conversation is both combative and revelatory … As an American epic, Trust gives The Great Gatsby a run for its money … Diaz’s debut, In the Distance , was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Trust fulfills that book’s promise, and then some … Wordplay is Trust ’s currency … In Diaz’s accomplished hands we circle ever closer to the black hole at the core of Trust … Trust is a glorious novel about empires and erasures, husbands and wives, staggering fortunes and unspeakable misery … He spins a larger parable, then, plumbing sex and power, causation and complicity. Mostly, though, Trust is a literary page-turner, with a wealth of puns and elegant prose, fun as hell to read.”

–Hamilton Cain ( Oprah Daily )

10. Bliss Montage by Ling Ma (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

20 Rave • 5 Positive • 2 Mixed Read an interview with Ling Ma here

“The strangeness of living in a body is exposed, the absurdity of carrying race and gender on one’s face, all against the backdrop of an America in ruin … Ma’s meticulously-crafted mood and characterization … Ma’s gift for endings is evident … Ma masterfully captures her characters’ double consciousness, always seeing themselves through the white gaze, in stunning and bold new ways … Even the weaker stories in the book…are redeemed by Ma’s restrained prose style, dry humor, and clever gut-punch endings. But all this technical prowess doesn’t mean the collection lacks a heart. First- and second-generation Americans who might have been invisible for most of their lives are seen and held lovingly in Ma’s fiction.”

–Bruna Dantas Lobato ( Astra )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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The Best Reviewed Books of 2021: Fiction

Featuring sally rooney, kazuo ishiguro, colson whitehead, viet thanh nguyen, jonathan franzen, and more.

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Well, friends, another grim and grueling plague year is drawing to a close, and that can mean only one thing: it’s time to put on our Book Marks stats hats and tabulate the best reviewed books of the past twelve months.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2021, in the categories of (deep breath): Memoir and Biography ; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror ; Short Story Collections ; Essay Collections ; Poetry ; Mystery and Crime ; Graphic Literature; Literature in Translation; General Fiction; and General Nonfiction.

Today’s installment: Fiction .

1. Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney (FSG)

27 Rave • 26 Positive • 25 Mixed • 2 Pan

Listen to an excerpt from Beautiful World, Where Are You here

“… wise, romantic, and ultimately consoling … Once again, Rooney has drawn a circumscribed world—four people, tightly wound in the small universe of one another’s lives—and once again, this is a love story, although the book’s most compelling romance is the platonic one between its two main female protagonists … it is the epic minutiae of human relations , not the grand structures of economic inequality, that send the blood pumping through the writing. Nonetheless, we know the two can’t be extricated; the latter impinges on the former … In [some] moments, Rooney deprives herself of access to her character’s interiority—the very medium of most fiction concerned with personal relations. Here’s an alternate way of seeing, one derived from a camera lens rather than the traditionally omniscient novelist’s gaze. The effect—implying the novelist herself might not fully know her characters, or at least withhold some of her knowledge—is one of delightful modesty … Maybe Rooney knows that it’s the small dimensions of her fiction—the close, funneled, loving attention she pays her characters—that allow her books to trap within their confines anxieties of huge historical breadth.”

–Hermione Hoby ( 4Columns )

2. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (Knopf)

28 Rave • 24 Positive • 6 Mixed

“ Klara and the Sun confirms one’s suspicion that the contemporary novel’s truest inheritor of Nabokovian estrangement—not to mention its best and deepest Martian—is Ishiguro … Never Let Me Go wrung a profound parable out of such questions: the embodied suggestion of that novel is that a free, long, human life is, in the end, just an unfree, short, cloned life. Klara and the Sun continues this meditation, powerfully and affectingly. Ishiguro uses his inhuman, all too human narrators to gaze upon the theological heft of our lives, and to call its bluff … Ishiguro keeps his eye on the human connection. Only Ishiguro, I think, would insist on grounding this speculative narrative so deeply in the ordinary … Whether our postcards are read by anyone has become the searching doubt of Ishiguro’s recent novels, in which this master, so utterly unlike his peers, goes about creating his ordinary, strange, godless allegories.”

–James Wood ( The New Yorker )

3. No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (Riverhead)

31 Rave • 13 Positive • 7 Mixed

Read an interview with Patricia Lockwood here

“Now Lockwood has put that strength into her first novel, No One is Talking About This , which leaves no doubt that she still takes her literary vocation seriously. It’s another attention-grabbing mind-blower which toggles between irony and sincerity, sweetness and blight … Lockwood deftly captures a life lived predominantly online … This portrait of a disturbing world where the center will not hold is a tour de force that recalls Joan Didion’s portrait of the dissolute 1960s drug culture of Haight-Ashbury in her seminal essay, ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ … Lockwood is a master of sweeping, eminently quotable proclamations that fearlessly aim to encapsulate whole movements and eras … It’s a testament to her skills as a rare writer who can navigate both sleaze and cheese, jokey tweets and surprising earnestness, that we not only buy her character’s emotional epiphany but are moved by it … Of course, people will be talking about this meaty book, and about the questions Lockwood raises about what a human being is, what a brain is, and most important, what really matters.”

–Heller McAlpin ( NPR )

4. Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen (FSG)

32 Rave • 12 Positive • 7 Mixed • 1 Pan

“… a novel that takes the religious beliefs of its characters seriously, without ever forgetting how easily faith can twist itself into absurdity … is light on curmudgeonly social commentary. (Readers who prefer his breakout 2001 novel, The Corrections , will surely welcome this … As with the best of Franzen’s fiction, the characters in Crossroads are held up to the light like complexly cut gems and turned to reveal facet after facet … feels purged of showy writing and stylistic set pieces, but the long flashback recounting this interlude feels bleached with the merciless glare and punishing downpours of winter afternoons on treeless Southern California boulevards. The way Franzen conveys this atmosphere without calling attention to how well he’s conveying it is in tune with the deferential spirit of the novel … The power of this enveloping novel, facilitated by neatly turned plot elements finally resides in how uncannily real, how fully imagined these people feel … Real people are tricky puzzles, volatile blends of self-knowledge and blindness, full of inexhaustible surprises and contradictions. Literary characters seldom achieve a comparably unpredictable intricacy because they are, after all, artifacts made by equally blinkered human beings, and furthermore they are the means to an artistic end. Franzen hasn’t always given his readers characters as persuasively flawed as the Hildebrandts. He hasn’t always tried to. But in Crossroads , his satirical and didactic impulses largely in check, his touch gentled, Franzen has created characters of almost uncanny authenticity. Is there anything more a great novelist ought to do? I didn’t think so.”

–Laura Miller ( Slate )

5. Matrix by Lauren Groff (Riverhead)

30 Rave • 9 Positive • 4 Mixed

Read an interview with Lauren Groff here

“Now that we’ve endured almost two years of quarantine and social distancing, [Groff’s] new novel about a 12th-century nunnery feels downright timely … We need a trusted guide, someone who can dramatize this remote period while making it somehow relevant to our own lives. Groff is that guide largely because she knows what to leave out. Indeed, it’s breathtaking how little ink she spills on filling in historical context … Though Matrix is radically different from Groff’s masterpiece, Fates and Furies, it is, once again, the story of a woman redefining both the possibilities of her life and the bounds of her realm … Although there are no clunky contemporary allusions in Matrix, it seems clear that Groff is using this ancient story as a way of reflecting on how women might survive and thrive in a culture increasingly violent and irrational.”

–Ron Charles ( The Washington Post )

6. Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)

30 Rave • 10 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan

Read an interview with Colson Whitehead here

“Whitehead’s own mind has famously gone thataway through nine other books that don’t much resemble one another, but this time he’s hit upon a setup that will stick. He has said he may keep Ray going into another book, and it won’t take you long to figure out why … brings Whitehead’s unwavering eloquence to a mix of city history, niche hangouts, racial stratification, high hopes and low individuals. All of these are somehow worked into a rich, wild book that could pass for genre fiction. It’s much more, but the entertainment value alone should ensure it the same kind of popular success that greeted his last two novels. It reads like a book whose author thoroughly enjoyed what he was doing … The author creates a steady, suspenseful churn of events that almost forces his characters to do what they do. The final choice is theirs, of course … Quaint details aside, this is no period piece … Though it’s a slightly slow starter, Harlem Shuffle has dialogue that crackles, a final third that nearly explodes, hangouts that invite even if they’re Chock Full o’ Nuts and characters you won’t forget even if they don’t stick around for more than a few pages.”

–Janet Maslin ( The New York Times )

7. Oh, William! by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)

25 Rave • 7 Positive

Read an interview with Elizabeth Strout here

“… yet another stunning achievement … In spare, no-nonsense, conversational language, Lucy addresses the reader as an intimate confidante … all her characters are complicated, neither good nor bad but beautifully explored and so real in their humanness … Strout’s simple declarative sentences contain continents. Who is better at conveying loneliness, the inability to communicate, to say the deep important things? Who better to illustrate the legacies of imperfect upbringings, of inadequate parents? When William explains that what attracted him to Lucy was her sense of joy, the reader can only agree. This brilliant, compelling, tender novel is—quite simply—a joy.”

–Mameve Medwed ( The Boston Globe )

8. The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr.  (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

24 Rave • 3 Positive

Read an excerpt from The Prophets here

“Meeting yourself in media is no guarantee that the mirror will be kind or wanted. Instead, it’s often a jagged glass you catch yourself in before it catches you. And even when you know it’s coming, the blood’s still warm and sharp. What of me, of us, was I to witness in The Prophets , the debut novel of Robert Jones Jr., set on an antebellum plantation in Mississippi? … What I found was an often lyrical and rebellious love story embedded within a tender call-out to Black readers, reaching across time and form to shake something old, mighty in the blood … One of the blessings of The Prophets is its long memory. Jones uses the voices from the prologue to speak across time, to character and reader alike. These short, lyric-driven chapters struck me as instructive and redemptive attempts at healing historical wounds, tracing a map back to the possibility of our native, queer, warrior Black selves. These voices are Black collective knowledge given shape, the oral tradition speaking in your face and setting you right … What a fiery kindness […] this book. A book I entered hesitantly, cautiously, I exited anew—something in me unloosed, running. May this book cast its spell on all of us, restore to us some memory of our most warrior and softest selves.”

–Danez Smith ( The New York Times Book Review )

9. The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove)

19 Rave • 12 Positive • 4 Mixed • 1 Pan

Listen to an interview with Viet Thang Nguyen here

“The novel is […] a homecoming of a particularly volatile sort, a tale of chickens returning to roost, and of a narrator not yet done with the world … Nguyen […] is driven to raptures of expression by the obliviousness of the self-satisfied; he relentlessly punctures the self-image of French and American colonizers, of white people generally, of true believers and fanatics of every stripe. This mission drives the rhetorical intensity that makes his novels so electric. It has nothing to do with plot or theme or character … That voice has made Nguyen a standard-bearer in what seems to be a transformational moment in the history of American literature, a perspectival shift … It’s a voice that shakes the walls of the old literary comfort zone wherein the narratives of nonwhite ‘immigrants’ were tasked with proving their shared humanity to a white audience … May that voice keep running like a purifying venom through the mainstream of our self-regard—through the American dream of distancing ourselves from what we continue to show ourselves to be.”

