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

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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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review of a novel example

How to Write a Book Review: Awesome Guide

review of a novel example

A book review allows students to illustrate the author's intentions of writing the piece, as well as create a criticism of the book — as a whole. In other words, form an opinion of the author's presented ideas. Check out this guide from EssayPro — book review writing service to learn how to write a book review successfully.

What Is a Book Review?

You may prosper, “what is a book review?”. Book reviews are commonly assigned students to allow them to show a clear understanding of the novel. And to check if the students have actually read the book. The essay format is highly important for your consideration, take a look at the book review format below.

Book reviews are assigned to allow students to present their own opinion regarding the author’s ideas included in the book or passage. They are a form of literary criticism that analyzes the author’s ideas, writing techniques, and quality. A book analysis is entirely opinion-based, in relevance to the book. They are good practice for those who wish to become editors, due to the fact, editing requires a lot of criticism.

Book Review Template

The book review format includes an introduction, body, and conclusion.

  • Introduction
  • Describe the book cover and title.
  • Include any subtitles at this stage.
  • Include the Author’s Name.
  • Write a brief description of the novel.
  • Briefly introduce the main points of the body in your book review.
  • Avoid mentioning any opinions at this time.
  • Use about 3 quotations from the author’s novel.
  • Summarize the quotations in your own words.
  • Mention your own point-of-view of the quotation.
  • Remember to keep every point included in its own paragraph.
  • In brief, summarize the quotations.
  • In brief, summarize the explanations.
  • Finish with a concluding sentence.
  • This can include your final opinion of the book.
  • Star-Rating (Optional).

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How to Write a Book Review: Step-By-Step

Writing a book review is something that can be done with every novel. Book reviews can apply to all novels, no matter the genre. Some genres may be harder than others. On the other hand, the book review format remains the same. Take a look at these step-by-step instructions from our professional writers to learn how to write a book review in-depth.

how to write a book review

Step 1: Planning

Create an essay outline which includes all of the main points you wish to summarise in your book analysis. Include information about the characters, details of the plot, and some other important parts of your chosen novel. Reserve a body paragraph for each point you wish to talk about.

Consider these points before writing:

  • What is the plot of the book? Understanding the plot enables you to write an effective review.
  • Is the plot gripping? Does the plot make you want to continue reading the novel? Did you enjoy the plot? Does it manage to grab a reader’s attention?
  • Are the writing techniques used by the author effective? Does the writer imply factors in-between the lines? What are they?
  • Are the characters believable? Are the characters logical? Does the book make the characters are real while reading?
  • Would you recommend the book to anyone? The most important thing: would you tell others to read this book? Is it good enough? Is it bad?
  • What could be better? Keep in mind the quotes that could have been presented better. Criticize the writer.

Step 2: Introduction

Presumably, you have chosen your book. To begin, mention the book title and author’s name. Talk about the cover of the book. Write a thesis statement regarding the fictitious story or non-fictional novel. Which briefly describes the quoted material in the book review.

Step 3: Body

Choose a specific chapter or scenario to summarise. Include about 3 quotes in the body. Create summaries of each quote in your own words. It is also encouraged to include your own point-of-view and the way you interpret the quote. It is highly important to have one quote per paragraph.

Step 4: Conclusion

Write a summary of the summarised quotations and explanations, included in the body paragraphs. After doing so, finish book analysis with a concluding sentence to show the bigger picture of the book. Think to yourself, “Is it worth reading?”, and answer the question in black and white. However, write in-between the lines. Avoid stating “I like/dislike this book.”

Step 5: Rate the Book (Optional)

After writing a book review, you may want to include a rating. Including a star-rating provides further insight into the quality of the book, to your readers. Book reviews with star-ratings can be more effective, compared to those which don’t. Though, this is entirely optional.

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Dive into literary analysis with EssayPro . Our experts can help you craft insightful book reviews that delve deep into the themes, characters, and narratives of your chosen books. Enhance your understanding and appreciation of literature with us.

book review order

Writing Tips

Here is the list of tips for the book review:

tips for book review

  • A long introduction can certainly lower one’s grade: keep the beginning short. Readers don’t like to read the long introduction for any essay style.
  • It is advisable to write book reviews about fiction: it is not a must. Though, reviewing fiction can be far more effective than writing about a piece of nonfiction
  • Avoid Comparing: avoid comparing your chosen novel with other books you have previously read. Doing so can be confusing for the reader.
  • Opinion Matters: including your own point-of-view is something that is often encouraged when writing book reviews.
  • Refer to Templates: a book review template can help a student get a clearer understanding of the required writing style.
  • Don’t be Afraid to Criticize: usually, your own opinion isn’t required for academic papers below Ph.D. level. On the other hand, for book reviews, there’s an exception.
  • Use Positivity: include a fair amount of positive comments and criticism.
  • Review The Chosen Novel: avoid making things up. Review only what is presented in the chosen book.
  • Enjoyed the book? If you loved reading the book, state it. Doing so makes your book analysis more personalized.

Writing a book review is something worth thinking about. Professors commonly assign this form of an assignment to students to enable them to express a grasp of a novel. Following the book review format is highly useful for beginners, as well as reading step-by-step instructions. Writing tips is also useful for people who are new to this essay type. If you need a book review or essay, ask our book report writing services ' write paper for me ' and we'll give you a hand asap!

We also recommend that everyone read the article about essay topics . It will help broaden your horizons in writing a book review as well as other papers.

Book Review Examples

Referring to a book review example is highly useful to those who wish to get a clearer understanding of how to review a book. Take a look at our examples written by our professional writers. Click on the button to open the book review examples and feel free to use them as a reference.

Book review

Kenneth Grahame’s ‘The Wind in the Willows’

Kenneth Grahame’s ‘The Wind in the Willows’ is a novel aimed at youngsters. The plot, itself, is not American humor, but that of Great Britain. In terms of sarcasm, and British-related jokes. The novel illustrates a fair mix of the relationships between the human-like animals, and wildlife. The narrative acts as an important milestone in post-Victorian children’s literature.

Book Review

Dr. John’s ‘Pollution’

Dr. John’s ‘Pollution’ consists of 3 major parts. The first part is all about the polluted ocean. The second being about the pollution of the sky. The third part is an in-depth study of how humans can resolve these issues. The book is a piece of non-fiction that focuses on modern-day pollution ordeals faced by both animals and humans on Planet Earth. It also focuses on climate change, being the result of the global pollution ordeal.

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How to Write a Book Review

Lindsay Kramer

Read any good books lately? Want to share your thoughts about them? A book review is a great way to shed insight and give your opinion on a book you’ve read, whether it’s nonfiction, a mystery novel, or a collection of poems.

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What is a book review?

A book review is an honest reaction to a book that generally analyzes its themes, plotline, characters, dialogue, and use of literary devices (if applicable). Through this analysis, written in the first person, a reviewer combines their opinions with insights about the book, sometimes comparing it to other books by the same author or books in the same genre.

Book reviews have a few different purposes. As an academic assignment, a book review requires students to build their analytical skills by engaging with the text and writing a coherent critique. Book reviews on blogs and in magazines often serve to tell readers what to expect from a book so they can decide whether they’re interested in reading it. This type of book review gives readers a preview of a book’s content, themes, and storyline.

How do you write a good book review?

Think of your book review as a conversation with a friend: You want to share your opinion and insights without giving everything away. Don’t spoil the book’s ending or its surprises, but do discuss how effectively you think the writing navigated its literary elements —such as plot, theme, and conflict—throughout the text.

How long is a book review?

Generally, book reviews aren’t long. In most cases, they’re between 500 and 750 words. Keep your book review concise and focus on the book’s big-picture aspects, such as its character development, pacing, reliance on tropes, and use of literary devices. Summarize the plot, then focus on analyzing the book. Mention what you did and didn’t like, and support these positions with quotations from the book. An effective book analysis is more than sharing your opinion; it’s interacting with the text and demonstrating that you’ve read it critically and formed a well-developed opinion about it.

How are book reviews structured?

Book reviews tend to follow similar layouts to other kinds of essays. An essay reviewing a book should begin with an introduction paragraph that summarizes the plot and includes the reviewer’s thesis statement. Following the introduction, a book review should have one body paragraph per point it critiques. For example, a review may have three body paragraphs, one that discusses the book’s themes, one that discusses its characters, and one that discusses the author’s use of metaphor. A book review ends with a conclusion paragraph that summarizes the points made in the body paragraphs and shares any final thoughts the reviewer has about the book. It may include a rating, like giving the book three stars out of five.

4 tips for writing a book review

1. avoid repetition.

A book review is its own piece of writing . By that, we mean your book review shouldn’t just repeat the book’s plot. It should add a new perspective about the book.

2. Be concise

Don’t ramble in your book review. Keep it focused on your analysis of the book since that’s the content your readers are looking for.

3. Support your claims and positions

Sharing your opinion is a significant part of writing a book review, but be sure to support your positions with insights from the book—as you’d support any claims you made in an academic essay with evidence from your sources.

4. Proofread

Before you upload, send, or submit your book review, proofread it. Read it with a critical eye to catch any grammatical or spelling mistakes you may have missed in a previous round of edits.

Book review outline examples

Persepolis by marjane satrapi, a powerful look at life during and following the iranian revolution.

In the introduction paragraph, the reviewer summarizes the plot of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis , briefly describes its protagonist, and provides a general statement about their thoughts on the book.

Satrapi’s color choices

In this section, the reviewer discusses the author’s choice to tell the story through black-and-white illustrations, analyzing the mood these illustrations create and the role they play in telling the story.

Hearing an adult’s story through a child’s narration

In this section, the reviewer discusses the author’s choice to tell the story through the voice of its child protagonist. They may discuss whether the author successfully captured a child’s voice and how the protagonist’s vocabulary and perspective shaped how the reader engaged with the plot.

Does Persepolis successfully tell its story?

In the conclusion paragraph, the reviewer summarizes the content of the previous body paragraphs and includes succinct statements of their thoughts about each. The reviewer then reiterates their thesis statement from the introduction and includes a few more of their thoughts about the book as a whole.

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

Good advice.

In the introduction paragraph, the reviewer summarizes the plot of Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad and the goals Kiyosaki set out to meet in writing it. This paragraph may also touch on how well known and beloved the book is and how it’s influenced many people since its initial release. This paragraph ends with a thesis statement summarizing the reviewer’s opinion on whether Rich Dad Poor Dad gives effective advice.

Who is it for?

In this section, the reviewer discusses the target audience for Rich Dad Poor Dad and their opinion on whether it effectively speaks to that audience. The reviewer may support their position by comparing it to other personal-finance books.

Does the narrative work?

Rich Dad Poor Dad is characterized by its narrative style as it explains financial concepts through a story. In this section, the reviewer may examine this narrative choice, analyzing how it affects the messages delivered and offering their own opinion on the style’s effectiveness.

How does Rich Dad Poor Dad pay off?

In the conclusion paragraph, the reviewer restates their thesis statement and summarizes the points they made in the review’s body paragraphs. They may end the review with a recommendation that the reader either read or skip Rich Dad Poor Dad .

Book review FAQs

A book review is an honest reaction to a book that generally analyzes its themes, plotline, characters, dialogue, and use of literary devices (if applicable). Book reviews are written in the first person and combine their authors’ opinions with insights about the book.

How long should a book review be?

A book review should be about 500 to 750 words.

What should a book review include?

  • Plot summary
  • Thesis statement
  • Critical analysis supported by quotations from the book
  • Reviewer’s opinion based on their critical analysis

review of a novel example

The Only Book Review Templates You'll Ever Need

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Blog – Posted on Thursday, Nov 11

The only book review templates you'll ever need.

The Only Book Review Templates You'll Ever Need

Whether you’re trying to become a book reviewer , writing a book report for school, or analyzing a book, it’s nice to follow a book review template to make sure that your thoughts are clearly presented. 

A quality template provides guidance to keep your mind sharp and your thoughts organized so that you can write the best book review possible. On Reedsy Discovery , we read and share a lot of book reviews, which helps us develop quite a clear idea what makes up a good one. With that in mind, we’ve put together some trustworthy book review templates that you can download, along with a quick run-through of all the parts that make up an outstanding review — all in this post! 

Pro-tip : But wait! How are you sure if you should become a book reviewer in the first place? If you're on the fence, or curious about your match with a book reviewing career, take our quick quiz:

Should you become a book reviewer?

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Book review templates for every type of review

With the rapid growth of the book community on Instagram, Youtube, and even TikTok, the world of book commentary has evolved far beyond your classic review. There are now many ways you can structure a book review. Some popular formats include:

  • Book reports — often done for school assignments; 
  • Commentary articles — think in-depth reviews in magazines and newspapers; 
  • Book blog reviews — short personal essays about the book; and
  • Instagram reviews — one or two-paragraph reviews captioned under a nice photo. 

But while the text in all these review styles can be organized in different ways, there are certain boxes that all good book reviews tick. So, instead of giving you various templates to use for different occasions, we’ve condensed it down to just two book review templates (one for fiction and one for nonfiction) that can guide your thoughts and help you nail just about any review. 

review of a novel example

⭐ Download our free fiction book review template  

⭐ Download our free nonfiction book review template  

All you need to do is answer the questions in the template regarding the book you’re reading and you’ve got the content of your review covered. Once that’s done, you can easily put this content into its appropriate format. 

Now, if you’re curious about what constitutes a good book review template, we’ll explain it in the following section! 

Elements of a book review template

Say you want to build your own book review template, or you want to customize our templates — here are the elements you’ll want to consider. 

We’ve divided our breakdown of the elements into two categories: the essentials and the fun additions that’ll add some color to your book reviews.

What are the three main parts of a book review?

We covered this in detail (with the help of some stellar examples) in our post on how to write a book review , but basically, these are the three crucial elements you should know: 

The summary covers the premise of the book and its main theme, so readers are able to understand what you’re referring to in the rest of your review. This means that, if a person hasn’t read the book, they can go through the summary to get a quick idea of what it’s about. (As such, there should be no spoilers!) 

The analysis is where, if it’s a fiction book, you talk more about the book, its plot, theme, and characters. If it’s nonfiction, you have to consider whether the book effectively achieves what it set out to do. 

The recommendation is where your personal opinion comes in the strongest, and you give a verdict as to who you think might enjoy this book. 

You can choose to be brief or detailed, depending on the kind of review you’re writing, but you should always aim to cover these three points. If you’re needing some inspiration, check out these 17 book review examples as seen in magazines, blogs, and review communities like Reedsy Discovery for a little variation. 

Which review community should you join?

Find out which review community is best for your style. Takes 30 seconds!

Which additional details can you include?