–Jonathan Dee ( The New Yorker )

10. Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So (Ecco)

22 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed

“The presence of the author is so vivid in Afterparties , Anthony Veasna So’s collection of stories, he seems to be at your elbow as you read … The personality that animates Afterparties is unmistakably youthful, and the stories themselves are mainly built around conditions of youth—vexed and tender relationships with parents, awkward romances, nebulous worries about the future. But from his vantage on the evanescent bridge to maturity, So is puzzling out some big questions, ones that might be exigent from different vantages at any age. The stories are great fun to read—brimming over with life and energy and comic insight and deep feeling.”

–Deborah Eisenberg ( New York Review of Books )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley review – a seriously fun sci-fi romcom

A bureaucrat in near-future London finds love with a Victorian Arctic explorer in a thrilling debut that takes a deep dive into human morality

F or a book to be good – really good, keep it on your shelf for ever good – it has to be two things: fun and a stretch . You have to need to know what happens next; and you have to feel like a bigger or better version of yourself at the end. Airport thrillers are almost always fun; much contemporary autofiction is just a stretch, largely because it’s very hard for a book in which not much happens to be a page-turner. What a thrill, then, to come to Kaliane Bradley’s debut, The Ministry of Time, a novel where things happen, lots of them, and all of them are exciting to read about and interesting to think about.

Bradley’s book is also serious, it must be said – or, at least, covers serious subjects. The British empire, murder, government corruption, the refugee crisis, climate change, the Cambodian genocide, Auschwitz, 9/11 and the fallibility of the human moral compass all fall squarely within Bradley’s remit. Fortunately, however, these vast themes are handled deftly and in deference to character and plot.

Billed as “speculative fiction”, it is perhaps more cheering to think of it as 50% sci-fi thriller, and 50% romcom. The Ministry of Time is chiefly a love story between a disaffected civil servant working in a near-future London, and Commander Graham Gore, first lieutenant of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated expedition to the Arctic. Gore, last seen grimly walking across the ice in 1847, has been retrieved from the jaws of death by a 21st-century government hellbent on testing the limits of time travel.

Gore is one of their “expats”: people brought through time and subjected not just to a barrage of tests but the tumult of the 21st century (traffic lights, acknowledging the atrocities of the British empire, Instagram). The expats have some problems with “hereness and thereness”: they don’t register, necessarily, on an MRI scan or an airport scanner. What is a person? What is time? How can the answers to these questions further our geopolitical interests?

Each expat has been assigned a “bridge”: part companion, part zookeeper, part researcher. The bridges share their homes, their lives – and perhaps more – but must file complete reports on every aspect of their new “friend” to an increasingly sinister HQ. Ursula K Le Guin wrote that the job of sci-fi was “to extrapolate imaginatively from current trends and events to a near-future that’s half prediction, half satire”. It is impossible to read The Ministry of Time and not feel that we are, in fact, mere years from “nose-bleeder” heatwaves, microchipped refugees and a government at war with itself.

One test of good sci-fi is how quickly the central premise, however fantastic, becomes so obviously true to both character and reader that the plot is permitted to move itself without any further conscious suspension of disbelief. The space blasters, or whatever, must feel as real as the people; and the people must not be left behind in the author’s quest to accurately describe ( to quote Raymond Chandler ) the poltexes and disintegrators and secondary timejectors. The Ministry of Time needs no such ritzy shortcuts: when the blue lights and lasers emerge, we have earned them.

The test of a good romance novel is, in some ways, the same. Cliche is a feature, not a bug; readers expect a certain set of beats, played to a certain rhythm. Girl meets boy; boy and girl fall in love over one hot summer; complications (in this case, guns, governments and an age gap of 200 years) ensue. The couple must kiss; and, while a happy ending is not mandatory (luckily for Bradley), there must be some sense of hope.

This is – astonishingly – a hopeful book. Much as our narrator would like us to believe chiefly in her failures, ultimately she exists around them and through them as a person in her own right. A nameless bureaucrat, through the course of the novel she (as she puts it of Gore) “fills out with attributes like a daguerreotype developing”. This is our hope, then, in the novel as in life: that people should become more than they thought they were. Life is worth living; and love is worth fighting for; and our characters – hereness and thereness notwithstanding – can and must do it. Won’t they? Would you? These are the big questions, and Bradley smuggles them in, concealed amid a breakneck plot just as the time outlaws hide among suburban London streets.

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For, despite its vast scope, The Ministry of Time reads like a novel that was written for pleasure. The acknowledgments reveal that the story began life as a joke for a handful of friends – and while it is not always true that a joy to write is a joy to read, this is the kind of summer romp that also sparks real thought. While Bradley’s writing can veer towards the glib, go with it: give in to the tide of this book, and let it pull you along. It’s very smart; it’s very silly; and the obvious fun never obscures completely the sheer, gorgeous, wild stretch of her ideas.

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Best Contemporary Fiction Book Review Blogs in 2024

Showing 147 blogs that match your search.

Chouett Blog

https://chouett.com/

Bonjour Everyone!! I am Virginie aka LaChouett and welcome to my blog. I am one of those “curious” reader and will not stick to just one genre. I enjoy reading well established authors however I have really enjoyed receiving pieces from unknown writers that I have provided with an honest review in return for their gift.

Blogger : Virginie Busette

Genres : Contemporary Fiction

🌐 Domain authority: 26

👀 Average monthly visits: 3,000 p/mo

💌 Preferred contact method: Mail

⭐️ Accepts indie books? Yes

The Creative Muggle

https://www.thecreativemuggle.com/

The Creative Muggle is a place for anyone who wants to read books. You can find fascinating reading lists to have a productive reading time in your busy life. From charming romance novels to propulsive thrillers, you are in for a literary treat!

Blogger : Stephy George

🌐 Domain authority: 20

👀 Average monthly visits: 20,500 p/mo

💌 Preferred contact method: Email

My Chestnut Reading Tree

https://mychestnutreadingtree.wordpress.com/

Hi, my name is Jo and I love reading which is why I set up My Chestnut Reading Tree in February 2016 so I could share my thoughts about the books I read with the world! I read mainly crime and psychological thrillers but I also love women's fiction...basically I just love a good story and will review most books apart from sci-fi or horror.

Blogger : Jo

🌐 Domain authority: 30

👀 Average monthly visits: 5,000 p/mo

⭐️ Accepts indie books? No

The Lesbrary

http://lesbrary.com/

The Lesbrary is a book blog all about les/bi/etc books. Yes, this often means lesbian books (hence the name), but includes anything in the broad ‰ÛÏdoesn't identify as a man and is at least some of the time attracted romantically and/or sexually to others who do not identify as a man‰Û category. Lesbrary books don't have to be written by a queer author, though it helps.

Blogger : The Lesbrarians

🌐 Domain authority: 37

👀 Average monthly visits: 7,000 p/mo

Always With A Book

http://alwayswithabook.blogspot.com

Welcome to Always With a Book! As the name implies, I always have a book with me wherever I go. Like any avid book blogger and book fanatic, I enjoy getting books to review. This is something I never even realized was a part of book blogging until a few months after I started my blog.

Blogger : Kristin

🌐 Domain authority: 31

Jessicamap Reviews

https://jessicamapreviews.com/

What exactly will you see here? Books. Reviews about books. A random chocolate lab. Then some of the awesome subscription boxes and other bookish things.

Blogger : Jessica

🌐 Domain authority: 24

💌 Preferred contact method: Website contact form

The Next Best Book Blog

http://www.thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.com/

I focus mainly on independent/small press and self published literary fiction. My preferred format is printed/bound books, though I have reluctantly moved into the digital age and accept ebooks for review (PDF and .mobi). I am open to working with various authors, publishers, publicists, and literary agencies - reading and reviewing ARC's and backlist titles. I would love to hear about your book as well.

Blogger : Lori

🌐 Domain authority: 35

Snazzy Books

https://snazzybooks.com/about/

This blog is mainly to share books I’ve read, whether good or bad, along with other stuff I think is interesting or worth recommending. As well as reading lots I love crafty stuff, make up, fitness, shopping and delicious food. I decided to start this blog mainly because I noticed a lack of blogs about adult fiction in general, compared to many blogs focusing on Young Adult books. Now that I’ve got more deeply into the blogging world I see there are actually lots of amazing blogs focusing on adult fiction, but I didn’t realise that when I started this blog! Still, what’s one more eh? 🙂

Blogger : Laura Nazmdeh

🌐 Domain authority: 25

Emily the Book Nerd

https://emilythebooknerdxo.blogspot.com

These days, I have been turning to the romance genre most. I am a sucker for all things romance! Helping authors and bloggers are a passion of mine. If you ever have any questions, I am always here to help.

Blogger : Emily Nicholas

🌐 Domain authority: 15

👀 Average monthly visits: 2,000 p/mo

Two Ends Of The Pen

https://twoendsofthepen.blogspot.com/

If you would like to request a review, please send me an email with a brief description of your book and the buy links. Please DO NOT attach any files to your request for review. I will let you know if I'm interested in reviewing your book. I cannot review every book submitted to me because of the overwhelming number of submissions. Please, no horror, true crime, memoirs, or children's books.

Blogger : Debra & David

Read. Eat. Repeat.

https://readeatrepeat.net/

Hi! I’m Jordan, wife to one husband and mom to two little girls. Blogging and writing are my side gig, and I love creating delicious recipes and reading lots of books to share with you guys! My favorite genre to review is historical fiction but I do read a bit of everything.

Blogger : Jordan

👀 Average monthly visits: 2,500 p/mo

Toby A. Smith

https://tobyasmith.com/

Independent book reviews (without spoilers) that focus on historical fiction. Chief areas of interest are English, French, and Russian history and the two World Wars.

Blogger : Toby A. Smith

🌐 Domain authority: 14

Linda's Book Bag

https://lindasbookbag.com/

The blog was initially designed to share a few thoughts about the books I read and that's the aspect I still enjoy most. I don't give star ratings as my 5 stars might be someone else's 3 so I say what I thought instead, trying to be as honest as I can and I make the review personal to me as a reader. After a few months of blogging I realised just how hard it is for smaller publishers and independent authors to get their books noticed so I'm always willing to feature them if I can.

Blogger : Linda Hill

🌐 Domain authority: 39

A Little Blog Of Books

http://www.alittleblogofbooks.com/

It may not come as a surprise to you that I like books and I read quite a lot of them Ð mostly contemporary, literary and translated fiction. I love stories with unreliable narrators and my greatest fear is running out of books to read. I don't accept review copies of self-published books. However, do feel free to contact me with all queries via email or Twitter. Please be aware that I may not be able to respond straight away.

Blogger : Clare

The LitBuzz Hive

https://www.thelitbuzz.com/

A book review site featuring a diverse Hive of voices reading and sharing, we have a vast palette. We welcome both indie and traditionally-published authors - at no charge for reviews, ever.

Blogger : The LitBuzz Hive

🌐 Domain authority: 7

👀 Average monthly visits: 300 p/mo

So you want to find a book blog?