Once you’ve nailed down the basics, you can jazz things up a little and add some personal flavor to your book review by considering some of these elements:

  • A star-rating (the default is five stars but you can create your own scales); 
  • A bullet-point pros and cons list; 
  • Your favorite quotation from the book; 
  • Commentary on the format you read (i.e., ebook, print, or audiobook);
  • Fun facts about the book or author; 
  • Other titles you think are similar.

This is where you can really be creative and tailor your review to suit your purpose and audience. A formal review written for a magazine, for instance, will likely benefit from contextual information about the author and the book, along with some comment on how that might have affected the reading (or even writing) process.

Meanwhile, if you’re reviewing a book on social media, you might find bullet points more effective at capturing the fleeting attention of Internet users. You can also make videos, take creative pictures, or even add your own illustrations for more personal touches. The floor is yours at this point, so go ahead and take the spotlight! 

That said, we hope that our templates can provide you with a strong foundation for even your most adventurous reviews. And if you’re interested in writing editorial reviews for up-and-coming indie titles, register as a reviewer on Reedsy Discovery !

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Discovery | Reviewer | Book Review Template | 2024-01

Writing a book review?

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The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Book Reviews

What this handout is about.

This handout will help you write a book review, a report or essay that offers a critical perspective on a text. It offers a process and suggests some strategies for writing book reviews.

What is a review?

A review is a critical evaluation of a text, event, object, or phenomenon. Reviews can consider books, articles, entire genres or fields of literature, architecture, art, fashion, restaurants, policies, exhibitions, performances, and many other forms. This handout will focus on book reviews. For a similar assignment, see our handout on literature reviews .

Above all, a review makes an argument. The most important element of a review is that it is a commentary, not merely a summary. It allows you to enter into dialogue and discussion with the work’s creator and with other audiences. You can offer agreement or disagreement and identify where you find the work exemplary or deficient in its knowledge, judgments, or organization. You should clearly state your opinion of the work in question, and that statement will probably resemble other types of academic writing, with a thesis statement, supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Typically, reviews are brief. In newspapers and academic journals, they rarely exceed 1000 words, although you may encounter lengthier assignments and extended commentaries. In either case, reviews need to be succinct. While they vary in tone, subject, and style, they share some common features:

  • First, a review gives the reader a concise summary of the content. This includes a relevant description of the topic as well as its overall perspective, argument, or purpose.
  • Second, and more importantly, a review offers a critical assessment of the content. This involves your reactions to the work under review: what strikes you as noteworthy, whether or not it was effective or persuasive, and how it enhanced your understanding of the issues at hand.
  • Finally, in addition to analyzing the work, a review often suggests whether or not the audience would appreciate it.

Becoming an expert reviewer: three short examples

Reviewing can be a daunting task. Someone has asked for your opinion about something that you may feel unqualified to evaluate. Who are you to criticize Toni Morrison’s new book if you’ve never written a novel yourself, much less won a Nobel Prize? The point is that someone—a professor, a journal editor, peers in a study group—wants to know what you think about a particular work. You may not be (or feel like) an expert, but you need to pretend to be one for your particular audience. Nobody expects you to be the intellectual equal of the work’s creator, but your careful observations can provide you with the raw material to make reasoned judgments. Tactfully voicing agreement and disagreement, praise and criticism, is a valuable, challenging skill, and like many forms of writing, reviews require you to provide concrete evidence for your assertions.

Consider the following brief book review written for a history course on medieval Europe by a student who is fascinated with beer:

Judith Bennett’s Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600, investigates how women used to brew and sell the majority of ale drunk in England. Historically, ale and beer (not milk, wine, or water) were important elements of the English diet. Ale brewing was low-skill and low status labor that was complimentary to women’s domestic responsibilities. In the early fifteenth century, brewers began to make ale with hops, and they called this new drink “beer.” This technique allowed brewers to produce their beverages at a lower cost and to sell it more easily, although women generally stopped brewing once the business became more profitable.

The student describes the subject of the book and provides an accurate summary of its contents. But the reader does not learn some key information expected from a review: the author’s argument, the student’s appraisal of the book and its argument, and whether or not the student would recommend the book. As a critical assessment, a book review should focus on opinions, not facts and details. Summary should be kept to a minimum, and specific details should serve to illustrate arguments.

Now consider a review of the same book written by a slightly more opinionated student:

Judith Bennett’s Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600 was a colossal disappointment. I wanted to know about the rituals surrounding drinking in medieval England: the songs, the games, the parties. Bennett provided none of that information. I liked how the book showed ale and beer brewing as an economic activity, but the reader gets lost in the details of prices and wages. I was more interested in the private lives of the women brewsters. The book was divided into eight long chapters, and I can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to read it.

There’s no shortage of judgments in this review! But the student does not display a working knowledge of the book’s argument. The reader has a sense of what the student expected of the book, but no sense of what the author herself set out to prove. Although the student gives several reasons for the negative review, those examples do not clearly relate to each other as part of an overall evaluation—in other words, in support of a specific thesis. This review is indeed an assessment, but not a critical one.

Here is one final review of the same book:

One of feminism’s paradoxes—one that challenges many of its optimistic histories—is how patriarchy remains persistent over time. While Judith Bennett’s Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600 recognizes medieval women as historical actors through their ale brewing, it also shows that female agency had its limits with the advent of beer. I had assumed that those limits were religious and political, but Bennett shows how a “patriarchal equilibrium” shut women out of economic life as well. Her analysis of women’s wages in ale and beer production proves that a change in women’s work does not equate to a change in working women’s status. Contemporary feminists and historians alike should read Bennett’s book and think twice when they crack open their next brewsky.

This student’s review avoids the problems of the previous two examples. It combines balanced opinion and concrete example, a critical assessment based on an explicitly stated rationale, and a recommendation to a potential audience. The reader gets a sense of what the book’s author intended to demonstrate. Moreover, the student refers to an argument about feminist history in general that places the book in a specific genre and that reaches out to a general audience. The example of analyzing wages illustrates an argument, the analysis engages significant intellectual debates, and the reasons for the overall positive review are plainly visible. The review offers criteria, opinions, and support with which the reader can agree or disagree.

Developing an assessment: before you write

There is no definitive method to writing a review, although some critical thinking about the work at hand is necessary before you actually begin writing. Thus, writing a review is a two-step process: developing an argument about the work under consideration, and making that argument as you write an organized and well-supported draft. See our handout on argument .

What follows is a series of questions to focus your thinking as you dig into the work at hand. While the questions specifically consider book reviews, you can easily transpose them to an analysis of performances, exhibitions, and other review subjects. Don’t feel obligated to address each of the questions; some will be more relevant than others to the book in question.

  • What is the thesis—or main argument—of the book? If the author wanted you to get one idea from the book, what would it be? How does it compare or contrast to the world you know? What has the book accomplished?
  • What exactly is the subject or topic of the book? Does the author cover the subject adequately? Does the author cover all aspects of the subject in a balanced fashion? What is the approach to the subject (topical, analytical, chronological, descriptive)?
  • How does the author support their argument? What evidence do they use to prove their point? Do you find that evidence convincing? Why or why not? Does any of the author’s information (or conclusions) conflict with other books you’ve read, courses you’ve taken or just previous assumptions you had of the subject?
  • How does the author structure their argument? What are the parts that make up the whole? Does the argument make sense? Does it persuade you? Why or why not?
  • How has this book helped you understand the subject? Would you recommend the book to your reader?

Beyond the internal workings of the book, you may also consider some information about the author and the circumstances of the text’s production:

  • Who is the author? Nationality, political persuasion, training, intellectual interests, personal history, and historical context may provide crucial details about how a work takes shape. Does it matter, for example, that the biographer was the subject’s best friend? What difference would it make if the author participated in the events they write about?
  • What is the book’s genre? Out of what field does it emerge? Does it conform to or depart from the conventions of its genre? These questions can provide a historical or literary standard on which to base your evaluations. If you are reviewing the first book ever written on the subject, it will be important for your readers to know. Keep in mind, though, that naming “firsts”—alongside naming “bests” and “onlys”—can be a risky business unless you’re absolutely certain.

Writing the review

Once you have made your observations and assessments of the work under review, carefully survey your notes and attempt to unify your impressions into a statement that will describe the purpose or thesis of your review. Check out our handout on thesis statements . Then, outline the arguments that support your thesis.

Your arguments should develop the thesis in a logical manner. That logic, unlike more standard academic writing, may initially emphasize the author’s argument while you develop your own in the course of the review. The relative emphasis depends on the nature of the review: if readers may be more interested in the work itself, you may want to make the work and the author more prominent; if you want the review to be about your perspective and opinions, then you may structure the review to privilege your observations over (but never separate from) those of the work under review. What follows is just one of many ways to organize a review.

Introduction

Since most reviews are brief, many writers begin with a catchy quip or anecdote that succinctly delivers their argument. But you can introduce your review differently depending on the argument and audience. The Writing Center’s handout on introductions can help you find an approach that works. In general, you should include:

  • The name of the author and the book title and the main theme.
  • Relevant details about who the author is and where they stand in the genre or field of inquiry. You could also link the title to the subject to show how the title explains the subject matter.
  • The context of the book and/or your review. Placing your review in a framework that makes sense to your audience alerts readers to your “take” on the book. Perhaps you want to situate a book about the Cuban revolution in the context of Cold War rivalries between the United States and the Soviet Union. Another reviewer might want to consider the book in the framework of Latin American social movements. Your choice of context informs your argument.
  • The thesis of the book. If you are reviewing fiction, this may be difficult since novels, plays, and short stories rarely have explicit arguments. But identifying the book’s particular novelty, angle, or originality allows you to show what specific contribution the piece is trying to make.
  • Your thesis about the book.

Summary of content

This should be brief, as analysis takes priority. In the course of making your assessment, you’ll hopefully be backing up your assertions with concrete evidence from the book, so some summary will be dispersed throughout other parts of the review.

The necessary amount of summary also depends on your audience. Graduate students, beware! If you are writing book reviews for colleagues—to prepare for comprehensive exams, for example—you may want to devote more attention to summarizing the book’s contents. If, on the other hand, your audience has already read the book—such as a class assignment on the same work—you may have more liberty to explore more subtle points and to emphasize your own argument. See our handout on summary for more tips.

Analysis and evaluation of the book

Your analysis and evaluation should be organized into paragraphs that deal with single aspects of your argument. This arrangement can be challenging when your purpose is to consider the book as a whole, but it can help you differentiate elements of your criticism and pair assertions with evidence more clearly. You do not necessarily need to work chronologically through the book as you discuss it. Given the argument you want to make, you can organize your paragraphs more usefully by themes, methods, or other elements of the book. If you find it useful to include comparisons to other books, keep them brief so that the book under review remains in the spotlight. Avoid excessive quotation and give a specific page reference in parentheses when you do quote. Remember that you can state many of the author’s points in your own words.

Sum up or restate your thesis or make the final judgment regarding the book. You should not introduce new evidence for your argument in the conclusion. You can, however, introduce new ideas that go beyond the book if they extend the logic of your own thesis. This paragraph needs to balance the book’s strengths and weaknesses in order to unify your evaluation. Did the body of your review have three negative paragraphs and one favorable one? What do they all add up to? The Writing Center’s handout on conclusions can help you make a final assessment.

Finally, a few general considerations:

  • Review the book in front of you, not the book you wish the author had written. You can and should point out shortcomings or failures, but don’t criticize the book for not being something it was never intended to be.
  • With any luck, the author of the book worked hard to find the right words to express her ideas. You should attempt to do the same. Precise language allows you to control the tone of your review.
  • Never hesitate to challenge an assumption, approach, or argument. Be sure, however, to cite specific examples to back up your assertions carefully.
  • Try to present a balanced argument about the value of the book for its audience. You’re entitled—and sometimes obligated—to voice strong agreement or disagreement. But keep in mind that a bad book takes as long to write as a good one, and every author deserves fair treatment. Harsh judgments are difficult to prove and can give readers the sense that you were unfair in your assessment.
  • A great place to learn about book reviews is to look at examples. The New York Times Sunday Book Review and The New York Review of Books can show you how professional writers review books.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Drewry, John. 1974. Writing Book Reviews. Boston: Greenwood Press.

Hoge, James. 1987. Literary Reviewing. Charlottesville: University Virginia of Press.

Sova, Dawn, and Harry Teitelbaum. 2002. How to Write Book Reports , 4th ed. Lawrenceville, NY: Thomson/Arco.

Walford, A.J. 1986. Reviews and Reviewing: A Guide. Phoenix: Oryx Press.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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How to Write a Book Review in 5 Steps

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Hannah Yang

how to write a book review

If you love to read books, you might be looking for ways to share your opinions about your recent reads.

Writing book reviews is a great way to engage with the book-loving community. If your reviews gain a large enough following, you might even get paid to read books—every reader’s dream come true!

So how exactly do you write book reviews?

This article will explain what a book review is and give you a step-by-step guide for writing a good one.

What Is a Book Review?

How to review a book in 5 steps, best book review examples, how to be a book reviewer.

A book review is a critical assessment of a recently published book. Looking at book reviews helps readers figure out which books to read next and which books to avoid.

The average book review is around 300–750 words. It includes a quick summary of the book, the reviewer’s evaluation of the book, and a recommendation about who should read this book.

It’s important not to confuse book reviews with book reports. A book report is a summary that proves you understood the book, often assigned to elementary school or middle school students.

what is a book review

Book reviews, on the other hand, should offer a unique perspective on a book. They’re often assigned to undergraduate or graduate students.

Professional book reviews can be published in academic journals, on the reviewer’s personal blog, or on platforms like Goodreads.

Here are five steps you can follow to write your own book review.

1. Briefly Summarize the Book

If you’re wondering how to start a book review, the answer is simple—start by summarizing the story!

A quick and objective summary, similar to the one you might find on the book jacket, gives your readers a sense of what the book is about. That way, they have enough context to understand the rest of your review.

If the book is nonfiction, you should include the major questions the book examines, the ways the book tries to answer those questions, and any relevant details about the author’s credentials.

If the book is a novel, you should include the genre, the main character, and the events that launch the main character into the story.

However, it’s important not to spoil the story for people who haven’t read it yet. A good rule is not to mention anything that happens after the midpoint of the story. Leave the rest for the readers to discover on their own.

steps to write a book review

2. Evaluate the Book’s Qualities

Once you’ve explained the premise of the book, it’s time to provide a more subjective evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the book. What do you want other readers to know about this book?

Here are some different aspects of a nonfiction book you can evaluate:

  • Key takeaways (e.g. What did you learn? What’s the book’s argument?)
  • Readability (e.g. What background knowledge do readers need to understand this?)
  • Prose (e.g. How are the points communicated? What’s the author’s writing style?)

Here are some different aspects of a novel you can evaluate:

  • Characters (e.g. How well-developed is the protagonist? The villain? The love interest?)
  • Plot (e.g. Are there surprising twists? Subverted tropes? Plot holes?)
  • Worldbuilding (e.g. Is the world of the story immersive? Unique? Original?)
  • Theme (e.g. What questions does the story examine? How does it answer those questions?)
  • Prose (e.g. Is the writing lyrical or plain? Funny or serious? Dense or digestible?)

Many reviewers focus on one aspect for each of the paragraphs in their review.

As much as possible, try to balance the good with the bad. If the entire review is glowing, or if the entire review is critical, it won’t feel as objective as one that mentions both positive and negative qualities.

Also, make sure you include spoiler warnings if you’re going to mention anything that happens after the midpoint of the story. Some book review platforms let you hide those passages of your review until readers click on them.

3. Include Quotes from the Book

Quotes from the book can serve as useful supporting evidence for your key points. If you say the book includes lyrical prose, make sure to include a passage that represents the lyrical style of the book, so your readers can see what you mean.

You can include well-written passages that showcase the author’s talent. If you disliked the book, you can also choose quotes that showcase what you disliked most.

4. Rate the Book

Many book review platforms, such as Goodreads, let you give a star rating to each book you review.

You can develop your own rating system if you’d like. For example, you could rate books on a scale of 1–5, 1–10, or even 1–100.

Some reviewers break down their ratings into multiple categories. For example, you might give a book five stars for its characters, but only two stars for its plot.

5. Give Your Recommendation

Finish your book review by stating whether or not you would recommend this book to others. That’s the main purpose of a book review, after all—to convince readers either to read the book or to skip it.

It can be helpful to say exactly what kinds of readers you’d recommend it to.

For example, you might write, “This book is perfect for anyone who loves swing dancing and slow-burn romance,” or “Don’t read this if you don’t like slow, atmospheric books that focus more on vibes than on plot.”

You can also recommend other books in the same genre that you think fellow readers will enjoy if they liked this one. “If you liked A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, we recommend The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.”

One way to learn how to write great book reviews is by reading them. Let’s look at a few examples of great book reviews you can use as inspiration.

Kirkus Reviews is a well-known American book review magazine. Here’s the beginning of their review of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo , a historical fiction novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

An aging starlet with seven marriages behind her generously offers the rights to her memoir to an inexperienced writer—at a heartbreaking cost. Monique Grant is stunned when Hollywood legend Evelyn Hugo grants an exclusive interview to her over more seasoned journalists, but when she’s also chosen to publish Evelyn’s final confessions after her death, she learns that the 79-year-old actress has enough life experience for them both. Growing up poor in Hell’s Kitchen, young Evelyn Herrera trades her virginity for a ride to Hollywood, changes her name, and climbs the rungs of the entertainment-industry ladder one husband at a time until she hits Oscar gold. To write her off as being calculating and fickle would leave out the difficulty of being a woman, especially a woman of color, trying to get by in the late 1950s without a man’s blessing.

Emily May is a UK-based book reviewer who’s one of the top-ranked reviewers on Goodreads. Here are the first few paragraphs of her Goodreads review of The Poppy War , a fantasy novel by R.F. Kuang.

“But I warn you, little warrior. The price of power is pain.” Holy hell, what did I just read?? A fantasy military school A rich world based on modern Chinese history Shamans and gods Detailed characterization leading to unforgettable characters Adorable, opium-smoking mentors That’s a basic list, but this book is all of that and SO MUCH MORE. I know 100% that The Poppy War will be one of my best reads of 2018.

Finally, Book Geeks is a website that describes itself as “India’s best book blog.” Here’s the beginning of their review of Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

WRITING STYLE: 3.5/5 SUBJECT: 4/5 CANDIDNESS: 4.5/5 RELEVANCE: 3.5/5 ENTERTAINMENT QUOTIENT: 3.5/5 Eat Pray Love is so popular that it is almost impossible to not read it. Having felt ashamed many times on my not having read this book, I quietly ordered the book (before I saw the movie) from Amazon and sat down to read it. I don’t remember what I expected it to be—maybe more like a chick-lit but it turned out quite different. The book is a real story and is a short journal from the time when its writer went travelling to three different countries in pursuit of three different things—Italy (Pleasure), India (Spirituality), Bali (Balance) and this is what corresponds to the book’s name—EAT (in Italy), PRAY (in India), and LOVE (in Bali, Indonesia).

There are many benefits to becoming a consistent book reviewer.

After you establish a following, many publishing houses will send you books for free in exchange for a review, which can be a huge perk. In some cases, you can even get paid for your reviews.

So how do you become a book reviewer? Here are a few tips:

Develop your own book reviewing style to give your reviews a more personal touch. Do you want to leave funny reviews that make readers laugh? Personal reviews that include anecdotes from your own life? Serious reviews that readers can trust for an objective opinion?

Start taking notes every time you read a book you’re planning to review. Recording your initial reactions can help you develop more insightful critiques.

Finally, set book reviewing goals and stick to them. For example, you might decide to start by reviewing one book a month. That way, you can turn reviewing into a consistent practice.

Good luck, and happy writing!

review of a novel example

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Hannah Yang is a speculative fiction writer who writes about all things strange and surreal. Her work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, The Dark, and elsewhere, and two of her stories have been finalists for the Locus Award. Her favorite hobbies include watercolor painting, playing guitar, and rock climbing. You can follow her work on hannahyang.com, or subscribe to her newsletter for publication updates.

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Literacy Ideas

How to Write a Book Review: The Ultimate Guide

review of a novel example

WHAT IS A BOOK REVIEW?

how to write a book review | what is a Book review | How to Write a Book Review: The Ultimate Guide | literacyideas.com

Traditionally, book reviews are written evaluations of a recently published book in any genre. Usually, around the 500 to 700-word mark, they offer a brief description of a text’s main elements while appraising the work’s strengths and weaknesses. Published book reviews can appear in newspapers, magazines, and academic journals. They provide the reader with an overview of the book itself and indicate whether or not the reviewer would recommend the book to the reader.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A BOOK REVIEW?

There was a time when book reviews were a regular appearance in every quality newspaper and many periodicals. They were essential elements in whether or not a book would sell well. A review from a heavyweight critic could often be the deciding factor in whether a book became a bestseller or a damp squib. In the last few decades, however, the book review’s influence has waned considerably, with many potential book buyers preferring to consult customer reviews on Amazon, or sites like Goodreads, before buying. As a result, book review’s appearance in newspapers, journals, and digital media has become less frequent.

WHY BOTHER TEACHING STUDENTS TO WRITE BOOK REVIEWS AT ALL?

Even in the heyday of the book review’s influence, few students who learned the craft of writing a book review became literary critics! The real value of crafting a well-written book review for a student does not lie in their ability to impact book sales. Understanding how to produce a well-written book review helps students to:

●     Engage critically with a text

●     Critically evaluate a text

●     Respond personally to a range of different writing genres

●     Improve their own reading, writing, and thinking skills.

Not to Be Confused with a Book Report!

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A BOOK REVIEW AND A BOOK REPORT?

book_reviews_vs_book_reports.jpg

While the terms are often used interchangeably, there are clear differences in both the purpose and the format of the two genres. Generally speaking, book reports aim to give a more detailed outline of what occurs in a book. A book report on a work of fiction will tend to give a comprehensive account of the characters, major plot lines, and themes in the book. Book reports are usually written around the K-12 age range, while book reviews tend not to be undertaken by those at the younger end of this age range due to the need for the higher-level critical skills required in writing them. At their highest expression, book reviews are written at the college level and by professional critics.

Learn how to write a book review step by step with our complete guide for students and teachers by familiarizing yourself with the structure and features.

BOOK REVIEW STRUCTURE

ANALYZE Evaluate the book with a critical mind.

THOROUGHNESS The whole is greater than the sum of all its parts. Review the book as a WHOLE.

COMPARE Where appropriate compare to similar texts and genres.

THUMBS UP OR DOWN? You are going to have to inevitably recommend or reject this book to potential readers.

BE CONSISTENT Take a stance and stick with it throughout your review.

FEATURES OF A BOOK REVIEW

PAST TENSE You are writing about a book you have already read.

EMOTIVE LANGUAGE Whatever your stance or opinion be passionate about it. Your audience will thank you for it.

VOICE Both active and passive voice are used in recounts.

A COMPLETE UNIT ON REVIEW AND ANALYSIS OF TEXTS

how to write a book review | movie response unit | How to Write a Book Review: The Ultimate Guide | literacyideas.com

⭐ Make  MOVIES A MEANINGFUL PART OF YOUR CURRICULUM  with this engaging collection of tasks and tools your students will love. ⭐ All the hard work is done for you with  NO PREPARATION REQUIRED.

This collection of  21 INDEPENDENT TASKS  and  GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS  takes students beyond the hype, special effects and trailers to look at visual literacy from several perspectives offering DEEP LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES by watching a  SERIES, DOCUMENTARY, FILM, and even  VIDEO GAMES.

ELEMENTS OF A BOOK REVIEW

As with any of the writing genres we teach our students, a book review can be helpfully explained in terms of criteria. While there is much to the ‘art’ of writing, there is also, thankfully, a lot of the nuts and bolts that can be listed too. Have students consider the following elements before writing:

●     Title: Often, the title of the book review will correspond to the title of the text itself, but there may also be some examination of the title’s relevance. How does it fit into the purpose of the work as a whole? Does it convey a message or reveal larger themes explored within the work?

●     Author: Within the book review, there may be some discussion of who the author is and what they have written before, especially if it relates to the current work being reviewed. There may be some mention of the author’s style and what they are best known for. If the author has received any awards or prizes, this may also be mentioned within the body of the review.

●     Genre: A book review will identify the genre that the book belongs to, whether fiction or nonfiction, poetry, romance, science-fiction, history etc. The genre will likely tie in, too with who the intended audience for the book is and what the overall purpose of the work is.

●     Book Jacket / Cover: Often, a book’s cover will contain artwork that is worthy of comment. It may contain interesting details related to the text that contribute to, or detract from, the work as a whole.

●     Structure: The book’s structure will often be heavily informed by its genre. Have students examine how the book is organized before writing their review. Does it contain a preface from a guest editor, for example? Is it written in sections or chapters? Does it have a table of contents, index, glossary etc.? While all these details may not make it into the review itself, looking at how the book is structured may reveal some interesting aspects.

●     Publisher and Price: A book review will usually contain details of who publishes the book and its cost. A review will often provide details of where the book is available too.

how to write a book review | writing a book review | How to Write a Book Review: The Ultimate Guide | literacyideas.com

BOOK REVIEW KEY ELEMENTS

As students read and engage with the work they will review, they will develop a sense of the shape their review will take. This will begin with the summary. Encourage students to take notes during the reading of the work that will help them in writing the summary that will form an essential part of their review. Aspects of the book they may wish to take notes on in a work of fiction may include:

●     Characters: Who are the main characters? What are their motivations? Are they convincingly drawn? Or are they empathetic characters?

●     Themes: What are the main themes of the work? Are there recurring motifs in the work? Is the exploration of the themes deep or surface only?

●     Style: What are the key aspects of the writer’s style? How does it fit into the wider literary world?

●     Plot: What is the story’s main catalyst? What happens in the rising action? What are the story’s subplots? 

A book review will generally begin with a short summary of the work itself. However, it is important not to give too much away, remind students – no spoilers, please! For nonfiction works, this may be a summary of the main arguments of the work, again, without giving too much detail away. In a work of fiction, a book review will often summarise up to the rising action of the piece without going beyond to reveal too much!

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The summary should also provide some orientation for the reader. Given the nature of the purpose of a review, it is important that students’ consider their intended audience in the writing of their review. Readers will most likely not have read the book in question and will require some orientation. This is often achieved through introductions to the main characters, themes, primary arguments etc. This will help the reader to gauge whether or not the book is of interest to them.

Once your student has summarized the work, it is time to ‘review’ in earnest. At this point, the student should begin to detail their own opinion of the book. To do this well they should:

i. Make It Personal

Often when teaching essay writing we will talk to our students about the importance of climbing up and down the ladder of abstraction. Just as it is helpful to explore large, more abstract concepts in an essay by bringing it down to Earth, in a book review, it is important that students can relate the characters, themes, ideas etc to their own lives.

Book reviews are meant to be subjective. They are opinion pieces, and opinions grow out of our experiences of life. Encourage students to link the work they are writing about to their own personal life within the body of the review. By making this personal connection to the work, students contextualize their opinions for the readers and help them to understand whether the book will be of interest to them or not in the process.

ii. Make It Universal

Just as it is important to climb down the ladder of abstraction to show how the work relates to individual life, it is important to climb upwards on the ladder too. Students should endeavor to show how the ideas explored in the book relate to the wider world. The may be in the form of the universality of the underlying themes in a work of fiction or, for example, the international implications for arguments expressed in a work of nonfiction.

iii. Support Opinions with Evidence

A book review is a subjective piece of writing by its very nature. However, just because it is subjective does not mean that opinions do not need to be justified. Make sure students understand how to back up their opinions with various forms of evidence, for example, quotations, statistics, and the use of primary and secondary sources.

EDIT AND REVISE YOUR BOOK REVIEW

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As with any writing genre, encourage students to polish things up with review and revision at the end. Encourage them to proofread and check for accurate spelling throughout, with particular attention to the author’s name, character names, publisher etc. 

It is good practice too for students to double-check their use of evidence. Are statements supported? Are the statistics used correctly? Are the quotations from the text accurate? Mistakes such as these uncorrected can do great damage to the value of a book review as they can undermine the reader’s confidence in the writer’s judgement.

The discipline of writing book reviews offers students opportunities to develop their writing skills and exercise their critical faculties. Book reviews can be valuable standalone activities or serve as a part of a series of activities engaging with a central text. They can also serve as an effective springboard into later discussion work based on the ideas and issues explored in a particular book. Though the book review does not hold the sway it once did in the mind’s of the reading public, it still serves as an effective teaching tool in our classrooms today.

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Teaching Resources

Use our resources and tools to improve your student’s writing skills through proven teaching strategies.

BOOK REVIEW GRAPHIC ORGANIZER (TEMPLATE)

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101 DIGITAL & PRINT GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS FOR ALL CURRICULUM AREAS

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Introduce your students to 21st-century learning with this GROWING BUNDLE OF 101 EDITABLE & PRINTABLE GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS. ✌ NO PREP REQUIRED!!! ✌ Go paperless, and let your students express their knowledge and creativity through the power of technology and collaboration inside and outside the classroom with ease.