If you’re a voracious reader, you might think of a book blog as an oasis in the middle of the desert: a place on the Internet that brims with talk about books, books, and more books.

Well, good news — we built this directory of the 200 of the best book blogs  to satiate your thirst. Take a walk around, use the filters to narrow down your search to blogs in your preferred genre, and feel free to bookmark this page and come back, as we do update it regularly with more of the best book blogs out there. 

If you’re an aspiring author, you might see a book blog more as a book review blog: a place where you can get your yet-to-be published book reviewed. In that case, you’ll be glad to know that most of the book blogs in our directory are open to review requests and accept indie books! We expressly designed this page (and our book marketing platform, Reedsy Discovery ) to be useful to indie book authors who need book reviews. If you’re wondering how to approach a book blog for a review request, please read on. 

You’ve found a book blog. Now what? 

Let’s say that you’re an author, and you’ve found a couple of book blogs that would be perfect fits to review your book. What now? Here are some tips as you go about getting your book reviews:

• Be sure to read the review policy. First, check that the book blog you’re querying is open to review requests. If that’s the fortunate case, carefully read the blog’s review policy and make sure that you follow the directions to a T.  
• Individualize your pitches. Book bloggers will be able to immediately tell apart the bulk pitches, which simply come across as thoughtless and indifferent. If you didn’t take the time to craft a good pitch, why should the blogger take the time to read your book? Personalize each pitch to up your chances of getting a response. 
• Format your book in a professional manner before sending it out. Ensure that your manuscript isn’t presented sloppily. If the book blogger asks for a digital ARC, you might want to check out apps such as Instafreebie or Bookfunnel. 
• Create a spreadsheet to track your progress. Wading through so many book blogs can be troublesome — not to mention trying to remember which ones you’ve already contacted. To save yourself the time and trouble, use a simple Excel spreadsheet to keep track of your progress (and results). 

Looking to learn even more about the process? Awesome 👍 For a detailed guide, check out this post that’s all about getting book reviews . 

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How to Write a Book Review: A Comprehensive Tutorial With Examples

You don’t need to be a literary expert to craft captivating book reviews. With one in every three readers selecting books based on insightful reviews, your opinions can guide fellow bibliophiles toward their next literary adventure.

Learning how to write a book review will not only help you excel at your assigned tasks, but you’ll also contribute valuable insights to the book-loving community and turn your passion into a professional pursuit.

In this comprehensive guide,  PaperPerk  will walk you through a few simple steps to master the art of writing book reviews so you can confidently embark on this rewarding journey.

What is a Book Review?

A book review is a critical evaluation of a book, offering insights into its content, quality, and impact. It helps readers make informed decisions about whether to read the book.

Writing a book review as an assignment benefits students in multiple ways. Firstly, it teaches them how to write a book review by developing their analytical skills as they evaluate the content, themes, and writing style .

Secondly, it enhances their ability to express opinions and provide constructive criticism. Additionally, book review assignments expose students to various publications and genres, broadening their knowledge.

Furthermore, these tasks foster essential skills for academic success, like critical thinking and the ability to synthesize information. By now, we’re sure you want to learn how to write a book review, so let’s look at the book review template first.

Table of Contents

Book Review Template

How to write a book review- a step by step guide.

Check out these 5 straightforward steps for composing the best book review.

Step 1: Planning Your Book Review – The Art of Getting Started

You’ve decided to take the plunge and share your thoughts on a book that has captivated (or perhaps disappointed) you. Before you start book reviewing, let’s take a step back and plan your approach. Since knowing how to write a book review that’s both informative and engaging is an art in itself.

Choosing Your Literature

First things first, pick the book you want to review. This might seem like a no-brainer, but selecting a book that genuinely interests you will make the review process more enjoyable and your insights more authentic.

Crafting the Master Plan

Next, create an  outline  that covers all the essential points you want to discuss in your review. This will serve as the roadmap for your writing journey.

The Devil is in the Details

As you read, note any information that stands out, whether it overwhelms, underwhelms, or simply intrigues you. Pay attention to:

• The characters and their development
• The plot and its intricacies
• Any themes, symbols, or motifs you find noteworthy

Remember to reserve a body paragraph for each point you want to discuss.

The Key Questions to Ponder

When planning your book review, consider the following questions:

• What’s the plot (if any)? Understanding the driving force behind the book will help you craft a more effective review.
• Is the plot interesting? Did the book hold your attention and keep you turning the pages?
• Are the writing techniques effective? Does the author’s style captivate you, making you want to read (or reread) the text?
• Are the characters or the information believable? Do the characters/plot/information feel real, and can you relate to them?
• Would you recommend the book to anyone? Consider if the book is worthy of being recommended, whether to impress someone or to support a point in a literature class.
• What could improve? Always keep an eye out for areas that could be improved. Providing constructive criticism can enhance the quality of literature.

Step 2 – Crafting the Perfect Introduction to Write a Book Review

In this second step of “how to write a book review,” we’re focusing on the art of creating a powerful opening that will hook your audience and set the stage for your analysis.

Identify Your Book and Author

Begin by mentioning the book you’ve chosen, including its  title  and the author’s name. This informs your readers and establishes the subject of your review.

Ponder the Title

Next, discuss the mental images or emotions the book’s title evokes in your mind . This helps your readers understand your initial feelings and expectations before diving into the book.

Judge the Book by Its Cover (Just a Little)

Take a moment to talk about the book’s cover. Did it intrigue you? Did it hint at what to expect from the story or the author’s writing style? Sharing your thoughts on the cover can offer a unique perspective on how the book presents itself to potential readers.

Present Your Thesis

Now it’s time to introduce your thesis. This statement should be a concise and insightful summary of your opinion of the book. For example:

“Normal People” by Sally Rooney is a captivating portrayal of the complexities of human relationships, exploring themes of love, class, and self-discovery with exceptional depth and authenticity.

Ensure that your thesis is relevant to the points or quotes you plan to discuss throughout your review.

Incorporating these elements into your introduction will create a strong foundation for your book review. Your readers will be eager to learn more about your thoughts and insights on the book, setting the stage for a compelling and thought-provoking analysis.

How to Write a Book Review: Step 3 – Building Brilliant Body Paragraphs

You’ve planned your review and written an attention-grabbing introduction. Now it’s time for the main event: crafting the body paragraphs of your book review. In this step of “how to write a book review,” we’ll explore the art of constructing engaging and insightful body paragraphs that will keep your readers hooked.

Summarize Without Spoilers

Begin by summarizing a specific section of the book, not revealing any major plot twists or spoilers. Your goal is to give your readers a taste of the story without ruining surprises.

Support Your Viewpoint with Quotes

Next, choose three quotes from the book that support your viewpoint or opinion. These quotes should be relevant to the section you’re summarizing and help illustrate your thoughts on the book.

Analyze the Quotes

Write a summary of each quote in your own words, explaining how it made you feel or what it led you to think about the book or the author’s writing. This analysis should provide insight into your perspective and demonstrate your understanding of the text.

Structure Your Body Paragraphs

Dedicate one body paragraph to each quote, ensuring your writing is well-connected, coherent, and easy to understand.

For example:

• In  Jane Eyre , Charlotte Brontë writes, “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me.” This powerful statement highlights Jane’s fierce independence and refusal to be trapped by societal expectations.
• In  Normal People , Sally Rooney explores the complexities of love and friendship when she writes, “It was culture as class performance, literature fetishized for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys.” This quote reveals the author’s astute observations on the role of culture and class in shaping personal relationships.
• In  Wuthering Heights , Emily Brontë captures the tumultuous nature of love with the quote, “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” This poignant line emphasizes the deep, unbreakable bond between the story’s central characters.

By following these guidelines, you’ll create body paragraphs that are both captivating and insightful, enhancing your book review and providing your readers with a deeper understanding of the literary work. 

How to Write a Book Review: Step 4 – Crafting a Captivating Conclusion

You’ve navigated through planning, introductions, and body paragraphs with finesse. Now it’s time to wrap up your book review with a  conclusion that leaves a lasting impression . In this final step of “how to write a book review,” we’ll explore the art of writing a memorable and persuasive conclusion.

Summarize Your Analysis

Begin by summarizing the key points you’ve presented in the body paragraphs. This helps to remind your readers of the insights and arguments you’ve shared throughout your review.

Offer Your Final Conclusion

Next, provide a conclusion that reflects your overall feelings about the book. This is your chance to leave a lasting impression and persuade your readers to consider your perspective.

Address the Book’s Appeal

Now, answer the question: Is this book worth reading? Be clear about who would enjoy the book and who might not. Discuss the taste preferences and circumstances that make the book more appealing to some readers than others.

For example:  The Alchemist is a book that can enchant a young teen, but those who are already well-versed in classic literature might find it less engaging.

Be Subtle and Balanced

Avoid simply stating whether you “liked” or “disliked” the book. Instead, use nuanced language to convey your message. Highlight the pros and cons of reading the type of literature you’ve reviewed, offering a balanced perspective.

Bringing It All Together

By following these guidelines, you’ll craft a conclusion that leaves your readers with a clear understanding of your thoughts and opinions on the book. Your review will be a valuable resource for those considering whether to pick up the book, and your witty and insightful analysis will make your review a pleasure to read. So conquer the world of book reviews, one captivating conclusion at a time!

How to Write a Book Review: Step 5 – Rating the Book (Optional)

You’ve masterfully crafted your book review, from the introduction to the conclusion. But wait, there’s one more step you might consider before calling it a day: rating the book. In this optional step of “how to write a book review,” we’ll explore the benefits and methods of assigning a rating to the book you’ve reviewed.

Why Rate the Book?

Sometimes, when writing a professional book review, it may not be appropriate to state whether you liked or disliked the book. In such cases, assigning a rating can be an effective way to get your message across without explicitly sharing your personal opinion.

How to Rate the Book

There are various rating systems you can use to evaluate the book, such as:

• A star rating (e.g., 1 to 5 stars)
• A numerical score (e.g., 1 to 10)
• A letter grade (e.g., A+ to F)

Choose a rating system that best suits your style and the format of your review. Be consistent in your rating criteria, considering writing quality, character development, plot, and overall enjoyment.

Tips for Rating the Book

Here are some tips for rating the book effectively:

• Be honest: Your rating should reflect your true feelings about the book. Don’t inflate or deflate your rating based on external factors, such as the book’s popularity or the author’s reputation.
• Be fair:Consider the book’s merits and shortcomings when rating. Even if you didn’t enjoy the book, recognize its strengths and acknowledge them in your rating.
• Be clear: Explain the rationale behind your rating so your readers understand the factors that influenced your evaluation.

Wrapping Up

By including a rating in your book review, you provide your readers with an additional insight into your thoughts on the book. While this step is optional, it can be a valuable tool for conveying your message subtly yet effectively. So, rate those books confidently, adding a touch of wit and wisdom to your book reviews.

Additional Tips on How to Write a Book Review: A Guide

In this segment, we’ll explore additional tips on how to write a book review. Get ready to captivate your readers and make your review a memorable one!