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Book and Movie review writing examples (Student Writing Samples)

Below are a collection of student writing samples of book reviews.  Click on the image to enlarge and explore them in greater detail.  Please take a moment to both read the movie or book review in detail but also the teacher and student guides which highlight some of the key elements of writing a text review

Please understand these student writing samples are not intended to be perfect examples for each age or grade level but a piece of writing for students and teachers to explore together to critically analyze to improve student writing skills and deepen their understanding of book review writing.

We would recommend reading the example either a year above and below, as well as the grade you are currently working with to gain a broader appreciation of this text type .

how to write a book review | book review year 3 | How to Write a Book Review: The Ultimate Guide | literacyideas.com

BOOK REVIEW VIDEO TUTORIALS

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The content for this page has been written by Shane Mac Donnchaidh.  A former principal of an international school and English university lecturer with 15 years of teaching and administration experience. Shane’s latest Book, The Complete Guide to Nonfiction Writing , can be found here.  Editing and support for this article have been provided by the literacyideas team.

How to Write a Great Book Review: 6 Templates and Ideas

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Whether you’ve loved or hated your recent reads, writing book reviews can be a fun and satisfying process. It’s a great way to unpack messages and information from a story, and it also helps you remember key elements of a book for much longer than you usually would. Plus, book reviews open up some interesting and exciting debates between readers with different opinions, and they also help others decide which books to read next .

Table of Contents

Where Can You Post Book Reviews?

Back in the old days, book reviews were reserved for leading publications and journals, but now, anyone can create their own book reviews, and they’re popping up almost everywhere.

Social Media

Bookworms have taken over social media, with hashtags like # bookstagram drawing in millions of readers from around the internet to share thoughts, ideas, inspiration, and of course, reviews.

Book blogs are also blowing up right now, and plenty of avid readers are making a solid income by writing and sharing their book reviews this way. You can either create your own from scratch or write guest posts and reviews for already established blogs.

Goodreads is the undisputed online home of books. It’s a great place to find inspiration for your next reads, browse other people’s book reviews, and of course, add your own reviews, too.

If you post a review of a popular book on Goodreads, it’s bound to be seen by a huge audience. Plus, it’s a great way to advertise your blog if you have one, as the Goodreads guidelines allow you to insert a link within the body of your review.

The world’s largest bookstore gets an incredible amount of traffic, so it’s one of the best places to get your reviews seen by the masses. But bear in mind that there are more rules and regulations for Amazon book reviews than on some of the other platforms listed here. Make sure you familiarize yourself with the guidelines first, or your submission could be rejected.

Booktube is a Youtube community dedicated to reviewing, discussing, and recommending books. If you’re comfortable in front of a camera, vlogging your book reviews on Booktube is an excellent alternative to the more traditional written book reviews above. It’s also a great way to get noticed by viewers around the world.

Some Booktube reviewers make their entire income from their channel, so if you’re passionate about reviewing and want to turn it into a living, this is a great avenue to explore.

Get Paid for Your Book Reviews

Some of the platforms I’ve listed above, like Booktube, Instagram, and blogging , allow you to get paid for your book reviews if you generate enough traffic, but getting to that level takes a lot of dedication, time, and patience.

Thankfully, there are plenty of websites that pay reviewers on a freelance basis. Here are three of the most popular:

Remember, each site has strict submission guidelines and requirements that you’ll need to check carefully before writing and submitting a review.

Kirkus Reviews

The Kirkus Reviews magazine, founded in 1933, is one of America’s oldest, most respected book reviewing companies.

They accept reviews around 350 words in length, and once you’re assigned the gig, you have a two-week submission deadline.

Kirkus is always on the lookout for new book reviewers, but you’ll need to prove you have experience and talent before they’ll accept your submissions. The best way to do this is to create a professional-looking portfolio that showcases your previous reviews, both paid and unpaid.

Booklist is a subgroup of the American Library Association. They feature all kinds of book reviews, both fiction and non-fiction, and publish them online and in print.

They pay their reviewers on a freelance, book-by-book basis. Their rates aren’t going to make you rich (around $12- $15 per review), but it’s a great way to gain some professional experience and build your book review portfolio without having to work for free.

Booklist has various publication outlets, such as their quarterly in-print magazine, a reader’s blog, and top book lists. Plus, they also accept pitches for book-related news and author interviews.

Online Book Club

This free-to-access community of bibliophiles has been going for over ten years, with a million active members and counting.

To join their professional freelance team, you’ll first have to submit an unpaid review to help them to determine if you’re worth hiring. If your review makes the cut, then your next submission is paid at a rate varying between $5 and $60, depending on the book’s length, the quality of the review, etc.

One of the major stipulations of Online Book Club is that your reviews are in-depth and honest. If you don’t like the book, never put a positive spin on it for the sake of it. ( The same goes for any book review platform you post on. )

It’s also worth noting that with Online Book Club, you’ll never pay for the books you review. So even if they reject your submission, you’ll still get a free book out of it.

How to Write a Book Review?

Book reviews can range from a simple tweet to a full-length essay or long-form blog post and anything in between.

As I mentioned above, some book review sites and platforms have strict guidelines and parameters to follow. But if you’re writing a book review for social media, your own blog, or any other purpose that lets you take the reins, then the following ideas will give you some help and inspiration to get started.

But before we dive in, let’s take a look at four key elements that a comprehensive book review should contain.

1. Information about the author and the name of the book

You might want to include any accolades that the author has received in the past and mention some of their previous notable works.

Also, consider the publication date; is the book a brand-new release, a few years old, or a classic from another century?

2. A summary of the plot

Writing about the plot takes skill and consideration; if your description is too thorough, you risk ruining the book for your audience with spoilers. But on the other hand, if you’re too vague on the details, your review can lack depth.

Consider your audience carefully, and if you feel like your book review contains even the slightest hint of spoilers, always add a warning at the beginning so people can decide for themselves whether to read on.

3. Your evaluation

This is the part where you get to describe what you feel about the book as a whole and give your opinion on the different elements within it. But, again, don’t be tempted to fall into the trap of positively evaluating books you didn’t actually like; no one wants to read a false review, so if you didn’t like it, explain why.

4. Your reader recommendation

Who might the book appeal to? Is it suitable for all audiences? In your opinion, is it a universal must-read, or should people avoid it?

Keep in mind that the purpose of most book reviews is to help the reader decide whether or not they would like to read it themselves. What works for you might not work for others, so consider this when writing your recommendations.

6 Book Review Templates and Ideas

1. the traditional approach.

Most traditional fiction reviews, like the ones found in newspapers and other popular publications, are based on the following format…

Introduction

The introduction is a paragraph or two which includes:

  • Key information that the reader needs to know. For example, the book’s title, the author’s name, the publication date, and any relevant background information about the author and their work.
  • A brief one-sentence summary of the plot. This sets the general scene of what the book is about.
  • Your overall opinion of the book. Again, keep it brief. (you can delve deeper into what you liked and disliked later in the review).

This is the main body of your book review, where you break down and analyze the work. Some of the key elements you might want to examine are listed below. Approach each element one at a time to help your analysis flow.

  • The characters
  • The setting
  • The structure of the story
  • The quality of the writing

What did you notice about each one, what did you enjoy, and what did you dislike? Why?

The conclusion is usually the shortest part of a traditional book review, which usually contains:

  • A summary of your thoughts about the book as a whole
  • Your reader recommendation

Remember that unless you’re writing a book review for a pre-existing publication, there are no rules that you need to follow. This traditional format can be adapted to suit your own style, the book you are reviewing, and your audience.

Also Read : BEST FICTION BOOK REVIEWS

2. Social Media Book Reviews

Book reviews posted on social media tend to have a more relaxed tone than a traditional book review. Again, there are no set rules, but here are a few guidelines and suggestions for posting reviews on platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

  • Include an eye-catching image

This is essential on Instagram, but whatever social media platform you’re posting on, including a great photo will draw people in to read your review.

In the Instagram world, photos of books taken directly from above are called ‘flat lays.’ You can keep it simple and just snap the front cover, or you can get creative and shoot your book flat lay against an interesting backdrop or include items related to the story.

  • Break up your review into short, bite-sized paragraphs

This rule applies to most web content, but it’s even more important on social media, where everyone competes for your reader’s attention.

Big blocks of text are much harder to follow and a sure-fire way to lose your reader’s attention before they even get started. Instead, stick to short paragraphs of one, two, or three sentences, and include spaces between each one.

  • Know your character limit

At just 280 characters, Twitter is by far the stingiest of the major social media platforms when it comes to the length of posts. That’s why most people choose platforms like Instagram or Facebook for book reviews. That being said, you can still use Twitter as a way of linking to them once they go live.

Instagram is considerably more generous with its 2,200-character limit, but if you have a lot to say about the book you’re reviewing, it can still be limiting.

If you want to post a more comprehensive review on social media, Facebook is your best bet; they have an upper limit of 63,206 characters.

Whichever platform you post on, remember to factor any hashtags into your character limit too.

  • Keep it succinct

Book reviews on social media perform better when sentences are concise. This helps to combat the character limit issue I mentioned above and gets your point across quickly, without the fluff.

Readers on platforms like Instagram and Facebook flit from post to post, so if you don’t say what you mean in as few words as possible, you’ll risk losing your audience altogether.

  • Don’t be afraid of emojis.

Love them or hate them, emojis convey mood and emotion where words can sometimes fail us. They also add an extra visual element to a post, help to break up blocks of text and keep the tone informal.

Of course, there’s no rule that you have to include emojis in your social media book reviews, but if you’re already comfortable using them elsewhere, consider incorporating them here too.

  • Add a star rating

Star ratings instantly tell your audience whether you loved the book or not before they read a single word of your post. It’s also another visual element to help draw your audience in to find out more.

  • Avoid spoilers

I’ve already touched on spoilers above, but it’s essential to avoid them on social media book reviews. That’s because unsuspecting users are scrolling from post to post on these platforms with no way of knowing what’s coming next. As a result, it’s very easy to read something you can’t unread.

  • Consider tagging the author and publisher.

But ONLY do this if you enjoyed the book and your review is favorable. It’s not good online etiquette to tag in the creators if you’re posting a scathing critique; it’s mean-spirited, and it could lead to a social media squabble, which the internet has enough of already.

3. Goodreads and Amazon Book Reviews

Both Goodreads and Amazon allow anyone to upload a review of any book, so they’re great places to get started if you’re new to the reviewing world. Plus, you can post more in-depth and lengthy reviews than you can on social media platforms.

There are endless ways to write reviews for sites like these, but if you’re looking for a bit of inspiration, here’s a good template that will help you to flesh out your ideas.

  • Star Rating

Sites like Goodreads and Amazon usually ask for a 1-5 star rating before writing your review. 3 is your baseline which translates to “pretty good.” It can be tempting to rush straight in for a 5 star if you loved a book, but where possible, try to reserve this rating for books that really blow you away.

  • A Brief Synopsis

Reviews on these sites appear directly under the book listing, so generally, there’s no need to mention the author, title, or publishing details. Instead, you can dive straight into a quick overview of the plot, using the official publisher’s summary to help you if needed.

Avoid revealing any significant details or spoilers, but include enough to outline the story and give context to the rest of your review.

Talking about how the book made you feel is a good place to start. Did you learn something you didn’t know before? Was it a page-turner or a hard slog? Were there any twists you did or didn’t see coming? Mentioning the existence of a plot twist is usually deemed ok, as long as you don’t reveal what it is.

Next, examine the book’s various elements, including the characters, setting, and plot, using examples. You might even want to include some direct quotes from the book, as long as they don’t give too much away.

Just like the traditional book review format, conclude it with a summary. Are you glad you read it? Who might enjoy this book, and who should avoid it?

4. Listicle Book Reviews

Listicles are articles and blog posts structured like a numbered list. An example from the book review world is “10 reasons why you need to read X by X”.

These types of reviews are particularly well suited to blog posts, as they’re an excellent way to encourage people to click on your link compared with a less attention-grabbing traditional format.

That being said, listicle book reviews tend only to work if your feedback is positive. Using this format to review a book you hated risks alienating your audience and coming across as harsh and judgemental. Less favorable reviews are better presented in a more traditional format that explores a book’s different aspects one by one.

5. An Essay Style Analysis

An essay-style review isn’t technically a review, as it delves much deeper into the work and examines it from multiple angles.

If you’re not limited to a word count and want to dissect an author’s work, then an in-depth essay-style analysis can be a great addition to your blog. Plus, they’re generally written for people who have already read the book, so there’s no need to worry about spoilers.

But when you’re writing more than 500 words about a book, it can be easy to ramble or go off on a tangent. Here’s an example format to keep you on track:

  • Include the author’s name, the title of the book, and the date of publication.
  • Is the book a standalone novel or part of a series?
  • What made you choose this book in the first place? Have you read any of the author’s previous work?
  • Describe the cover. Does it draw you in? Is it an appropriate representation of the book as a whole?

Set the Scene

  • Include an overview of the plot.
  • Did you have any expectations or preconceived ideas about the book before you read it?

Your Review

Discuss the following elements one at a time. Use quotes or direct examples when talking about each one.

  • Describe the geographical location, the period in time, and the environment.
  • Is the setting based on reality or imagination?
  • How does the setting help to add mood and tone to the story?
  • Give an overview of the main characters and their backgrounds.
  • Discuss the significant plot points in the story in chronological order.
  • What are the conflicts, the climaxes, and the resolutions?
  • How does the author use literary devices to bring meaning and life to book?
  • For example, discuss any elements of foreshadowing, metaphors, symbolism, irony, or imagery.
  • What are the overall themes and big ideas in the story? For example, love, death, friendship , war, and coming of age.
  • What, if any, are the morals within the story?
  • Are there any underlying or less prominent themes that the author is trying to portray?

Your Opinion

  • Which elements were successful, and which weren’t?
  • Were the characters believable? Did you want them to succeed?
  • In the case of plot twists, did you see them coming?
  • Are there any memorable scenes or quotes that particularly stood out to you? If so, why?
  • How did the book make you feel? Did it evoke any strong emotions?
  • Did the book meet your preconceived expectations?
  • Were you satisfied by the ending, or did you find it frustrating?
  • Summarise the plot and theme in a couple of sentences.
  • Give your overall opinion. Was the book a success, a failure, or something in between?
  • Include a reader recommendation, for example, “this book is a must-read for anyone with a love of dystopian science fiction.”
  • Include a star rating if you wish.

6. Create Your Own Book Review Template

If you plan on becoming a regular book reviewer, it’s a good idea to create your own unique template that you can use for every book you review, whether you’re posting on a blog, website, or social media account.

You can mix and match the various elements of the review styles above to suit your preferences and the types of books you’ll be reviewing.

Creating a template unique to you helps build your authority as an independent reviewer and makes writing future reviews a lot easier.

Writing book reviews is a great way to get even more out of your reading journey. Whether you loved or hated a title, reviewing it will help you remember and process the story, and you’ll also be helping others to decide whether or not it’s worth their time, too.

And who knows, you might fall in love with writing book reviews and decide to pursue it as an additional source of income or even a new career!

Whatever your book reviewing plans and goals are, I hope the templates, tips, and ideas above will help you get started.

Do you have any advice for writing a great book review? Let me know in the comments below!

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Book Review Examples

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Let's look at a book review example

As discussed in our article explaining how to write a book review , book reviews are very different from book reports. In order to illustrate what a book review is, we have provided a book review example for your reference. 

Here is an example of a book review opening

" The Devil's Company , a treat for lovers of historical fiction, sees the return of Benjamin Weaver in his third exciting romp through the varied and sometimes surreal landscape of 18th-century London. Weaver is an endearing protagonist, a former pugilist and investigator for hire whom we first met in David Liss's A Conspiracy of Paper (1999)."

In just a few short lines, reviewer Frank Tallis has told us about the genre, setting, and main character of this novel.

He concludes the favorable review by saying, "Historical fiction is mostly smoke and mirrors. Modern writers really don't know what it was like to live in the past—no matter how much research they do—so the success of the enterprise depends largely on creating a convincing illusion. Liss rises to this challenge with great skill in this accomplished, atmospheric and thoughtful novel."

This book review example illustrates another important question to be addressed in the review: how does the work compare to others similar to it? Does the book contribute to a particular field or genre, or is the book lacking in quality compared to the works of other writers?

Now that you have an idea of how to write a book review, try one of your own. Don't forget to send it in for an English grammar check . Good luck!

Image sources: Fineas Anton/Unsplash.com

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Tips for Writing a Good Book Review 

Now that you’ve prepped what you want to say, how you want to say it, and who you want to say it to, it’s time to start writing. Below we’ve gathered our favorite tips to help you write a good book review. Wait… make that a GREAT book review.

1. Include general information

Make sure to include all the relevant book information for your audience , including the title, author, genre, and publisher in your review. While not necessary, it is also helpful to include the number of pages, list price, and ISBN number.

2. Provide a brief plot summary

After the hook, you can then move on to the brief plot summary. This summary shouldn’t be too long, but it can be a paragraph that explains the basic plot so that the reader better understands if it’s a topic of interest. One pitfall to avoid is to give away spoilers in the plot summary. Don’t give away any plot twists, and err on the side of caution if you feel that the information is too much. For example, tell the reader that the plot has unexpected twists rather than explain any surprises in the summary.

3. Focus on the book, not the author

Keep in mind that your main job as a reviewer is to share your opinion on the book, not to critique the author. Keep the focus on the story. Avoid referencing pitfalls in any of the author’s past books or what you about them as a writer. You can provide a brief introduction to the story mentioning the author and past books, but don’t spend too much time focused on the author. The review should focus on the content of the book and its characters.

4. Be clear and specific

It is not enough to just say that you did or didn’t like the book. Let your readers know why. Make your thoughts clear as early as possible and explain the reasons why you liked or disliked specific storyline components and characters. Be specific about what you loved about the writing, what drew you to the characters, or what left you feeling lukewarm about the plot. You don’t need to explain every aspect of the book, but the reader should walk away with a sense that they understand the basic plot and determine from the review if they want to read the book for themselves.

Write a 5 star book review

5. Remain subjective

Not all book reviews have to be glowing, but they should be subjective. Rather than just saying you didn’t like something, support it by letting your readers know why. We all gravitate towards different things, so what may not appeal to you may appeal to someone else. If you remain subjective, then you can explain to the reader the basic story and let them decide for themselves. The review can include your likes and dislikes, but they should focus on what you felt the story did well and what parts of the story you didn’t like. However, the main focus of the review should be to explain the story so that readers can determine if they want to read the book further.

6. Avoid spoilers

We know it can be tempting, but do your best not to let any spoilers slip in your book review. Have you ever been excited to see the latest blockbuster hit (or watch the season cliffhanger to your favorite TV show) and then someone spoils the end before you even have time to watch? That is exactly what you don’t want to do to your reader. As you explain the book in your summary, ask yourself if what you are explaining ruins any surprises or twists. As you write the review, keep it vague. For example, explain that there is a major plot twist but don’t go into the specifics.

7. Be transparent

Always share if you received an incentive to review the book, got an advance copy, or have any connection to the author. Your readers will appreciate your honesty. Plus, it helps you avoid the negative impact on your credibility if they find out later. Getting paid for a review is a perfectly reasonable excuse to read a book, but it does allow readers to determine if you’re being unbiased. By specifying if you have any relationship with the author, the reader can better trust your opinion, even if they feel you’re being more biased.

8. Keep it short

While book reviews can be any length, it is always best to keep it short and succinct. Pull in your reader with a strong first sentence that sets the tone of the review and end with your recommendation. Remember, most people start to scan when something gets too long. A book review is a short summary, so writing a novel-length review loses reader interests. Keeping it short will ensure that your readers will dive into your likes and dislikes and use your reviews to determine if they have an interest in the books.

9. Proofread before posting

The quickest way to lose credibility is to post a review filled with typos. Make sure to give your final book review a thorough read before posting it and double check the spelling of any character names or places that you mention. Even better, ask someone else to read it over. It is always good to have a fresh pair of eyes proof to catch any typos. If you don’t have a family or friend who will help with proofreader, you can join a writing community where members offer test reads and proofreading. Make sure that you don’t post the review publicly, because search engines will index it and the review will no longer be unique content.

Also, keep in mind that you will want to write different book reviews for different sites. Don’t just copy and paste the same review. Google search engines scan for duplicate content and if flagged, your review won’t appear.

10. Add a hook

The hook is one or two sentences that grab the reader and convince them to keep going. It should be interesting, but it should also stick with the topic without misleading readers. The hook could be a simple statement that explains the main character of the book, or it could ask a question that resonates with the reader. Don’t make the hook too sensational to avoid sounding like a sales pitch. It should simply provide an introduction that grabs reader interests.

11. Explain what you liked about the book

Writing your own book review is a way to explain what you liked about it, and what you liked could be of interest to another reader. This section allows you to personalize the review. You can explain what you liked about the characters, who was your favorite character, what part of the book was your favorite, and if the book invoked any personal feelings (e.g., you laughed or cried).

12. Explain what you disliked about the book

You likely have something that you disliked about the book, and this section explains what you wish would have been different about the storyline or the characters. Just like the other sections, make sure that you do not reveal too much and give away important plot lines that could be considered spoilers for the rest of the story.

13. Include brief quotes as examples

Brief quotes provide readers with better insight into characters. Using quotes from characters will help the reader follow the plot summary and determine if the characters are people they can relate to. Avoid using excessively long quotes. Since the reader hasn’t read the book, a long quote could ruin plot twists or overpower the review.

14. Reference similar books

A great way to introduce readers to a specific book is to compare your book review with other books. For example, you can explain to the reader that they will like the current book you’re reviewing if they like another similar book. Alternatively, you can also compare characters between books to provide better insight into the story’s characters and the dynamic between individual characters.

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Book Review Writing

Cathy A.

How to Write a Book Review - A Step By Step Guide

15 min read

Published on: May 21, 2019

Last updated on: Nov 16, 2023

How to Write a Book Review

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Book Review Examples to Help You Get Started

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Ever stare at a blank page, wondering how to spill your thoughts about a book onto it? You're not alone!

Crafting a compelling book review can be as daunting as facing a dragon in a fantasy novel. The struggle is real. How do you structure your thoughts? And most importantly, how do you make it enjoyable, both for you and your readers?

Fear not, because we've got you covered.

In this guide, we'll take you step by step through the process. We'll share some useful tips and show you real examples. From organizing your review to nailing the writing part, we've got everything covered. 

So let's dive in!

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What is a Book Review?

A book review is a critical evaluation of a literary work that provides a reader's perspective on its strengths and weaknesses. It goes beyond summarizing the plot, diving into aspects like character development, writing style, and thematic elements. 

Through insightful analysis, a book review offers potential readers a nuanced understanding, guiding them in making informed choices. It serves as a valuable tool for both readers and authors, offering constructive feedback for continuous improvement.

How to Write a Book Review?

Let's break down the steps of writing a book review:

Step 1: Read the Book Thoroughly

Read the book attentively, taking note of major plot points, character developments, and any recurring themes. Ensure a clear understanding of the author's narrative choices.

Example: 

Step 2: Understand the Author's Intent

Research the author's background, previous works, and writing style. Consider the book's genre and its place in the author's overall body of work to understand their intent.

Step 3: Identify the Target Audience

Determine the ideal reader for the book. Assess how well the author caters to this audience and whether the content is appropriate for the intended readership.

Step 4: Compose an Engaging Introduction

Start with a captivating hook, such as an interesting fact or a thought-provoking question. Provide essential information about the book, including the title, author, and genre.

Step 5: Summarize the Plot Concisely

Provide a brief overview of the plot without revealing spoilers. Focus on the key events that drive the narrative forward.

Step 6: Evaluate Character Development

Discuss the characters' depth and growth throughout the story. Analyze their relevance to the overall plot and note any notable character traits.

Step 7: Assess Writing Style and Language

Evaluate the author's writing style and language choices. Comment on how these elements contribute to or hinder the overall reading experience.

Step 8: Explore Themes and Symbolism

Identify central themes and discuss their significance in the book. Look for symbolism or motifs that enhance the overall meaning of the narrative.

Step 9: Critique the Ending 

Evaluate how well the conclusion wraps up the story. Discuss whether it is satisfying or if it leaves room for interpretation. Avoid giving away crucial plot details.

Step 10: Share Personal Insights

Express your personal reactions and emotions toward the book. Support your opinions with specific examples or passages from the text that resonated with you.

Step 11: Maintain Objectivity 

Balance criticism with praise. Provide constructive feedback without solely focusing on negative aspects. Base your arguments on evidence from the book.

Step 12: Consider the Book's Impact

Reflect on the lasting impression the book leaves. Discuss its significance in a broader literary context and consider its potential influence on readers.

Step 13: Craft a Conclusion

Summarize the key points discussed in your review. Provide a final assessment of the book and recommend it to specific audiences based on its strengths.

Step 14: Revise and Proofread 

Polish your review for clarity and coherence. Check for grammatical errors, and typos, and ensure a professional presentation. Consider seeking feedback from others for additional perspectives.

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Book Review Format

In this section, we'll explore how to write a book review format, particularly focusing on the formatting guidelines. Let's explore the essential guidelines that make up a compelling book review: 

Title Page:

  • Boldly display the book title centered at the top.
  • Include the author's name beneath the title.
  • Mention the publication date and edition if applicable.

Page Formatting:

  • Use standard letter-sized paper (8.5 x 11 inches).
  • Set 1-inch margins on all sides for a clean appearance.

Text Formatting:

  • Choose a legible font like Times New Roman or Arial.
  • Use a 12-point font size for the main text.
  • Italicize book titles and maintain consistency in formatting throughout.

Line Spacing:

  • Double-space the entire review for readability.
  • Single space within paragraphs for a balanced look.

If you want to learn the details of structuring and formatting a book review check out our “ book review format ” blog!

Book Review Template

Let’s take a look at a sample book review writing template: 

Note: The template provided is a general guide, and the structure can vary based on personal preferences or specific requirements. 

Book Review Examples

Examples are a great source to learn something new. That’s why below we have provided some book review examples that you can read to understand what it takes to write a great book review.

Fictional Book Review

Here is how to write a book review for a fiction book: 

Non-Fiction Book Review

Here is how to write a book review sample for a non-fictional book: 

How to Write a Book Review PDF Samples

We have collected a bunch of samples for your how to write a book review example queries. Check out and download to enhance your learning: 

Short Book Review For Students

How To Write A Book Review For School

How To Write A Book Review For College

How To Write A Book Review University

Need more examples for better understanding? Check out our book review examples blog for a range of sample book reviews.

Book Review Sample Topics

If you are looking for more book reviews, we have compiled some potential book review topics often designated for student assignments:

  • "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien Discuss the epic fantasy, world-building, and themes of friendship and power.
  • "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen Explore the societal norms and romantic elements in Austen's beloved novel.
  • "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins Analyze the dystopian world, social commentary, and character development in this modern YA classic.
  • "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton Examine the portrayal of social issues and youth identity in this coming-of-age novel.
  • "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley Discuss the futuristic society, technology, and ethical dilemmas in Huxley's dystopian masterpiece.
  • "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker Analyze the narrative of oppression, resilience, and empowerment in Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
  • "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini Explore themes of guilt, redemption, and the impact of personal choices in this powerful novel.
  • "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak Reflect on the impact of literature and the resilience of the human spirit during World War II.
  • "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde Analyze the moral decadence and the consequences of aestheticism in Wilde's classic novel.
  • "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan Examine the intergenerational relationships and cultural dynamics in Tan's exploration of Chinese-American experiences.

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Tips to Write a Book Review Effectively

Here are some essential tips for writing a top-notch book review: 

  • Capture Emotions: Express how the book made you feel. Readers connect with genuine emotional responses.
  • Highlight Unique Aspects: Bring attention to distinctive elements—be it writing style, character depth, or unusual plot twists.
  • Avoid Spoilers: Maintain intrigue by avoiding detailed plot revelations. Let readers discover the story organically.
  • Compare Similar Works: Draw comparisons with other books in the same genre to provide context and perspective.
  • Proper Content Breakdown: Organize your review into distinct body paragraphs, each focusing on a specific aspect like plot, characters, and themes.
  • Consider the Audience: Tailor your review to the likely readership. Evaluate the book's appeal within its target audience.
  • Balance Critique: Offer constructive criticism without solely focusing on flaws. Acknowledge the book's strengths and weaknesses. Also, your thesis statement should guide the overarching tone and focus of your critique.
  • Connect with Themes: Discuss underlying themes and how they resonate with broader societal or personal contexts.
  • Use Vivid Language: Craft your review with descriptive language. Paint a vivid picture without giving away too much.
  • Relate to the Author: Explore the author's background, writing influences, or any personal connections that enhance understanding.
  • Encourage Discussion: Pose questions or points for discussion to engage readers and stimulate conversation.

Wrapping it Up!

This step-by-step guide has equipped you with the tools to craft a compelling book review. From understanding the book's essence to expressing your personal reactions, we've covered it all.  Remember, a well-crafted review is an art that combines analysis and emotion. 

If you find yourself struggling with your book review assignment or seeking professional guidance, don't hesitate to reach out. Our expert writers at MyPerfectWords.com are here to provide the best online writing service . 