Hook ’em with an Intriguing Introduction

Keep your introduction precise and to the point. Readers have the attention span of a goldfish these days, so don’t let them swim away in boredom. Start with a bang and keep them hooked!

Embrace the World of Fiction

When learning how to write a book review, remember that reviewing fiction is often more engaging and effective. If your professor hasn’t assigned you a specific book, dive into the realm of fiction and select a novel that piques your interest.

Opinionated with Gusto

Don’t shy away from adding your own opinion to your review. A good book review always features the writer’s viewpoint and constructive criticism. After all, your readers want to know what  you  think!

Express Your Love (or Lack Thereof)

If you adored the book, let your readers know! Use phrases like “I’ll definitely return to this book again” to convey your enthusiasm. Conversely, be honest but respectful even if the book wasn’t your cup of tea.

Templates and Examples and Expert Help: Your Trusty Sidekicks

Feeling lost? You can always get help from formats, book review examples or online  college paper writing service  platforms. These trusty sidekicks will help you navigate the world of book reviews with ease. 

Be a Champion for New Writers and Literature

Remember to uplift new writers and pieces of literature. If you want to suggest improvements, do so kindly and constructively. There’s no need to be mean about anyone’s books – we’re all in this literary adventure together!

Criticize with Clarity, Not Cruelty

When adding criticism to your review, be clear but not mean. Remember, there’s a fine line between constructive criticism and cruelty. Tread lightly and keep your reader’s feelings in mind.

Avoid the Comparison Trap

Resist the urge to compare one writer’s book with another. Every book holds its worth, and comparing them will only confuse your reader. Stick to discussing the book at hand, and let it shine in its own light.

Top 7 Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Writing a book review can be a delightful and rewarding experience, especially when you balance analysis, wit, and personal insights. However, some common mistakes can kill the brilliance of your review. 

In this section of “how to write a book review,” we’ll explore the top 7 blunders writers commit and how to steer clear of them, with a dash of  modernist literature  examples and tips for students writing book reviews as assignments.

Succumbing to the Lure of Plot Summaries

Mistake: Diving headfirst into a plot summary instead of dissecting the book’s themes, characters, and writing style.

Example: “The Bell Jar chronicles the life of a young woman who experiences a mental breakdown.”

How to Avoid: Delve into the book’s deeper aspects, such as its portrayal of mental health, societal expectations, and the author’s distinctive narrative voice. Offer thoughtful insights and reflections, making your review a treasure trove of analysis.

Unleashing the Spoiler Kraken

Mistake: Spilling major plot twists or the ending without providing a spoiler warning, effectively ruining the reading experience for potential readers.

Example: “In Metamorphosis, the protagonist’s transformation into a monstrous insect leads to…”

How to Avoid: Tread carefully when discussing significant plot developments, and consider using spoiler warnings. Focus on the impact of these plot points on the overall narrative, character growth, or thematic resonance.

Riding the Personal Bias Express

Mistake: Allowing personal bias to hijack the review without providing sufficient evidence or reasoning to support opinions.

Example: “I detest books about existential crises, so The Sun Also Rises was a snoozefest.”

How to Avoid: While personal opinions are valid, it’s crucial to back them up with specific examples from the book. Discuss aspects like writing style, character development, or pacing to support your evaluation and provide a more balanced perspective.

Wielding the Vague Language Saber

Mistake: Resorting to generic, vague language that fails to capture the nuances of the book and can come across as clichéd.

Example: “This book was mind-blowing. It’s a must-read for everyone.”

How to Avoid: Use precise and descriptive language to express your thoughts. Employ specific examples and quotations to highlight memorable scenes, the author’s unique writing style, or the impact of the book’s themes on readers.

Ignoring the Contextualization Compass

Mistake: Neglecting to provide context about the author, genre, or cultural relevance of the book, leaving readers without a proper frame of reference.

Example: “This book is dull and unoriginal.”

How to Avoid: Offer readers a broader understanding by discussing the author’s background, the genre conventions the book adheres to or subverts, and any societal or historical contexts that inform the narrative. This helps readers appreciate the book’s uniqueness and relevance.

Overindulging in Personal Preferences

Mistake: Letting personal preferences overshadow an objective assessment of the book’s merits.

Example: “I don’t like stream-of-consciousness writing, so this book is automatically bad.”

How to Avoid: Acknowledge personal preferences but strive to evaluate the book objectively. Focus on the book’s strengths and weaknesses, considering how well it achieves its goals within its genre or intended audience.

Forgetting the Target Audience Telescope

Mistake: Failing to mention the book’s target audience or who might enjoy it, leading to confusion for potential readers.

Example: “This book is great for everyone.”

How to Avoid: Contemplate the book’s intended audience, genre, and themes. Mention who might particularly enjoy the book based on these factors, whether it’s fans of a specific genre, readers interested in character-driven stories, or those seeking thought-provoking narratives.

By dodging these common pitfalls, writers can craft insightful, balanced, and engaging book reviews that help readers make informed decisions about their reading choices.

These tips are particularly beneficial for students writing book reviews as assignments, as they ensure a well-rounded and thoughtful analysis.!

Many students requested us to cover how to write a book review. This thorough guide is sure to help you. At Paperperk, professionals are dedicated to helping students find their balance. We understand the importance of good grades, so we offer the finest writing service , ensuring students stay ahead of the curve. So seek expert help because only Paperperk is your perfect solution!

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Reading Ladies

How i write a fiction book review.

*this post contains affiliate links

January 12, 2019

Have you written a book review?

Do you write reviews for Goodreads? Instagram? Or occasional blog reviews?

If you’ve never written a review, would you like you to try?

Even if you are an avid reader and are not interested in writing reviews, you might be interested to know how I approach writing a review because it might enhance your reading experience. If you don’t write a review, you might tell a friend what you like about a book or give a video review in Instagram stories, and that involves some of the same thinking and communication skills as a written review. Here’s a behind the scenes look at my process for writing a fiction book review. Usually for a review, I will choose a few of these elements to build my review….it depends on the reading and what impressed me.

My Intent. In sharing my thoughts, I need to stress that I am a definite work in progress. Readers have vastly different opinions on books and reviews, and writing a review feels like walking through a mine field at times. I want to provide honest reviews, but I don’t want to offend anyone either or be overly critical of an author. Even though I rewrite and thoughtfully edit my reviews, I realize they can be improved. It’s also helpful to read and learn from the reviews of others. What I’m offering here are steps to begin your thinking process and to explore the planning stage of writing a review.

First…

…and this is not meant to scare you, but… I usually think about how I’m going to take notes. I’ve found that when a thought strikes me while I’m reading that it’s best to write it down. Otherwise, the book takes my mind in so many different directions that I can’t always remember the specific moments that make the most impact. I also like to note at least one quote for my review. For me, it’s convenient to make notes right in the notes section of my iPad as I’m reading because I complete the majority of my reading in the Kindle app on my iPad. You could keep a small notebook or even a scrap of paper that doubles as a bookmark. It doesn’t matter what the note taking process looks like for you. I find that looking at my notes gives me a great starting point for my review. Recently, I read a physical copy of a book and decided that I would simply flag certain passages with little flag post its. Well….my five year old grandson picked up my book one day and little hands removed a few of my post its! Sometimes there are hazards involved with note taking.

Next is the reading…..and I’m considering the following elements:

Using my five senses, can I envision a place? The time period? The atmosphere? The season? When I close my eyes and stop to think about the story, can I place myself in the story? What do I see, hear, touch, feel, taste, smell? What details do I notice? If I’m having difficulty in answering these questions, this might mean a low rating for this element of the story. How important is the setting to the story? Is the setting an important aspect of the story or could the story have taken place in any location or in any time period? Sometimes the setting can be as important in a story as a character. An example of this is Where the Crawdads Sing .

Main Characters/Narrator/Point of View

Are main characters well developed? I’m hoping not to find stereotypes (this lowers my star rating). I’m watching for diversity, point of view, and I’m looking intently for character traits. Sometimes there are too many characters and keeping them straight is confusing. Who’s the narrator of the story? Is the story told from multiple perspectives or only one? Are the characters children, young adults, or adults? Or is this a story of family dynamics? Interestingly, the story in The Book Thief is told by Death. That’s an interesting detail for a review!

Plot/Pacing

Do the events of the story move the story forward at a nice pace? Or are there places where the story drags? At the story’s end, are you left with unanswered questions and disappointed with dangling story lines? Is the story predictable? (this is something that readers tend to either like or dislike) Does it bother you if you are able to consistently guess what is going to happen before it happens? Honestly, predictability takes a bit of the enjoyment out of the story for me and I usually give those stories three stars. Is the story engaging? Is it a page turner? Is it a happily ever after (HEA)? Is it unputdownable? Is the story character driven or plot driven? An example of character driven is A Gentleman in Moscow , and an example of plot driven is The Great Alone .

Important Themes

Themes are the most enjoyable part of my reading experience and my favorite aspect of writing a review. I love a great theme! A story that doesn’t have a few good themes won’t be earning four or five stars from me. I always include themes in my reviews. Common themes include family dynamics (parent/child, siblings), faith, friendship, loyalty, ambition, bravery, determination, survival, pursuing a dream or goal, loss, achievement, overcoming obstacles, grief, etc., etc.

The Writing

Does the writing flow? Or are you confused and find yourself rereading for clarification or understanding? Is it evident that the writer excels at her or his craft? With certain authors like Fredrik Backman, I need to stop often and simply reflect on how beautifully the sentence was constructed or how uniquely the thought was expressed ( Beartown ).  I notice gorgeous and creative figurative language, descriptive details, and a unique turn of phrase ( Virgil Wander ). The recent trend of not punctuating dialogue ( The Boat People ) seriously annoys me and slows down my reading pace. Even though the author has a specific artistic reason for using this style (which I appreciate), it still creates a more difficult than necessary reading experience. Personally, I like short chapters. I have a difficult time stopping mid chapter, so I appreciate having frequent opportunities for taking a pause. In addition, short paragraphs lend itself to easier reading. This might be a good place to note that I love reading books by “own voices” authors (e.g. Inside Out and Back Again or The Hate U Give ). This is an interesting fact to point out in a review. Some of what I mention in this section consists of personal preferences and will be a small consideration in your rating.

Enjoyability Factor

This is one of the most important elements in a book review. Potential readers want to know if you enjoy the book and why or why not. I ask myself: Would I reread this? Does it earn a place on my “forever shelf”? Am I tempted to carry it with me where ever I go? Do I find myself wanting to pull it out and read at stop signs? Would I save it in a fire? Is it unputdownable? Did I read the entire book in one day or one sitting? ( Castle of Water ) Did I neglect everything else in my life to read this book? Or did I purposefully stretch it out to savor it? Recently, I lent a book to my mother and her complaint about it was that she wasn’t getting her housework done because she was constantly tempted to pick up the book ( The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter ) to find out what happened next! Do I recommend this book to everyone I see? How many significant connections with characters and/or circumstances have I made with the story? My favorite read of last year ( A Place For Us ) earned five stars from me mostly because of the emotional connections I felt with the characters. It outweighed every other element of the story. Ultimately, reading is a subjective and emotional experience and no two people read the same book. Does the book give me a reading hangover? That is, do I still think about the story and the characters days and weeks or even years later? This enjoyability factor sometimes determines the difference between a four and a five star read for me. Five star reads MUST meet many aspects of the enjoyability factor. The enjoyability factor will be evident in your review and your enthusiasm will be the part of your review that causes other readers to pick up the book. It’s a good thing to let your enthusiasm for a book show! If I don’t sense a reviewer’s enthusiasm, I think that she/he must not be recommending it despite all the other wonderful points being made. (Some reviewers do not believe in leaving negative reviews, so I’ve learned to read between the lines!)