Your academic success is our priority. Reach out to us today, and let's turn your book review assignment into a masterpiece!

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 4 stages of a book review.

The 4 stages of reviewing a book are:

  • Introduction the book
  • Drafting an outline of its major chapters
  • Highlighting the significant details of the book
  • Writing a detailed evaluation

What are the parts of a book review?

The main parts of a book review are as following:

  • Summary of the book
  • Background details of the book
  • Credits: author, publisher, etc.
  • Plot and setting

What is the goal of a book review?

The purpose of the book review is to convey information about a particular book in an understandable way. It can be used as a tool by other people who want to know what your review about the book is or how it compares to their own expectations.

Cathy A. (Literature, Marketing)

Cathy has been been working as an author on our platform for over five years now. She has a Masters degree in mass communication and is well-versed in the art of writing. Cathy is a professional who takes her work seriously and is widely appreciated by clients for her excellent writing skills.

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25+ Book Review Templates and Ideas to Organize Your Thoughts

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Danika Ellis

Danika spends most of her time talking about queer women books at the Lesbrary. Blog: The Lesbrary Twitter: @DanikaEllis

View All posts by Danika Ellis

When I was a kid I loved reading, but I hated book reports. It felt impossible to boil a book down to a few lines or even a page of writing. Besides, by the time I had to write the report, I had already forgotten a lot. It never ceases to be painful to try to pull my thoughts and opinions out of my head and put them on the page, especially in a coherent way.

As an adult, I continue to usually find writing book reviews painful . And yet, I maintain a book blog with reviews of all the (bi and lesbian) books I read. Why? For one thing, I want to raise the visibility of these books — or, in the case of a book I loathed, warn other readers of what to expect. It helps me to build community with other book lovers. It’s also a great way to force myself pay attention to how I’m feeling while I’m reading a book and what my thoughts are afterwards. I have learned to take notes as I go, so I have something to refer to by the time I write a review, and it has me notice what a book is doing well (and what it isn’t). The review at the end helps me to organize my thoughts. I also find that I remember more once I’ve written a review.

Once you’ve decided it’s worthwhile to write a review, though, how do you get started? It can be a daunting task. The good news is, book reviews can adapt to whatever you want them to be. A book review can be a tweet with a thumbs up or thumbs down emoji, maybe with a sentence or two of your thoughts; it can also be an in-depth essay on the themes of the book and its influence on literature. Most are going to fall somewhere between those two! Let go of the idea of trying to create the One True Book Review. Everyone is looking for something different, and there is space for GIF-filled squee fests about a book and thoughtful, meditative explorations of a work.

This post offers a variety of book reviews elements that you can mix and match to create a book review template that works for you. Before you get started, though, there are some questions worth addressing.

black pencil on top of ruled paper

Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Book Review Template

Where will you be posting your book reviews.

An Instagram book review will likely look different from a blog book review. Consider which platform you will be using for your book review. You can adapt it for different platforms, or link to your original review, but it’s a good starting point. Instagram reviews tend to be a lot shorter than blog reviews, for instance.

Will you be using the same template every time?

Some book reviewers have a go-to book review template. Others have a different one for each genre, while another group doesn’t use a template at all and just reacts to whatever each book brings up.

Heading or no headings?

When choosing which book review elements to mix and match, you can also decide whether to include a header for each section (like Plot, Characterization, Writing, etc). Headers make reviews easier to browse, but they may not have the professional, essay-style look that you’re going for.

Why are you writing a review?

When selecting which elements to include in your review, consider what the purpose is. Do you want to better remember the plot by writing about it? You probably want to include a plot summary, then. Do you want to help readers decide whether they should read this book? A pros and cons list might be helpful. Are you trying to track something about your reading, like an attempt to read more books in translation or more books by authors of color? Are you trying to buy fewer books and read off your TBR shelf instead? These are all things you can note in a review, usually in a point-form basic information block at the beginning.

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Book Review Templates and Formats

Essay-style.

This is a multi-paragraph review, usually with no headers. It’s the same format most newspapers and academics use for book reviews. Many essay-style reviews use informal categories in their writing, often discussing setting, writing, characters, and plot in their own paragraphs. They usually also discuss the big themes/messages of a story. Here are some questions to consider when writing an essay-style review:

What is the author trying to do? Don’t evaluate a romance novel based on a mystery novel’s criteria. First try to think about what the book was attempting to do, then try to evaluate if they achieved it. You can still note if you didn’t like it, but it’s good to know what it was aiming for first.

What are some of the themes of the story? What big message should the reader take away? Did you agree with what the book seemed to be saying? Why or why not?

How is this story relevant to the world? What is it saying about the time it was written in? About human nature? About society or current issues? Depending on the book, there may be more or less to dig into here.

What did this book make you think about? It may be that the themes in the book were just a launching off point. How did they inspire your own thinking? How did this book change you?

A Classic Book Review

This is probably the most common kind of book review template. It uses a few criteria, usually including Setting, Writing, Characters, and Plot (for a novel). The review then goes into some detail about each element, describing what the book did well, and where it fell short.

The advantage of this format is that it’s very straightforward and applies to almost any fiction read. It can also be adapted–you will likely have more to say about the plot in a mystery/thriller than a character study of a novel. A drawback, though, is that it can feel limiting. You might have thoughts that don’t neatly fit into these categories, or you could feel like you don’t have enough to say about some of the categories.

Pros and Cons

A common format for a Goodreads review is some variation of pros and cons. This might be “What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like” or “Reasons to Bump This Up Your TBR/Reasons to Bump This Down On Your TBR.” This is a very flexible system that can accommodate anything from a few bullet points each to paragraphs each. It gives a good at-a-glance impression of your thoughts (more cons than pros is a pretty good indication you didn’t like it). It also is broad enough that almost all your thoughts can likely be organized into those headings.

This is also a format that is easily mix and matched with the elements listed below. A brief review might give the title, author, genre, some brief selling points of the novel, and then a pros and cons list. Some reviews also include a “verdict” at the end. An example of this format:

review of a novel example

The Tea Dragon Society by Katie O’Neill

🌟 Fantasy All-Ages Comic 💫 Adorable pet dragons ✨ A diverse cast

Pros: This book has beautiful artwork. It is a soothing read, and all the character are supportive of each other. This is a story about friendship and kindness.

Cons: Don’t expect a fast-moving plot or a lot of conflict. This is a very gentle read.

Another approach to the review is not, strictly speaking, a book review template at all. Instead, it’s something like “5 Reasons to Read TITLE by Author” or “The # Most Shocking Plot Twists in X Series.” An advantage of this format is that it can be very to-the-point: if you want to convince people to read a book, it makes sense to just write a list of reasons they should read the book. It may also be more likely to get clicked on–traditional book reviews often get less views than more general posts.

On the other hand, listicles can come off as gimmicky or click-bait. You’ll have to decide for yourself if the book matches this format, and whether you are writing this out of genuine enthusiasm or are just trying to bend a review to be more clickable.

Your Own Original Rating System

Lots of reviewers decide to make their own review format based on what matters to them. This is often accompanied by a ratings system. For instance, the BookTube channel Book Roast uses the CAWPILE system:

CAWPILE is an acronym for the criteria she rates: Characters, Atmosphere, Writing, Plot, Intrigue, Logic, Enjoyment. Each of those are rated 1–10, and the average given is the overall rating. By making your own ratings/review system, you can prioritize what matters to you.

My favorite rating system is Njeri’s from Onyx Pages , because it shows exactly what she’s looking for from books, and it helps her to think about and speak about the things she values:

A “Live Tweet” or Chronological Review

Another format possibility is live tweeting (or updating as you go on Goodreads, or whatever your platform of choice is). This has you document your initial thoughts as you read, and it’s usually informal and often silly. You can add what you’re loving, what you’re hating, and what questions you have as you go.

This is a fun format for when you’re reading a popular book for the first time. That way, other people can cackle at how unprepared you are as you read it. This requires you to remember to always have your phone on you as you read, to get your authentic thoughts as they happen, but it saves on having to write a more in-depth review. Alternately, some people include both a “first impressions” section and a more in-depth analysis section in their final review.

Get Creative

There are plenty of book review templates to choose from and elements to mix-and-match, but you can also respond in a completely original way. You could create a work of art in response to the book! Here are some options:

  • Writing a song , a short story, or a poem
  • Writing a letter to the author or the main character (you don’t have to send it to the author!)
  • Writing an “interview” of a character from the book, talk show style
  • Making a visual response, like a collage or painting
  • Making a book diorama, like your elementary school days!

Mix-and-Match Elements of a Book Review

Most book reviews are made up of a few different parts, which can be combined in lots of different ways. Here is a selection to choose from! These might also give you ideas for your own elements. Don’t take on too much, though! It can easily become an overwhelming amount of information for readers.

Information

Usually a book review starts with some basic information about the book. What you consider basic information, though, is up for interpretation! Consider what you and your audience will think is important. Here are some ideas:

  • The title and author (pretty important)
  • The book’s cover
  • Format (audiobook, comic, poetry, etc)
  • Genre (this can be broad, like SFF, or narrow, like Silkpunk or Dark Academia)
  • Content warnings
  • Source (where did you get the book? Was is borrowed from the library, bought, or were you sent an ARC?)
  • Synopsis/plot summary (your own or the publisher’s)
  • What kind of representation there is in the novel (including race, disability, LGBTQ characters, etc)
  • Anything you’re tracking in your reading, including: authors of color, authors’ country, if a book is in translation, etc

Review Elements

Once you’ve established your basic information, you’re into the review itself! Some of these are small additions to a review, while others are a little more time-intensive.

Bullet point elements:

  • Rating (star rating, thumbs up/down, recommend/wouldn’t recommend, or your own scale)
  • Who would like it/Who wouldn’t like it
  • Read-alikes (or movies and TV shows like the book)
  • Describe the book using an emoji or emojis
  • Describe the book using a gif or gifs
  • Favorite line(s) from the book
  • New vocabulary/the most beautiful words in the novel
  • How it made you feel (in a sentence or two)
  • One word or one sentence review
  • Bullet points listing the selling points of a book
  • BooksandLala’s Scary, Unsettling, and Intrigue ratings, for horror
  • World-building, for fantasy and science fiction titles
  • Art, for comics
  • Narration, for audiobooks
  • Romance, for…romance
  • Heat level, for erotica

Visual elements:

  • Design a graphic (usually incorporating the cover, your star rating, and some other basic info)
  • Take a selfie of yourself holding the book, with your expression as the review
  • Make a mood board
  • Design your own book cover
  • Make fan art

Elements to incorporate into a review:

  • Quick/initial thoughts (often while reading or immediately after reading), then a more in-depth review (common on Goodreads)
  • A list of facts about the book or a character from the book
  • Book club questions about the book
  • Spoiler/non-spoiler sections
  • Research: look up interviews with the author and critique of the book, incorporate it (cited!) into your review
  • Links to other resources, such as interviews or other reviews — especially #OwnVoices reviews
  • A story of your own, whether it’s your experience reading the book, or something it reminded you of

This is not a complete list! There are so many ways to write a book review, and it should reflect your own relationship with books, as well as your audience. If you’re looking for more ways to keep track of your reading, you’ll also like 50+ Beautiful Bujo Spread Ideas to Track Your Reading .

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review of a novel example

  • book marketing / Book Promotion / Book Reviews / book sales

How to Write and Get Great Reviews — With Examples of a Book Review

by Ezra Barany · Published April 25, 2012 · Updated February 5, 2019

Examples of a Cat's Book Review

A lot of authors think that getting many five-star ecstatic reviews will help make more book sales, so they get their family and friends to post rave reviews. The problem is that browsing readers can detect false praise a mile away, so if you just help guide the reviewer on how to sound authentic, your reviews will in fact help you make more sales of your books.

When I evaluate a book that looks good, the first reviews I look at are the one-star reviews. I carefully scrutinize what the reviewer writes.

Why do I start at the one-star reviews? Because I’ve already got the impression the book may be worth getting, so I want to know what’s wrong with the book. You know the expression, “Too good to be true?” I come to a book that looks promising while thinking of that expression.

Since the one-star review doesn’t make the author happy, I know the reviewer’s not a close friend or relative of the author, so whatever the reviewer has to say may be more trustworthy. Also, I like reading one-star reviews because it can be fun to see someone ruthlessly tear a book apart if they do it with wit and humor.

If I get the impression that the reviewer is being biased or unfair, or their reason for not liking the book is insignificant, then I might look at the two-star reviews, and I’ll soon go to the four-star and five-star reviews.

Ideally, you want a review that combines both the excitement of how good your book is with the honesty and credibility of a one-star reviewer.

What Makes a Good Review?

Like I said, when people see five-star reviews with praise, they often think the reviewer is a friend of the author. Browsers of books will then dismiss those reviews as being biased. So actually, those are not good reviews. The best reviews are ones that sound sincere and come from a place of authentic criticism.

From beginning to end, here’s what a good review should have :

1. Typical Reading (To show where the reviewer is coming from)

The reviewer should explain where they’re coming from. Do they usually read science thrillers? Erotic romance? Knowing what the reviewer usually reads helps us know through what lens they’re looking when they comment on a book.

2. Pleasantly Surprised (To show that the reviewer can be trusted)

If the reviewer says they knew the book was going to be great because the author is their son, we won’t trust the review. But if the reviewer says they didn’t think the author or the book would be all that interesting, we feel like the reviewer has confided in us.

“I was pleasantly surprised” is a great comment. When a reviewer says she wasn’t expecting much and was pleasantly surprised, that tells us we can trust her. She’s being honest. As prospective buyers of the book reading her review, when we learn that we can trust the reviewer, we’ll be willing to read what else she has to say.

3. Reader’s Experience

Phrases like “I couldn’t put the book down,” or “It had me routing for the heroine,” are very useful. The overall experience is a great way to convey not only the value of the book but also what experience one can expect when reading it.

4. Specific Praise

It’s good to have content like, “This was a good book, I liked it a lot.” But it’s better to have specifics. “The writing was captivating,” “The characters were believable and I cared about them,” “The plot had so many twists and turns I couldn’t put the book down.” Specific praise helps browsing readers get a better sense of why your book is so good.

5. The Worst Problem (Back to the trust) + 6. The Best Part of the Book (To counter the one problem)

Why mention the worst problem about the book? By allowing the reviewer to reveal the worst problem of your book you gain two things. The superficial advantage is that the browsing reader will trust the review more. (We assume that anyone that mentions something bad about the book is being completely up front.)

The best advantage of revealing the worst problem with the book is that you reduce the risk of having someone who dislikes your style of book read it and give a harsh review of it. Is the problem that the characters are too stereotypical? Any reader who hates stereotypical characters will avoid the book and the only readers the book attracts will be ones who don’t mind stereotypical characters.

Better to prepare readers on what the biggest problem of your book is so they can decide if they’re willing to dismiss the problem and enjoy everything else your book has to offer.

Robert Cialdini, a man who got a degree in the psychology of influence, pointed out to me that one method of influence is to call out the worst part of the product and then hit them with the best. Have you heard the commercial for L’Oreal products? “It’s expensive, but you’re worth it!” so the reviewer should list the biggest problem, such as “I thought the characters could have been described better,” and then end with the best part about the book to show why the big problem doesn’t matter: “But the journey the story took me through was worth it.”

7. Recommend

When the reviewer ends by saying she’d recommend the book to others, it’s an opportunity to clarify the kinds of readers who’d love the book. By stating something like “I would recommend this book to anyone who likes paranormal romance,” the reader can immediately know if they fall in the category of people who would like the book.

(You can edit before posting.)

Examples of a Book Review

Here are examples of a book review pulled from combinations of actual reviews I received for  The Torah Codes with the corresponding numbered parts of a good review:

Examples of a book trailer for The Torah Codes

(1.) I’m not much into the subject matter that the title suggests. (2.) I was a little concerned that this book was going to have an agenda about Torah codes, but I was pleasantly surprised. (3.)  The Torah Codes has a compelling story line and was actually hard to put down. (4.) The character Nathan is likable and often very funny, and the action kept me turning the pages. (5.) I must nitpick on one issue, though. Sophia, the main female character, is a Tarot card reader, which although an interesting twist to add, I would have liked the real meanings of the cards to have been used, not strange ones that are never used. (6.) This however, probably won’t affect the majority of the audience, so it’s definitely not something that should deter anyone from reading the book. This is a fun, quick-paced story that will not disappoint. (7.) It’s a fun book to share with a special friend.

How do you get the reviewer to write a well-written review?

When you request a review, offer to send them guidelines. If they respond by saying they are open to guidelines, list the above seven parts as questions for them to answer.

  • What books do they usually read or like to read?
  • What pleasantly surprised them about your book, and what experience did they have reading it?
  • What specifically worked for them? The characters? The plot? The writing? How so?
  • Also, what was the biggest aspect they didn’t like?
  • And what one thing, the biggest praise they have for the book, made the aspect they didn’t like meaningless?
  • Lastly, who would they recommend the book to?

Send them a few examples so that they get the idea. Also, I believe browsing readers like to read short reviews. So tell them it’s okay to keep it at about 300 to 500 words.

For those extra busy readers who are open to having you write the review for their approval, practice by writing one for your own book in the comments below! Include a link to where we can get your book!

review of a novel example

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Thanks for the help…i’m always worried that i will not say what needs to be said! 🙂 This will give me some ideas of what’s needed and what’s not. I won’t listen all the time but this can help me decide when i do need to follow the rules for the good of the book.

[…] your platform. Nick Thacker advises writing guest posts to sell more books, and Ezra Barany tells how to write and get great reviews, complete with example book […]

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You present a nifty formula.

Perhaps I should try it out on a couple of books on Amazon tomorrow to see if it works for me?

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Very helpful and realistic advice. It’s just hard to imagine encouraging people to write a 1-star review. I hope they can still give the 5-stars of enthusiasm they seem to have for my compelling memoir “The Woman in the Photograph,” yet give an honest evaluation of their experience. Thanks for your wisdom.

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I found that reading glowing 5-Star reviews can be deceiving, and if I’ve read the book and know the thing actually stinks, I’m assured these people are friends. What I don’t like is doing reviews for someone and them refusing to let me put in a 3-Star review or lower. Like Ezra said, those are the honest ones.

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The Post is very helpful, especially points 5 and 6. I also look at the least favorable reviews first, to get a sense of expectations that the reader may have, that for whatever reason did not come to fruition. Thanks for sharing these great guidelines!

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You’re so welcome, Mary! I hope you’ll consider writing some book reviews for WritersFunZone!

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I agree with Mary. This was a very helpful article and has helped me understand how to write a better book review without going into a long analysis which I don’t have time to do for every book I read.

So glad to hear it, Ann! I look forward to your reviews.

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This is very helpful..not all post gives a detailed article Kindly post more ..I’m much delighted Just started to read books as i know it would be of much help to an individual..I’m not a that smart but hoping to put in my best

Merli, I’m glad you found it helpful.

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I have always struggled with just the right things to say for a book review, wanting it to be relevant and helpful to the reader. This list of criteria is the perfect structure and has inspired me to write some reviews where I have been hesitating. Thank you!

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Book Review

Book Review Examples

Last updated on: Nov 20, 2023

Good Book Review Examples to Help you Write a Great Review

By: Nova A.

Reviewed By: Chris H.

Published on: Mar 30, 2021

Book Review Examples

A book review is a common assignment that allows the students to demonstrate the author’s intentions in the book. It also provides them with the chance not only to criticize but also to give constructive criticism on how they can make improvements.

The purpose of writing a book review is to come up with your opinion about the author’s ideas presented in the book. On the other hand, a book analysis is completely based on opinions that are relevant to the book.

Writing a review is something that can be done with any book that you read. However, some genres are harder to write. But with a proper plan, you can easily write a great review on any book.

Read some short book review examples in this guide. They will help you understand the key elements of writing a great review in no time.

Book Review Examples

On this Page

Academic Book Review Examples

If you are assigned to write a book review, referring to some examples will be of great help. In addition, reading examples before starting the writing process will help you understand what elements are needed for a great book review. There are also many review sites online you can get help from.

Academic book reviews follow a fairly simple structure. It usually includes an introduction, middle paragraphs, and a conclusion that sums up all the ideas.

For a great book review, here are the things you need to focus on during the writing process.

  • The main argument presented by the author
  • Author’s methodologyAppropriateness for the audience
  • Relationship to the real world

Have a look at the following book review examples for kids before beginning the writing process.

Book Review Examples for Middle School Students

Book Review Example For Kids

Book Review Examples for High School Students

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Book Review Examples for College Students

Book Review Examples for University Students

How to Write a Book Review - Examples

If you don’t know how to write a book review, look at the following steps.

The first step is to plan and create an outline that includes all the points that you will have to cover in the review. Don’t forget to include all the information about the characters, plot information, and some other parts of the chosen book.

The three parts of a book review are:

1. Provide a Summary

What is the book about? Write about the main characters and what is the conflict that is discussed in the book.

2. Provide Your Evaluation

Share your thoughts about the book and what elements work best.

3. Rate the Book

Rate and recommend the book to others who will enjoy reading this book.

If you need to submit a book review soon, we suggest you start reading some book reviews online. Here you can also find some good book review writing examples to understand how to craft each section of a book review.

Book Review Introduction Examples

Thesis Statement Book Review Examples

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Book Review Conclusion Examples

Critical Book Review Examples

A book review is a critical evaluation of the book, movie, or any other literary work. It has two goals: the first is to inform the readers about the content of the book, and the second is to evaluate your judgment about the book.

A book review is more than a book report. A review is basically a critical essay that evaluates the merits of a literary work. The purpose of writing a book review is not to prove that you have read a book but to show that you think critically about the chosen book.

When you are asked to write a critical book review, you need to identify, summarize and evaluate the ideas of the author. In simpler words, you will be examining and evaluating another person’s work from your point of view.

Science Book Review Examples

A scientific book review will contain the same elements as writing a review for a fiction book; some elements might vary. When you are reviewing a scientific text, you need to pay attention to the writing style and the validity of the content.

Most students turn to non-fictional sources of information. It is important to make sure the information you provide in your review is factual and scientific.

Book review writing can be difficult if you don’t know how to follow the standard protocols. That’s where our reliable book review writing service aims to provide the necessary help.

No matter what your academic level is, we can provide you with the best book review writing help. This type of writing assignment can be tricky and time-consuming. So, if you don’t know how to crack this task, better get professional help.

We at 5StarEssays.com provide exceptional book review writing help. Not only book reviews, but we also provide the best ‘ write an essay for me ’ help to students. Moreover, we also have an AI essay writer to help you with tight deadlines, give it a try now!

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you write a book review example.

Here are some steps that will help you to write a book review example.

  • Start writing with few sentences and describe what the book is all about
  • Focus on your thoughts
  • Mention things that you dont like about the book.
  • Summarize your thoughts.
  • Give rating to the book.

Nova A.

Thesis, Law

As a Digital Content Strategist, Nova Allison has eight years of experience in writing both technical and scientific content. With a focus on developing online content plans that engage audiences, Nova strives to write pieces that are not only informative but captivating as well.

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All the Light We Cannot See: Book Review Example

All the Light We Cannot See: Book Review Example

A book review is a piece of writing which provides critical evaluation of the book. Usually it is not long and has a certain structure. The review gives readers the summary of the book including the information about the author; it defines its genre, outlines the plot and gives critical characteristics of the characters. Besides, the review of a book may include the analysis of the author’s writing style and the language of the story under discussion. It also provides suggestions whether it could be recommended for the readers to read and whether the latter will enjoy it or not. Below you will find an example of a book review.

Book Review Example

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is a historical novel written in 2014. In 2015 the novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize as the best fiction book. The novel was on the list of The New York Times as one of the best-selling novels of 2014.

The story is set in France and Germany in the years of the World War II, namely during the German occupation of France. The central figures are two children – German boy and a blind French girl who are struggling through the horrors of the war to survive. The girl’s name is Marie-Laure LeBlanc. She is a six-year old girl whose father, a widower, works at the Natural History Museum in the capital of France. Marie-Laure cannot see, but she has mastered the skill of finding her way in the labyrinth of Paris streets using a scale-model that her father has made. The girl’s father is a good teacher – he hides the presents in the elaborately carved boxes to teach her see using other senses rather than seeing with her eyes, which is a good way to sharpen her mind. She is free to explore the treasures of the museum. The museum boasts of an extremely valuable if not priceless blue diamond, known as the Sea of Flames. The diamond is said to have some superpower: a person who keeps it is granted eternal life but those he loves are cursed being doomed to live in misfortune.

In 1940, after the Nazis’s invasion of France, Marie-Laure leaves Paris, together with her father, to find a refuge in Saint-Malo, where the girl’s great uncle Etienne lives. As it turns out, the Sea of Flames or presumably one of the copies of the diamond are entrusted to Marie-Laure’s father to prevent it from being seized by the Germans. The man hides the stone in the model of the house belonging to Etienne. Sometime later, the Germans arrest him and his further fate remains unknown. Marie-Laure is left in care of Etienne, her great-uncle, and the housekeeper. Shortly after this event, a Nazi who hunts for treasure starts his chase after the diamond.

The parallel plotline takes the readers to the town of Zollverein in Germany. The main character, Werner Pfennig, has no parents but has a preternatural gift to understand circuitry. One day Werner and his sister Jutta find a broken radio. Having repaired it, the young boy hears some Frenchman who is talking about science. This is how his enchantment with science starts. Thanks to his extraordinary skills in radio mechanics and love of science, he finds himself in the school which trains the military elite of the Nazi. Having graduated from the school, he joins the Wehrmacht.

In 1944, the Allied forces land in Normandy, and the unit where Werner carries on his military service is assigned to a special mission in Saint-Malo. Werner needs to find and kill a mysterious person who sends broadcasts against the Nazi regime and this is where Werner and Marie-Laure meet. It turns out that Etienne, the great-uncle of MarieLaure, transmits the broadcasts for purposes of the French Resistance. Meanwhile, the search for the Sea of Flame continues. We will not reveal the ending of the book. Let this pleasure of discovery be left for the readers.

In his novel, Doerr creates an intricate plot to the point of intolerable suspense thus keeping the readers’ attention up to the last page of the book. He travels back in time while revealing the facts which make the story more and more intriguing. The tension is kept high up to the end when the puzzle-box opens and the readers find the treasure inside. The novel is absorbing the reader’s attention to the point that it is hard to stop reading until one finds out the clue. This is a good choice for those who are on a holiday or travel a long distance trying to fill up their spare time with thrilling reading.

As for the style of the book, it should be noted that it is quite relentless and dramatic. There is a wide use of the epithets which make the novel sound rich and voluptuous to some extent, although sentences often seem tobe short and abrupt. Doerr pays great attention to detail which helps the readers to imagine the picture vividly to the point that one cannot wait for the next turn in the lives of the main characters.

All the Light We Cannot See review is a book review example that can be ordered on the website. If you need any book review help, you will find support of our book review writing service .

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Book Review Writing Examples

Examples: learn from the efforts of others.

Learning how to write strong reviews takes time and not a little effort. Reading the reviews others have done can help you get a feel for the flow and flavor of reviews.

If I Never Forever Endeavor Review by Hayden, age 4, Southeast Michigan Mensa

If I Never Forever Endeavor cover

This book was about a bird who didn't yet know how to fly.

The bird has to decide if it will try to fly, but it was not sure if it wants to. The bird thought, "If I never forever endeavor" then I won't ever learn. On one wing, he worries he might fail and on the other wing he thinks of how he may succeed. He worries that if he tries, he may get lost in the world. That makes him want to stay in his nest where he's safe.

I think this book would help other children to learn that trying new things can be scary, but sometimes when we try, we can find things that make us happy too. And this book will help others know that mistakes are okay and part of learning.

My favorite part is that the bird tried and learned that she could fly. I also liked that I read this book because it gave me a chance to talk to mom about making mistakes and how I don't like making them. Then I learned they are good and part of learning.

Boys and girls who are 3 to 8 years old would like this book because it teaches about trying a new thing and how it's important to get past being scared so you can learn new things.

I give the book 5 stars since I think it's important for other children to learn about courage.

Flesh & Blood So Cheap Review by Umar B., age 8, Central New Jersy Mensa

Flesh & Blood So Cheap cover

I liked this book. People who are interested in national disasters and US history as well as immigration will most probably be interested in reading this book.

Readers can gain knowledge of what it was like to work in New York City in the early 1900s. One of the things that was especially interesting was that there were no safety laws at work. Also, there was a big contrast between the rich and the poor. Some people may not like this book because it is very depressing, but it is an important event in history to remember.

This book was very well written. It has black and white photos along with descriptions of the photos. These photos give us a better idea of what people's lives were like. This book is suitable for 9-20 year olds.

I give this book 5 stars.

Galaxy Zach: Journey to Juno Review by Young Mensan Connor C., age 6, Boston Mensa

Galaxy Zach: Journey to Juno cover

Journey To Juno is the second book of the Galaxy Zack series. It is just as good as the first one. It's awesome!