Recommendation

I typically end my review with a recommendation (e.g. “recommended for readers of historical fiction”). You can recommend the genre, the style of writing, the topic, the author, read-a-likes, etc. This is something I look for in a review because it helps me decide if this story is one for me or if it eliminates me. If I write that a book is recommended for readers who love paranormal, what I’m also saying is you might not want to read this if you don’t like the genre. Bottom line, there are kind ways of saying negative things. I’ve developed a few tricks for writing reviews for books that haven’t been the best reads for me. It’s amazing what can be communicated by creating a recommendation statement.

Star Ratings

The Five Star Rating System is a fairly subjective and highly discussed rating system. I happen to love when reviewers give me a star rating….it provides a great deal of information at a glance. However, some reviewers avoid the star rating system completely. Goodreads has a guideline for the 5 star system and you can find my complete explanation of my five star scale here . This is a brief explanation of mine: 5=it’s going on my lifetime favorites list; 4=very good read; 3=OK, satisfactory; 2=didn’t like it for several reasons; 1=DNF, not recommended. If you decide to use the 5 star system, I would encourage you to spend some time reflecting on the categories and developing what the stars mean to you and then apply it consistently. I will warn you that it is rather disconcerting to see that someone has awarded 1 star to your 5 star read!

Other Considerations

The Hook: It’s always good writing technique to begin your review with a hook. Three ideas for frequently used hooks: create a question (based on a theme or conflict from the story), consider a bold statement (a fact from the story), or find a quote (from your notes!).

Genre: You want to mention the genre in your review. If you’re not sure, check sites like Amazon (looking to see where it’s been shelved is helpful). Keep the genre in mind when writing your review. Does the story accomplish what the genre typically  sets out to do? I try not to rate the story down for standards I would apply to another genre. For example, a YA selection is likely to include teenage angst and/or instalove, so I take that into consideration even though I might not have enjoyed it. Chic Lit is going to be light, predictable, and perhaps filled with stereotypes. Memoirs are going to be focused on self. Science fiction might need a suspension of disbelief. Romance will include an HEA and might have overused or predictable tropes. I need to remind myself frequently to keep the genre in mind. Let the reader know if the book is a genre that you don’t typically read so that your comments are taken in context. Others that prefer that genre might really enjoy the read.

Triggers: It’s always appropriate and considerate of readers to let them know about possible trigger warnings in a way that allows them to make their own reading decision (offensive language, steamy romance, graphic violence, sensitive subjects, etc.). Often, if I feel a need to include a trigger warning, I will place it as a simple *starred note at the end of my review. Here’s an example.

Be Specific: Do not say “I liked it.” Include specific examples of what you liked (using ideas from your notes). When we were in school, we learned Point + Example for expository writing. This is a good model for writing a review, too.

Tone: Is it suspenseful? Thrilling? Melancholy? Reflective? Humorous? Pedantic? Agenda driven? Heartfelt? Informative? Atmospheric? Romantic? These are examples of descriptive words you can add into your review that gives readers more insight into what to expect from the reading experience.

Summaries/Spoilers: Although it’s common to begin a review with a brief summary, it’s not absolutely necessary (official summaries are readily available on Amazon or Goodreads). I like to start a review with a general summary (in my own words) because it provides context for the remainder of my review. Be careful not to reveal spoilers. Sometimes, I refer to the synopsis on the back cover when writing my summary, but I find that it can also include spoilers. It’s forgivable to reveal small inconsequential spoilers, but please avoid spoiling the main resolution or final outcome. If you know your review will include spoilers, you can warn readers at the beginning that the review includes spoilers (Goodreads has a spoiler alert function as part of writing a review).

Author’s Note: I hope you always read the author’s note (if provided). It can greatly enhance your reading experience and provide an important perspective. I remember when I read We Were the Lucky Ones , I was struck by the author’s note that the story was really her family history, and it made the story even more meaningful for me and I was sure to include that information in my review.

Extra Resources: Sometimes authors will include extra resources like maps, illustrations, links, photos (especially if it’s a fictionalized biography). Specifics like this might be nice to mention in a review. It’s also interesting and helpful to include links to outside sources in your review if available. For example, I recently reviewed a fictionalized biography about Dorothea Lange and I included three links to YouTube video clips about her life.

Length: Reviews can be short or more detailed. For a blog post, I will write a longer review than what I write for Goodreads. You can pick one of the above elements as your focus or select a few elements. Sometimes it helps to develop a template (e.g. one sentence summary+a sentence about characters or plot or theme+a sentence about what you enjoyed most about the story+a sentence about recommending the read).

Proofread: I always read my review several times to proof for spelling, punctuation, word usage, verb tense agreement (I like to write book reviews in present tense), sentence structure, clarity,  clear communication of ideas, etc. I also consider if there is a kinder way to say something if I’m being critical.

Do I Need to Write a Review? First, writing a review is a perfect way to support an author and authors greatly appreciate reviews. If you tag them on Instagram, many of them will respond with a “like” or a comment. Out of consideration, I only tag authors when I write very positive reviews. ( ***Updated to add that I have stopped tagging authors….but I always hashtag the title….that way if the author wants to find your review, she or he can find it. ) If you start writing reviews, keep in mind that you are not required to write a review for every book you read! Sometimes I simply give it a Star rating on Goodreads and leave it at that with no explanation. Or if it’s a book that I really dislike, I will shelve it as a DNF on Goodreads with no review or star rating. If I can’t say one good thing about the book, I usually won’t write a review. Although if I do review a book I dislike, I’ll start off with a statement of what I appreciate about the book and then add statements about what “I wish…” would have been different. For an example of one of the most negative reviews I’ve written read here. For an example of a recent book I felt meh about read here. If I can’t give a book a 4 or 5 star rating, I usually won’t feature it on the blog. Occasionally, a 3.5 will be featured. When you see a book review on this blog, I want you to be able to trust that I’m sincerely and wholeheartedly recommending it (even though you may end up with a different opinion).

Criticism: Your reviews are public so be prepared for a variety of responses. Most commenters are kind and will make comments like “I enjoyed it.” Very rarely you might receive a negative comment such as “I do not agree at all.” If I disagree with a reviewer, I usually do not write a comment. If I comment, I relate it to something positive she/he said in their review. (practice “eye roll and scroll” and “let it be” as the kind response)

Let’s Discuss!

I hope this gives you some ideas and encouragement for writing reviews if you have specific questions, i’d be happy to address them in comments., *tip: start in goodreads with giving a star rating and writing a one sentence review, which of these elements is easiest or most difficult for you to address in a review, if you’ve never written a review, i hope this information is an encouragement for you., if you’re an experienced reviewer, what tips or ideas can you add, #writeareviewandsupportanauthor, shares are appreciated:, 43 comments.

I do book reviews. I learned from your post. I like to write a short summary also. It does show you read the book.

Thanks for your feedback! I think if I don’t provide a summary that the reader is inconvenienced by taking another step to search it out. I look forward to following your reviews!

Reblogged this on The Book Decoder and commented: Carol’s post on How I Write a Fiction Book Review is a post that every book blogger must read. She has made some excellent points here so have a look at it.

Thank you for your kind words and for sharing my post!

You’re most welcome, Carol. 🙂

Book reviews were never something I gave much thought to until I began writing them myself and began to realize how much goes into a quality review. This was interesting and very useful, thank you for sharing!

You’re welcome! Thanks for your comments! You’re right about the effort required. Your reviews are exceptional and I enjoy them so much …..and I recognize and appreciate the effort!

Fantastic post! Even though I’ve been book blogging for a few years, it’s so helpful to get tips on how to write better reviews.

Ahhhh! Thank you! I’m always working towards improving! Some things I’ve learned in the school of hard knocks! Once I wrote that a memoir was self absorbed and a reviewer called me on it and said “What did you expect, it’s a memoir!) oops! Thanks for commenting!

I’d love to try writing a book review! Great tips #MixItUp

Thanks for stopping in and good luck on your first review!

This is an extremely helpful and clear guide! I think that writing reviews can really further a connection between a reader and a book, though it can seem like a daunting task at first. This post really helps to navigate! Thank you for sharing.

Thank you so much for your kind words and for stopping in and commenting!

Lots of wonderful and helpful ideas, Carol! ♥️

Thank you Jennifer! 😍

Mind blowing

Please read my first post

Interesting food for thought, I feel like I tend to forget some of these…

I can commiserate …… after I write a review I often think “I forgot to mention…..!” Thanks for commenting!

[…] Hall Papertea and Bookflowers – My Love for Literature & Languages Reading Ladies – How I Write a Fiction Book Review What’s Nonfiction – 12 Upcoming Nonfiction Titles in 2019 Fictionophile – Twitter […]

Thank you so much! 🙌

Gosh, you’re thorough! I have to say I envy the authors whose books you pick up.

Thanks for your kind and encouraging comments!

As the author of over 500 fiction book reviews I believe you have made some very good points. ♥

Thank you so much for your kind words! 🙌500+ Wow! I’m thrilled to know you as a mentor!

[…] never written reviews, you can begin simply by writing one sentence about why you liked the book. I have a post on How I Write A Fiction Review here for when you’re feeling more adventurous! I spent some time reading a variety of reviews […]

I’m so glad I found your post! Incredibly helpful, thanks so much for sharing!

I’m happy to hear you find it helpful! Thanks for stopping by and commenting Grace! I hope to see you again!

You definitely will!

Thank you, Carol. I appreciate your advice, as I am writing my first review. Bookmarked in Open First.

It gets easier with practice! Start with a simple template 👍 By the way…my aunt’s middle name is Ardelle and I don’t hear it often!

Give my regards to your aunt! I only know of one other, and I’m named after her. She is 98!

Thank you for sharing the great post.

Thank you for your kind feedback! 🙌

[…] How I Write a Fiction Book Review; 10 Elements of a 5 Star Read; Do I Write Honest […]

[…] Authors depend on reviews, and I like to write as many reviews as possible (even if it’s just to add a star rating on Goodreads). However, the discipline of writing the review before beginning my next book is an ongoing challenge and is one of my most unrelenting bookworm problems. It doesn’t take long to get behind in writing reviews! Who can relate? I want to add here that your review doesn’t need to be long. Authors value one-sentence reviews as highly as full paragraph(s) reviews. You might be interested in this post I wrote about writing a review. […]

[…] Writing a review while the reading experience is fresh in my mind is always my goal….but life. In a perfect world, I’m taking notes as a read and writing an immediate review (even though it might be published months later). It’s amazing how many impressions and reactions fade quickly. Do you write reviews? […]

[…] Posts: How I Write a Fiction Review, 6 Tips For Writing Book […]

I’m sorry, I laughed at the anecdote about your grandson 😀 I also keep notes as I read a book for reviews, and I can just imagine the look on your face when that happened. I’ve found that using colour coding in the kindle app helps me a lot, especially as a chronically ill reviewer, as it saves me time and energy.

Great post, thanks for sharing!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Heather! Yes, I love highlighting in my kindle! Happy spring reading and reviewing!

I have been meaning to start writing book reviews for a while now, but I would hesitate due to a lack of experience in the field and the fear of offending anyone. Your post has cleared some doubts on how and where to start reviewing. Thank you for your extensive yet easy to understand guide.

Awww! Thanks so much for your kind words! I’m happy it was helpful!

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Williams grew up in Helena, Ala., a small town, but also a small world. And the world of publishing didn’t help much — he devoured the “Twilight,” “Harry Potter” and “Hunger Games” series but says, “I connected to the characters because it’s still a human experience, but I didn’t feel seen by those stories. And if somebody that looked like me was there, they were relegated to the side or killed to help propel the main white character’s story forward. Eventually, I fell out of love with reading.”

While attending a small Christian university in Tennessee, Williams double majored in writing and theater, but “there weren’t a lot of opportunities for people like me there — I was a 6-foot 3-inch, 250-pound Black kid and the only role I got was as a slave in ‘Big River.’”

Frustrated, he dropped out and returned home. But working at a Taco Bell drive-thru left him lost and depressed. Williams wanted to write plays or screenplays with strong Black roles, but there were no classes or other guidance at home. He knew he couldn’t afford a school like UCLA, so he looked up the syllabus for a writing class, bought the books and taught himself.

“I wrote my first pilot script, and people say to become a TV writer, you have to move to L.A.,” he recalls. On May 9, 2015, he was stuck at Taco Bell, dealing with rude customers, when his paycheck landed via direct deposit. “I had never been on a plane before but I looked up how to buy a plane ticket and bought one for $181, one-way, on Southwest. I packed up three suitcases and a dream and just moved to L.A.”

On the one hand, Williams felt tremendous freedom. On the other hand, there was culture shock, and he was quickly in over his head. “I got a job at Universal, thought, ‘Ooh, I’m going to be working on a movie set,’ but it was the theme park, and I was taking out trash,” he says with a wry chuckle. “My dream was right there, but it was a million miles away.”

He was naïve enough to think that he could still get a job as a TV writer.

“I thought it was kind of like applying to Taco Bell — you send in your stuff and then you just get hired,” he says. “I’ve definitely been humbled.”

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Still, lonely and frustrated, he plugged away, writing, submitting scripts to contests, working for Lyft and Uber to fund short films and produce his own plays.

“I couldn’t get an agent or anyone to look at my scripts, but I was very hungry and kept hustling,” he says, even when he was without a home, sleeping in the same car he was driving around in all day. “I was doing it to pay for my films and plays.”

At one point, he wrote and produced a 25-minute pilot of “Blood at the Root,” hoping to make it into a TV series. While he says he got a strong response on social media, Hollywood once again paid no heed.

Although he had been passionate about writing plays with roles for young Black men, “Blood” struck a different chord for him, bringing him back to his teen years when he yearned for a fantasy story in which he could see himself. That feeling was especially acute in 2020 after George Floyd was murdered, prompting marches and protests across America.

“Now, I had the fire back in me,” he recalls. So he went to the Barnes & Noble in Burbank and asked the clerk for a YA fantasy book with a Black boy lead but without racial trauma or police brutality — one that could provide escape for readers. The clerk brought him to the YA section and together they searched. “And she looked at me and I looked at her and she said, ‘Oh, we really don’t have anything.’”

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That sparked a “righteous rage” in Williams, and he locked himself in his apartment for 12 days to crank out the first draft. “The main character, Malik, wouldn’t leave me alone,” he says, “and I saw my book cover in my dreams.”

“Blood” tells the story of Malik, a 17-year-old who has been in foster care for a decade since his mom’s death. He was 7 when his mother was attacked, and he used magic he didn’t know he possessed, unsuccessfully, to try to save her. Malik later harnesses his powers to rescue his foster brother Taye from an abusive situation. They run away together. (Malik’s experiences and language skew toward the older end of a YA audience, while wide-eyed Taye, at 12, provides a more innocent character.) Malik meets a grandmother he didn’t know he had, and she uses her clout to enroll him at Caiman University, an HBCU for kids with magic — essentially a Black collegiate version of Hogwarts.

“This is a coming-of-age story,” Williams says, adding that he stuck to his plan to not play up racial trauma or police brutality. Instead, you’ll find Malik hugging Taye and expressing his love. “We don’t really get to see young Black boys be tender with each other, and it’s so beautiful because Malik never received that type of tenderness when he was a child. It’s something I’m just learning now in my 30s.”

Originally, Williams planned to self-publish but was persuaded to seek a bigger audience. After plenty of rejections, he found an agent. After another round of “nos,” on Jan. 19, 2023 (he remembers each important date), while he was driving for Lyft, he got the call from his agent that they had landed a publishing deal.

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“The main theme of the book is that the magic of resilience is in the blood, and I had that magic inside of me,” Willams says, adding that he had to come to L.A. to find it. “I wouldn’t have made it back home. I was so depressed. It even came to a point where I didn’t want to exist anymore because I wasn’t feeding myself artistically or creatively.”

Before he signed the contract, Williams had one demand. “My one non-negotiable was that there be a Black boy on the cover,” Williams says. “I want young Black boys in Alabama, Mississippi or Kentucky to walk into that bookstore and see that cover and say, ‘Yo, that kid looks like me.’”

They’re not going to be the only ones excited to see it on a shelf. “I’m going back to that Barnes & Noble in Burbank,” he says. “I took a picture of myself in the bookstore that day but I was depressed and forcing myself to smile. Now I’m going back there to take a picture of myself with my book.”

More to Read

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Lesley Ann McDaniel

Real Life~Pure Fiction

How to Write a Nonfiction Book Review

May 13, 2013

Do you love reading nonfiction books? Why not try your hand at reviewing them. 

What is a nonfiction book review?

A book review is a critical evaluation of a book. It isn’t just a summary, but gives commentary that will be uniquely yours as the writer of the review. The difference between a review of fiction versus nonfiction is that with the latter, the reviewer will evaluate the piece not so much on its entertainment value as on whether it fulfills its promise to solve a particular problem or deliver certain information.

Why write book reviews?

Reviews help books get noticed and gain credibility. Writers want to receive reviews to show readers that their book is widely-read and well-received.

Where are reviews posted?

These days, the answer is ‘lots of places.’ Many reviewers post book reviews on their own blogs. You can also post reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, library websites, or submit them to other people’s review blogs. If you really want to get serious, there are a lot of literary journals that accept freelance reviews.

How long  should a review be?

That will depend largely on where you are planning to submit your review. Check for guidelines, and assume that you will write anywhere from 100 to 1500 words. Be succinct, but give enough to serve the purpose of the review.

Points to Consider:

●What if you really don’t like the book? Always write your reviews with integrity. If you honestly don’t like a book, write your review as if you are in a critique session with the author. Use positive words and avoid sarcasm.

●Take time to read reviews written by other readers, but keep in mind that many of them are not trained reviewers.

●Review the book that has been written, not the book you think the author  should  have written.  It isn’t fair to criticize an author for failing to achieve something he or she never intended to achieve.

Nonfiction Book Review Template:

Opening statement:  Include title and author.

What does the book promise to deliver to the reader? Another way to look at it is, what problem does this book promise to solve?

Does it accomplish what it sets out to accomplish?

If so, how?

If not, what could the author have done differently?

What makes this author uniquely qualified to write on this topic?

What is the tone of the book? Is it humorous and easy to relate to, or is it more dry and academic?

Overall impression:  This is where you give your personal take on the book.

Suggested points to include:

Was the book written in a way that you as a reader could easily relate to?

What was your favorite part of the book?

Do you have a least favorite part of the book?

If you could change something, what would it be?

Are there photos or illustrations? If so, are they effective in enhancing the book’s message?

Would you recommend this book?

What type of reader would enjoy this book?

There are so many wonderful nonfiction books out there. Have a great time reading and reviewing!

Have you written any nonfiction book reviews?

If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy How to Write a Fiction Book Review .  

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May 20, 2013 at 1:19 pm

Thanks for some more helpful tips on writing book reviews Lesley.

October 16, 2020 at 12:01 pm

I am writing a review for a friend of my son who has a book on how to begin a blog. I thought the reminder you offered about illustrations was something I did not think about. The obvious alludes us sometimes.

December 29, 2014 at 12:25 pm

Very helpful, Lesly. I printed this out! Amy

December 30, 2014 at 10:27 am

Amy, I’m so glad you found the post helpful. Reviews are so important to the success of a book.

September 26, 2020 at 9:31 am

I am writing creative nonfiction book, how do I get contacts for reviewers of my book?

September 26, 2020 at 10:46 am

There are lots of ways to find reviewers. I’m not an expert on that, but if you google “how to get reviewers for your book,” you should find lots of ideas.

June 16, 2020 at 6:03 am

Thanks so much, Lesley for providing this information.!

June 16, 2020 at 7:13 am

My pleasure, Vicki. I’m glad you found it useful.

October 9, 2020 at 10:46 am

Lesley Thank you for a concise yet thorough piece on book reviews. I learned much. Best to you and yours.

October 9, 2020 at 10:56 am

I’m glad it was helpful for you, Jim.

November 8, 2020 at 9:43 am

This was really helpful. I’ve never done a non-fiction book review before, so I learnt a lot from this. Thank you!

November 8, 2020 at 11:34 am

I’m so glad it was helpful.

November 25, 2020 at 9:23 am

I’m writing a nonfiction book review for a class project. How do i make the review interesting and engaging?

November 25, 2020 at 9:48 am

What a fun class project! My best advice is to read examples of nonfiction reviews and pick out the ones that are interesting to you. What is it about those reviews that makes them stand out? Also, let your own voice and style shine through in your writing. Hope you get an A+!

May 10, 2022 at 11:34 pm

I read a lot of non fiction books and now have decided to start documenting my reviews..

Do you recommend I set up my own blog. I would prefer to do it on a platform that is popular.. That even the authors might pay a visit.

But I also want to include a summary of key points in the book. This way I can go back to the summary ant remind myself what the book was about

June 24, 2022 at 5:33 pm

I think setting up your own blog is a fantastic idea. Best to you!

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Peacock’s ‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’ Is a Gruesome and Grueling Holocaust-Set Love Story: TV Review

By Amber Dowling

Amber Dowling

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Specific images of the Holocaust have endlessly punctuated the film and TV landscape: The barbed wire of a concentration camp. Naked bodies rendered to skin and bone, tossed in discarded piles. Gleeful abuse and random killings by evil Nazis. Hollywood has repeatedly ingrained that imagery when presenting this horrific time in history, so to continue conjuring it adds to the collective trauma of an entire people.

Yet all these displays and more are the Sky Studios and Peacock co-production “ The Tattooist of Auschwitz .” That makes it a challenging show to sit through, let alone binge six episodes of, when the event series drops on Peacock on May 2.

Popular on Variety

The book, and now the show, tells Lali’s story from his arrival at the camp in 1942 to his escape in 1945. While there, he met a woman named Gita Furman while tattooing an identification number into her flesh. It was love at first sight, and the pair found ways to communicate and meet while at the camp. Eventually, after many close calls and gruesome encounters, Furman also escaped. The two reunited, married, moved to Australia and had a son. 

The gist of the story happened in real life, but the book was published as fiction. Still, historians and scholars questioned the details, claiming the book contains misrepresentations and errors. Some of the big ones were the description of the camp and its layout, the train route characters took, and the number Sokolov tattooed onto his eventual wife’s arm. For her part, Morris maintains she wrote a work of fiction and told Sokolov’s version of events, not the version of events that happened.

Even with the best intentions of showing the perseverance of the human spirit and how love finds a way, these were highly upsetting events that led to massive generational trauma. It’s essential to know the history and hear the stories, but in recreating those events for a viewing audience, you need to figure out what you’re adding to the landscape that is helpful and not harmful. Over six episodes, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” does both.

Director and co-executive producer Tali Shalom-Ezer and the rest of the crew attempted to address the book’s criticisms as carefully as possible, hiring consultants and ensuring everyone had access to counseling. They also changed Gita’s number from 34902 (what Lali remembered in the book) to 4562, which Gita confirmed before her death. Story-wise, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” acknowledges this is a retelling by having an aged Lali (Harvey Keitel) recount his experiences to a first-time author named Heather (Melanie Lynskey).

Through that retelling and flashbacks, viewers meet 25-year-old Lali, played by Jonah Hauer-King. It’s a heavy lift for the actor, whose most recognizable role to-date is Prince Eric in the live-action “The Little Mermaid.” Lali is a complex and haunted character, and Hauer-King throws himself into the role with aplomb. This is a man who ultimately does what it takes to survive, and he internalizes the pain that his involvement and complicity causes to heartbreaking effect.

As a tattooist, Lali inks identification numbers onto prisoners’ arms to take advantage of the better sleeping arrangements and more food. But he apologizes with each prick of the needle and later shares those extra rations with fellow prisoners. In small ways, he gives back, trying to balance the scales.

It’s fathomable that Lali’s position would grant him certain advantages, but the general tolerance he receives is inconsistent compared to the treatment of those around him. He’s able to fight back and question guards without significant repercussions, all while those same guards are quick to shoot others in the head for stumbling or using the latrine at night. 

Lali’s ability to maneuver around the camp also separates him from others. He evades guards and bribes others to visit the eternal optimist Gita (played by Anna Próchniak with a memorable spark in her eye). In one scene, Lali interacts at Auschwitz with Dr. Schumann, selling a piece of his soul in exchange for an antibacterial that will save Gita’s life. (This scene in the book drew criticism: Gita was given penicillin, which wasn’t widely available at the time. The series has corrected this anachronism.)

What’s harder to watch are the random acts of violence shown in full detail: Men picked off in front of a firing squad. A woman shot in the head after begging for help. Lali called in to identify two bodies, and the guards joking he was the only Jew to ever walk out of the chamber alive. Sick, naked women shoved outside to freeze overnight and free up the beds. “The Tattooist of Auschwitz”is full of such unnecessarily harrowing moments.

They’re enough to make the present-day narrative breaks a needed reprieve. That mental load is mirrored onscreen as Heather grapples with secondary trauma from what she’s learning. Meanwhile, the series also uses those moments to address historical inaccuracies and Lali’s ability to remember correctly. Lali is haunted by the ghosts of his past and frequently interacts with them, sometimes in Heather’s presence. There are also hints that he may sometimes be embellishing to forgive himself for participating in it all.

The idea is that the truth lies somewhere between recollection and reality, and one man’s experience isn’t necessarily universal. Knowing and sharing his story is important, but with the appropriate context. At the end of the day, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” puts the dichotomy of the human spirit on full display, showing the possibility of love and the unimaginable monstrosity that hatred can bring.

Or at least it does if you can watch it all the way through.

All six episodes of “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” are now streaming on Peacock.  Editor’s note: The original version of this review mischaracterized the scene in which Lali makes a deal with the Auschwitz doctor in exchange for medicine for Gita.

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25 Great Writers and Thinkers Weigh In on Books That Matter

To celebrate the Book Review’s 125th anniversary, we’re dipping into the archives to revisit our most thrilling, memorable and thought-provoking coverage.

Damon Winter/The New York Times (Toni Morrison); Henry Clarke/Conde Nast, via Getty Images (Joan Didion); Ulf Andersen/Getty Images (Patricia Highsmith); Andre D. Wagner for The New York Times (Patti Smith); Oliver Morris/Getty Images (Kurt Vonnegut); Ulf Andersen/Getty Images (James Baldwin) Credit...

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By Tina Jordan ,  Noor Qasim and John Williams

• Published Jan. 25, 2021 Updated Oct. 26, 2021

On Oct. 10, 1896, after years of robust literary coverage at The New York Times, the paper published the first issue of the Book Review.

In the 125 years since, that coverage has broadened and deepened. The Book Review has become a lens through which to view not just literature but the world at large, with scholars and thinkers weighing in on all of the people and issues and subjects covered in books on philosophy, art, science, economics, history and more.

In many ways, the Book Review’s history is that of American letters, and we’ll be using our 125th anniversary this year to celebrate and examine that history over the coming months. In essays, photo stories, timelines and other formats, we’ll highlight the books and authors that made it all possible.

Because, really, writers are at the heart of everything we do. Pairing a book with the right reviewer is a challenge, one that we relish. And we’ve been fortunate to feature the writing of so many illustrious figures in our pages — novelists, musicians, presidents, Nobel winners, CEOs, poets, playwrights — all offering their insights with wit and flair. Here are 25 of them.

H.G. Wells | Vladimir Nabokov | Tennessee Williams | Patricia Highsmith | Shirley Jackson | Eudora Welty | Langston Hughes | Dorothy Parker | John F. Kennedy | Nora Ephron | Toni Morrison | John Kenneth Galbraith | Nikki Giovanni | James Baldwin | Kurt Vonnegut Jr. | Joan Didion | Derek Walcott | Margaret Atwood | Ursula K. Le Guin | Stephen King | Jhumpa Lahiri | Mario Vargas Llosa | Colson Whitehead | Patti Smith | Bill Gates

Tell us: Who are the writers who have inspired you?

On Morley Roberts’s “The Private Life of Henry Maitland”

H.G. Wells, the author of science fiction classics like “The Time Machine” and “The War of the Worlds,” admitted that he had a personal interest in this work about his fellow author George Gissing (who was oddly given the pseudonym Henry Maitland in a book that was clearly about him). “In so far that I have on several occasions encouraged Mr. Roberts to write it,” Wells wrote, “I feel myself a little involved in the responsibility for it.” He must have left Roberts feeling a bit less than grateful for the encouragement when he judged: “It is no use pretending that Mr. Roberts’s book is not downright bad, careless in statement, squalid in effect, poor as criticism, weakly planned and entirely without any literary distinction.”

Vladimir Nabokov

On jean-paul sartre’s “nausea”.

Nabokov was not yet a household name in the United States (that would come about a decade later, with the publication here of “Lolita”) when he reviewed Sartre’s philosophical novel about Antoine Roquentin, a French historian troubled by the very fact of existence. “Sartre’s name, I understand, is associated with a fashionable brand of cafe philosophy, and since for every so-called ‘existentialist’ one finds quite a few ‘suctorialists’ (if I may coin a polite term), this made-in-England translation of Sartre’s first novel, ‘La Nausée,’ should enjoy some success.”

Tennessee Williams

On paul bowles’s “the sheltering sky”.

Williams, who had won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” reviewed this debut novel by Bowles, which went on to be acclaimed as one of the best of the 20th century. The story mercilessly follows a young married couple from New York adrift in the North African desert. “I suspect that a good many people will read this book,” Williams wrote, “without once suspecting that it contains a mirror of what is most terrifying and cryptic within the Sahara of moral nihilism, into which the race of man now seems to be wandering blindly.”

Patricia Highsmith

On r. frison-roche’s “first on the rope”.

When she wrote this brief review, Patricia Highsmith was the author of one novel, “Strangers on a Train.” She would go on to worldwide fame for that and other thrillers, including the ones that feature Tom Ripley. The author she reviewed, the French mountaineer R. Frison-Roche, is now relatively obscure. “This is exactly the kind of novel one would expect a Chamonix guide to write — blunt in style and treatment, unevenly paced, about mountain climbing, of course, and authentic down to the last piton, the last breathtaking moment before the summit.” More tantalizingly, Highsmith added: “There is a delightful and unexpected chapter about a cow battle that is fully as dramatic as the mountain scaling.”

Shirley Jackson

On red smith’s “out of the red”.

One of the stranger matchups of big names in our archives is this review of the sports columnist Red Smith’s work by Shirley Jackson, the author of “The Lottery” and “The Haunting of Hill House.” Jackson wrote about her enjoyment of watching sports on TV. Though she had “limited knowledge” of sportswriters at the time, Smith’s book won her over. “There are some otherwise modest, sensitive females — I am among them — who are become brazen snatchers of the sports page from the morning paper, and only a book like Red Smith’s shows me what I have been missing by not getting into this field sooner. Reading ‘Out of the Red’ has been, actually, an educational experience unlike almost anything I have known since first looking into Chapman’s Homer.”

Eudora Welty

On e.b. white’s “charlotte’s web”.

Eudora Welty’s review of this timeless tale is a sheer delight, starting from its headline (“Life in the Barn Was Very Good”) and its first sentence (“E.B. White has written his book for children, which is nice for us older ones as it calls for big type”). Unlike contemporary reviews that get future classics “wrong,” Welty — who worked briefly as an editor at the Book Review during World War II — saw this accomplishment clear in the moment. “What the book is about is friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time,” she wrote. “As a piece of work it is just about perfect, and just about magical in the way it is done.”

Langston Hughes

On james baldwin’s “notes of a native son”.

In this review, Langston Hughes, an eminent literary figure and chronicler of the Black experience in the United States, took the measure of this first collection of essays by Baldwin. He was impressed: “He uses words as the sea uses waves, to flow and beat, advance and retreat, rise and take a bow in disappearing.” He suggested that Baldwin still had room to grow, but that “America and the world might well have a major contemporary commentator.”

Dorothy Parker

On s.j. perelman’s “the road to miltown”.

To no one’s surprise, Dorothy Parker, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, was funny in this review of work by her fellow humor writer. She begins it: “It is a strange force that compels a writer to be a humorist. It is a strange force, if you care to go back farther, that compels anyone to be a writer at all, but this is neither the time nor the place to bring up that matter. The writer’s way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning out ferryboats?” But while Parker was part of a “vicious circle,” and known for her piercing barbs, she happily praised Perelman, who, she wrote, “stands alone” in his field.

John F. Kennedy

On arthur larson’s “what we are for”.

John F. Kennedy was the author of three books and still a Massachusetts senator when he reviewed this book, an attempt to define for the world what America believed in beyond simply opposition to the Soviet Union and Communism. Larson was a Republican who had worked with labor issues and had been a top speechwriter for President Dwight D. Eisenhower. “Though the book’s style is somewhat discursive and here and there perhaps a trifle condescending,” Kennedy wrote, “Mr. Larson does succeed very well in portraying the dangers of analyzing American society in terms of class distinctions or rigid economic interests. Though it is not a new theme, he is very successful in reminding us of the ‘kaleidoscope of apparently inexplicable mixtures of political coloration across the landscape.’”

Nora Ephron

On rex reed’s “do you sleep in the nude”.

In this review, the filmmaker, director and writer Nora Ephron marveled at how the young Reed got his show-business subjects to say the things they said to him. Those subjects included Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty and Lucille Ball. Ephron’s opening is a classic: “Rex Reed is a saucy, snoopy, bitchy man who sees with sharp eyes and writes with a mean pen and succeeds in making voyeurs of us all. If any of this sounds like I don’t like Rex Reed, let me correct that impression. I love Rex Reed.”

Toni Morrison

On toni cade bambara’s “tales and stories for black folks”.

Toni Morrison had just one novel under her belt when this review was published in 1971. One of the joys in our archives is to see — in retrospect — the understated descriptions of those who wrote for us. Morrison’s read: “Toni Morrison, an editor in a New York publishing house, is the author of ‘The Bluest Eye.’” “It is a most remarkable collection,” she wrote of Bambara’s work. “Joy aches and pain chuckles in these pages, and the entire book leaves you with the impression of silk — which is so nice because it was made by a living thing that had something on its mind, its survival no doubt.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

On chester bowles’s “my years in public life”.

“Truth, not unconvincing humility, is the grandest virtue and accordingly I may observe that I am better qualified than any man alive to review a book on the public life of Chester Bowles.” The iconoclastic economist and prolific author John Kenneth Galbraith began his review this way because he and Bowles had held some of the same positions of power and had worked together on presidential campaigns. In so doing, they had become friends, which, Galbraith wrote, “is a disadvantage only if the book in question is bad. Only then do you have to consider whether the author should get the truth from you or someone else. This, fortunately, is an extremely good book.”

Nikki Giovanni

On virginia hamilton’s “m.c. higgins, the great”.

The acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni has written verse for children as well as adults, so she was the ideal reviewer for this novel, which was written for young readers but dealt with difficult, mature subjects. Hamilton’s novel, which won a Newbery Medal and a National Book Award, concerns a young boy hoping to save a local mountain from the ravages of strip mining. “‘M.C. Higgins, the Great’ is not an adorable book, not a lived‐happily‐ever‐after kind of story. It is warm, humane and hopeful and does what every book should do — creates characters with whom we can identify and for whom we care. … We’re glad Miss Hamilton is a writer. It makes the world just a little bit richer and our lives just a little bit warmer.”

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

On tom wicker’s “a time to die”.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. reviewed this account of the 1971 uprising at Attica prison written by Tom Wicker, who was a reporter, columnist and editor for The Times. The book mixed its reportage about the dramatic events at the prison with passages of autobiography. Leave it to Vonnegut to come up with a memorable comparison for what resulted: “The book is designed like a shish kebab, with novelistic scenes from ‘Wicker’s’ childhood and youth alternating with hard‐edged episodes from Attica, and with Tom Wicker himself as the skewer. The materials placed shoulder‐to‐shoulder on the skewer are as unlike as ripe peaches and hand grenades.”

James Baldwin

On alex haley’s “roots”.

The Book Review has always taken pride in finding the right reviewers for the right books, and that is only heightened when a book is a true event, like Alex Haley’s “Roots,” which spent months at No. 1 on The Times’s best-seller list. The great James Baldwin’s piece is something still worth reading and considering today. He wrote of “Roots”: “It suggests with great power, how each of us, however unconsciously, can’t but be the vehicle of the history which has produced us. Well, we can perish in this vehicle, children, or we can move on up the road.”

Joan Didion

On norman mailer’s “the executioner’s song”.

Talk about two heavyweights. On the cover of our Oct. 7, 1979, issue, Didion reviewed Mailer’s epic, genre-defying novel about the infamous Gary Gilmore, who murdered two people in Utah and later demanded that the state follow through with his execution for the crime. Much more than just the story of a crime and a very public death penalty debate, Mailer’s book captured the desperate side of life in the American West. “I think no one but Mailer could have dared this book,” Didion wrote. “The authentic Western voice, the voice heard in ‘The Executioner’s Song,’ is one heard often in life but only rarely in literature, the reason being that to truly know the West is to lack all will to write it down.”

Derek Walcott

On “the glorious flight: across the channel with louis blériot, july 25, 1909” by alice and martin provensen.

The poet Derek Walcott, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, reviewed this book about the French aviator Louis Blériot and his flight across the English Channel, 18 years before Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic. “Gaiety and true bravery are close in legend, and this spaciously crafted and modestly presented book is very much in the spirit of its subject,” Walcott wrote. “Fact is turned into magic, very quietly. The return to innocence requires gay and brave strides; the light on the way there is direct, the flight natural and simple, and ‘The Glorious Flight’ has made it.”

Margaret Atwood

On toni morrison’s “beloved”.

Sometimes a book that will become an undisputed classic is met at the moment of its publication with appropriate awe. Such was the case with Morrison’s “Beloved,” a remarkable ghost story set in the years after the Civil War. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and in 2006 was named the best novel of the previous 25 years by a group of prominent writers, critics and editors polled by the Book Review. In her original review of the book in 1987, Margaret Atwood — the author of her own classics, like “The Handmaid’s Tale” — wrote: “‘Beloved’ is Toni Morrison’s fifth novel, and another triumph. Indeed, Morrison’s versatility and technical and emotional range appear to know no bounds. If there were any doubts about her stature as a pre-eminent American novelist, of her own or any other generation, ‘Beloved’ will put them to rest. In three words or less, it’s a hair-raiser.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

On j.g. ballard’s “war fever”.

The critic Harold Bloom once said that Ursula K. Le Guin had “raised fantasy into high literature for our time.” In this review of another iconic writer of literary science fiction, Le Guin captured the scope and relevance of Ballard’s themes. “The brilliant, obsessive fictions of J.G. Ballard circle through a round of almost canonical topics of modernist literature and film: the Conradian jungle and its white folk, consumerist America and the ugly American, popular cult figures such as astronauts and film stars, T.S. Eliot’s ‘waste land’ and ‘unreal city.’ Through these and other landscapes of alienation, stock figures move in meticulous patterns toward a predictably shocking conclusion. The voltage is high, but it’s all in the mind.”

Stephen King

On thomas harris’s “hannibal”.

Dark imaginations collide in this review. (If Thomas Harris hadn’t invented Hannibal Lecter, perhaps eventually Stephen King would have?) This was Lecter’s first appearance in a novel in 11 years — and the first since the film adaptation of “The Silence of the Lambs” had made him a household name. “I don’t think many of the Danielle Steel crowd will be rushing out to buy a book in which one character is eaten from the inside out by a ravenous moray eel — but for those who like what Harris can do so brilliantly, no book report is required.”

Jhumpa Lahiri

On mohsin hamid’s “moth smoke”.

We like to keep our eyes peeled for the newest talents here at the Book Review, and here is a vintage example. About a month after this review was published, Jhumpa Lahiri would win a Pulitzer Prize for her debut collection of stories, “Interpreter of Maladies.” And here she was reviewing the debut novel by Mohsin Hamid, who was embarking on his own award-winning career. “Like Fitzgerald, Hamid writes about the slippery ties between the extremely wealthy and those who hover, and generally stumble, in money’s glare,” Lahiri wrote. “Hamid also sets the action over a single, degenerate summer, when passions run high and moral lassitude prevails. And like Fitzgerald, Hamid probes the vulgarity and violence that lurk beneath a surface of affluence and ease.”

Mario Vargas Llosa

On suzanne jill levine’s “manuel puig and the spider woman”.

The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, delivered a sweeping review of this biography of the Argentine writer Manuel Puig. In it, Vargas Llosa considered everything from the influence of the movies on Puig to what made his work so original to whether that work has the “revolutionary transcendence attributed to it by Levine and other critics.” He praised Levine’s own work: “This fascinating book is indispensable for anyone interested in Puig’s work (which Levine, the translator of several of his novels into English, knows to perfection) and in the close connection between film and literature, a defining characteristic of cultural life in the late 20th century; both are described with intelligence and an abundance of information. I found occasional errors, but these in no way diminish the virtues of a book in which rigor and readability walk arm in arm.”

Colson Whitehead

On richard powers’s “the echo maker”.

As we celebrate 125 years of the Book Review, we’ll spend time not just in the distant past but in the vibrant present. Few writers this century are as acclaimed as Colson Whitehead, the author of several novels and the winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for “The Underground Railroad” (2016). In 2019, Richard Powers joined the list of Pulitzer winners as well, for “The Overstory.” But back in 2006, when both were simply very acclaimed authors, Whitehead reviewed this novel about a man who suffers from a rare cognitive disorder after a near-fatal car accident. “Part of the joy of reading Powers over the years has been his capacity for revelation,” Whitehead wrote. “His scientific discourses point to how the world works, but the struggles of his characters … help us understand how we work.”

Patti Smith

On haruki murakami’s “colorless tsukuru tazaki and his years of pilgrimage”.

A longtime rock star and poet, Patti Smith became an award-winning memoirist with the publication of “Just Kids” in 2010. We also think she’s a fine reviewer. She brought her deep knowledge of the work of Haruki Murakami to this assessment of his 13th novel. “This is a book for both the new and experienced reader. It has a strange casualness, as if it unfolded as Murakami wrote it; at times, it seems like a prequel to a whole other narrative. The feel is uneven, the dialogue somewhat stilted, either by design or flawed in translation. Yet there are moments of epiphany gracefully expressed, especially in regard to how people affect one another.”

On Yuval Noah Harari’s “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”

Yes, we love to publish work by prominent novelists, essayists, poets, journalists, historians. But sometimes it’s a thrill to have someone weigh in who is (very, very well) known for something other than books. And who better to review a look at the 21st century than Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, who did so much to shape the world we live in? “Harari is such a stimulating writer that even when I disagreed, I wanted to keep reading and thinking. All three of his books wrestle with some version of the same question: What will give our lives meaning in the decades and centuries ahead? … It’s no criticism to say that Harari hasn’t produced a satisfying answer yet. Neither has anyone else. So I hope he turns more fully to this question in the future.”

Explore More in Books

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“Real Americans,” a new novel by Rachel Khong , follows three generations of Chinese Americans as they all fight for self-determination in their own way .

“The Chocolate War,” published 50 years ago, became one of the most challenged books in the United States. Its author, Robert Cormier, spent years fighting attempts to ban it .

Joan Didion’s distinctive prose and sharp eye were tuned to an outsider’s frequency, telling us about ourselves in essays that are almost reflexively skeptical. Here are her essential works .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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