Zack joins the Sprockets Academy Explorers Club at school. They fly on a special trip to Juno, a new planet no one has ever visited. Zack gets paired up with Seth, the class bully, and that's dreadful but Zack is excited when he finds a huge galaxy gemmite. A gemmite that large had not been found in 100 years! Kids will love this book!

Boys and girls will both like it. It's an easy chapter book with pictures on every page. I love the illustrations. I think ages 6-8 would like this but younger kids would like the story being read to them.

My favorite parts are the galactic blast game (it is similar to baseball except there are robots playing), recess at Zack's school where everything is 3-D holographic images, the rainbow river in a crystal cave on Juno, and the galaxy gemmite that Zack finds on Juno. I also loved when a life-size holographic image of his Earth friend appears in Zack's room because he calls him on a hyperphone. I give this book one hundred stars! There is a "to be continued" at the end so you have to read the next book see what's in store. I can't wait to find out what happens!!!

I Capture the Castle Review by Lauren W., age 17, Mensa in Georgia

I Capture the Castle cover

Dodie Smith's novel I Capture the Castle is a journey through the mind of a young writer as she attempts to chronicle her daily life. Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain has recently learned to speed-write, and she decides to work on her writing skills by describing the actions and conversations of those around her.

Cassandra lives in a fourteenth-century English castle with an interesting cast of characters: her beautiful older sister, Rose; her rather unsociable author father and his second wife, artist-model Topaz; Stephen, the garden boy; a cat and a bull terrier; and sometimes her brother Thomas when he is home from school. One fateful day they make the acquaintance of the Cotton family, including the two sons, and a web of tangled relationships ensues.

While I definitely recommend this book to other readers, I would recommend it to older teenagers, mainly because it will resonate better with them. The writing is tame enough that younger teens could also read it, but most of the characters are adults or on the verge of adulthood. Older readers would take the most from it since they can not only relate, but they may also better pick up on and appreciate Cassandra's sometimes subtle humor.

Over the course of the novel, Cassandra undergoes a definite transformation from child to mature young adult, even though it's only over the course of several months. I love that I could see into her mindset and read exactly what she was feeling when she thought out situations. Her thoughts flowed well and moved the book along very quickly.

Cassandra's narrative voice is wonderful. She is serious at times, but also very witty, which makes for an engaging read. It feels absolutely real, as though I'm reading someone's actual journal. Sometimes I forget that I am reading a story and not a real-life account. Her emotions and the dialogue are so genuine, and they are spot-on for a seventeen-year-old girl in her situation.

Cassandra has many wonderful insights on life, on topics ranging from writing to faith to matters of the heart. I personally have had some of the same thoughts as Cassandra, except Ms. Smith was able to put them into words.

Capture the Castle should be essential reading for aspiring writers, those looking for historical fiction or romance, or anyone who loves reading amazing classic books. Dodie Smith is an exceptional writer, and I Capture the Castle is a book that will never become obsolete.

Frankenstein's Cat Review by Zander H., age 12, Mid-America Mensa

Frankenstein's Cat cover

I appreciated Frankenstein's Cat for its fascinating explanation about the often baffling subject of bioengineering and its sister sciences. Emily Anthes explains the many sides of today's modern technology, such as gene modification, cloning, pharmaceutical products (from the farm), prosthesis, animal tag and tracking and gene cryogenics. This book provides a well-rounded summary of these complicated sciences without being boring or simply factual. Her real world examples take us on a journey from the farm, to the pet store and then from the pharmacy to the frozen arc.

Have you ever wondered if the neighborhood cat is spying on you? Read about Operation Acoustic Kitty and find out if this feline fantasy fiction or fact. Do you think bugs are creepy? What about a zombified cyborg beetle? Is Fido so special that you want two of him? Money can buy you an almost exact copy of your pooch BUT don't expect the same personality. Emily Anthes makes you crave more information. She makes you want to know the future of Earth's flora and fauna, as well as humanity itself.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who desires a guide to the future of biological science and technology. Frankenstein's Cat is best read by the light of a glow-in-the-dark fish, while cuddling your favorite cloned dog and drinking a glass of genetically modified milk.

About Marsupials Review by Connor C., age 6, Boston Mensa

About Marsupials cover

About Marsupials is the title so the book is about...marsupials, of course. It's non-fiction. I really think everyone would like the book. I think someone who likes animals would especially like to read it.

The glossary of facts in the back of About Marsupials is the most useful part. I thought the most interesting parts were that some marsupials have their pouch at their back legs and one marsupial, the Yellow-footed Rock Wallaby, is very small but can jump 13 feet wide!

Kids in the 4-8 age range would like this book. Even though it's not a story book, 4 year olds would like the few words on each page and they would love the beautiful pictures. But older kids would like it because of all the facts in the back of the book. There's a lot of information for each animal. I think boys and girls (and parents) would enjoy reading it. This book is very interesting. I give it 4 stars.

Mapping the World Review by Umar A., age 10, Central New Jersey Mensa

Mapping the World cover

Every day, people around the world use maps. Whether it is an airplane pilot or businessman, housewife or museum group, maps have always and will continue to provide useful information for all.

Mapping the World talks about the uses of maps, as well as how to differentiate between the type of map projection and type of map.

In this series, we travel to the past and learn about historical mapmakers, from Claudius Ptolemy (who stated the idea that the Earth is at the center of the universe) to Gerardus Mercator (who created one of the most widely used map projections) and more. This series goes into tremendous detail on the cartographer's life and maps. We then journey to the present era to learn about map projections and the diverse types of maps used today. You might ask, "What is the difference between the two? They sound the same to me." No map projection is perfect, because you cannot really flatten a sphere into a rectangle. An uncolored projection could be used in many ways. We could use it for population concentration, highways, land elevation, and so many other things!

For example, we could make a topographic map of the U.S., which shows land elevation. We could make it a colorful map that shows the amount of pollution in different areas, or it could be a population map, or it could even be a map that shows the 50 states, their capitals and borders! Our last step in this amazing excursion is the near future, where we see some hypothetical solutions as to what maps will be used for. Currently, we are working on better virtual map technology.

Now, scientists have been able to put maps on phones. Back in the early 1900s, people had to lug a lot of maps around to find your way from place to place, or just keep asking for directions. Now, all the information is on a phone or global positioning system (GPS). It is amazing how much maps have changed technology and the world in this century.

The Mapping the World 8-book set goes into amazing levels of detail. It is a long read, but it gives an immense range and amount of information that you would not find in any other book or series on maps. The flowing way the chapters and books are organized makes it easy to link passages from different books in this series together. Mapping the World is a treasure box, filled with the seeds of cartography. Collect and plant them, and you soon will have the fruits of cartography, beneficial to those who want to be cartographers. Use this series to the utmost, then the fruits of mapping will be sweet for all who endeavor to succeed in cartography.

This series of lessons was designed to meet the needs of gifted children for extension beyond the standard curriculum with the greatest ease of use for the educator. The lessons may be given to the students for individual self-guided work, or they may be taught in a classroom or a home-school setting. Assessment strategies and rubrics are included at the end of each section. The rubrics often include a column for "scholar points," which are invitations for students to extend their efforts beyond that which is required, incorporating creativity or higher level technical skills.

‘The Alternative’ is just the book economists should read — and won’t

Journalist nick romeo lays out eight examples of what we gain when we think about morality alongside money.

review of a novel example

In 1991, long before Lawrence Summers claimed, while president of Harvard, that women were innately disinclined toward science, he served as chief economist of the World Bank. In this capacity, too, he distinguished himself. “I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted,” he wrote to his colleagues in a memo. “I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.” After all, he reasoned, the rest of the world would not lose out on much money or value if poor people with shorter life spans sickened and died; it would be far more profitable to keep healthier populations with higher incomes alive. (Summers later told a Senate committee that the memo was satirical and “never intended in any way as a serious policy recommendation.”) José Lutzenberger, Brazil’s environment minister, replied to the memo: “Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane.”

According to Nick Romeo, we could say much the same thing to the majority of contemporary economists. In Romeo’s diligently researched and admirably principled new book, “ The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy ,” he argues that the world wrought by neoclassical economics is “perfectly logical” — but horrifically inhumane.

Fortunately, it is not the only option. The eight case studies in “The Alternative” present diverse solutions to the problems of paltry wages, rampant unemployment, unstable housing and exploitative labor practices. At a time when global and national politics often overshadow local victories, it is heartening to hear of a successful workers’ cooperative in Spain, or of the small city in Portugal that empowers its residents to determine how to allocate its budget, or of the handful of American cities where there are plans to establish “a public-sector platform to create more humane and efficient labor markets” — in effect, to reconceptualize gig work as a public utility so as to protect workers while allowing them to enjoy flexible schedules.

“The Alternative” is a brisk and sensible book that details bold and ingenious proposals in measured tones. Romeo, a writer for the New Yorker and a professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, has the approachable style of a moderate but the bold convictions of a radical. Though the tactics he chronicles differ dramatically, they are all designed to reimagine “the economy as a place of moral action and accountability,” and they are all examples of the sort of compassionate creativity that Summers and his ilk should, but probably won’t, dare to muster. Indeed, “The Alternative” is the sort of book that Summers and his ilk should, but probably won’t, read and learn from.

It was not always thus. “The insight that economics is in essence a subfield of philosophy was once widespread,” Romeo writes wistfully. In an earlier era, many of the subject’s leading lights were commendably humanistic: Adam Smith is renowned as both a moral philosopher and the founder of the dismal science.

But in the intervening centuries, mainstream academics have adopted what Romeo describes as “a technocratic, quasi-scientific vocabulary,” an arcane lexicon that “obscures the ethical and political questions that lie at the heart of the discipline.” Although “the major topics of economics are inescapably moral and political,” many of today’s thinkers refuse to countenance value judgments, much less acknowledge that their supposedly neutral methods are rife with questionable assumptions.

Romeo suggests that their approach is not merely intellectually dishonest: It also plays straight into the hands of the wealthy. By framing the market as “a realm of immutable laws and forces,” he writes, neoclassical economists deter us from “pursuing alternative arrangements” — ones that might allow a much broader swath of people to live fulfilling and comfortable lives.

Because mainstream economists refuse to rethink their field, the task has fallen to organizers and policymakers on the ground, and the bulk of “The Alternative” is dedicated to the quietly heroic figures who are implementing novel initiatives in their own communities. Romeo writes of the Austrian town of Gramatneusiedl, which has pioneered a job guarantee program in which “participants shape the work they do,” coming together to “brainstorm with social workers about their skills and interests”; the annual climate budgeting process in Oslo, during which every department in the city “identifies specific policies and actions to reduce its emissions”; and the “true price” system at De Aanzet, an independent grocery store in the Netherlands, that takes the environmental and social costs of production into account. For instance, De Aanzet charges 3.97 euros (about $4.25) for a kilo of tomatoes when it would normally charge 3.75 euros (about $4).

One pathbreaker who features prominently in “The Alternative” is Aaron Seyedian, founder of Well-Paid Maids, a cleaning service in Washington that pays workers $22 an hour before tips and provides them with “an expansive benefits package with twenty-four days of paid time off annually, predictable schedules, employer-paid commuting costs, and excellent health, dental, and vision benefits.” In depressing contrast, “the median hourly wage for cleaners in Washington, D.C., is $15.44 an hour, and many lack sick leave, vacation, or unemployment insurance.”

Federal minimum-wage legislation is no help whatsoever: Since 2009, it has guaranteed only the meager and unlivable sum of $7.25 an hour. The living wage calculator favored by a number of prominent corporations, a tool devised by MIT economist Amy Glasmeier, shows that “a typical American single parent of two children earning $7.25 per hour would need to work 138 hours per week to earn her living wage standard.” Even those who support a more generous “living wage” are often woefully unambitious.

By Romeo’s own admission, the measures he surveys are only stopgaps. Neither companies offering living wages of their own volition nor programs awarding living wage certifications to unusually upstanding employers are a suitable substitute for laws mandating the fair payment of workers. Romeo is emphatic that “only living wage legislation can prevent some firms from undercutting their more ethical competitors.” We could — and Romeo generally does — tell a similar story about most of the proposals in “The Alternative.”

Still, as long as the powers that be continue to twiddle their thumbs and consult Lawrence Summers, the strategies in “The Alternative” have an important place: They are not a “replacement for these political instruments,” Romeo tells us, so much as “a preparation for them.” At a minimum, many of them could induce companies and consumers to behave better.

Orthodox economists are likely to regard these interventions into the market as inefficient. As Romeo points out, however, the costs of prioritizing capital gains over human and planetary flourishing are already vast, even if they are difficult to measure and quantify (and even if the ruling classes have every incentive to turn a blind eye to them). While true prices may prove higher for Western consumers, they do not represent an increase in total cost but “a shift in who pays .” Criminally undercompensated child laborers and victims of climate-induced displacement in other parts of the world already pay an unconscionably high price for the groceries we buy so cavalierly. Similarly, as the founder of Well-Paid Maids tells Romeo, the wages he offers his employees are:

… what it costs, right? You’re either paying for it now by actually paying the price of the service in a way that allows somebody to live, or you’re paying for it in the externality, where you’re supporting a business model that doesn’t allow people to take care of themselves. You’re paying for it in the societal and generational costs of how that person’s kids are going to grow up and what choices people are going to make in an environment of scarcity.

It also happens to be true that many of the initiatives in “The Alternative” prove straightforwardly lucrative. “Multiple academic studies have found that cooperatives with worker governance and ownership are as or more profitable than conventional firms,” Romeo reports, and Well-Paid Maids has flourished in a way that even the most conventional economist could appreciate: The company was yielding $600,000 in annual revenue just two years after its founding.

But Romeo stresses in no uncertain terms that ethical scruples come before the bottom line. Even when we would hemorrhage money by acting morally, we stand to lose something much more important if we fail to devise an economy in which we can treat one another like human beings.

This is precisely the sort of appeal that has no place in neoclassical economics. Its champions will no doubt object that consumers, whom they think of as ruthlessly rational actors, are unwilling to make financial sacrifices in the name of high-minded ideals. But in fact, people have consistently demonstrated that they are willing to pay more to protect the workers responsible for the goods they purchase. After De Aanzet adopted a true-price model, “business increased by 5 percent.”

Does it follow that the store’s customers were simply irrational? Romeo does not sound irrational in the least when he writes, “It feels wrong that the person who cares for your children or delivers your packages is not paid enough to go out to dinner once a month, save anything for retirement, or take a vacation.” Like the clientele of De Aanzet, he is simply embracing a more expansive and more intuitive form of rationality — one that counts moral and social harms as costs.

For who, at the end of the day, is more logical? The companies willing to countenance child labor to produce cheap coffee, and the economists willing to dump toxins on the most impoverished people? Or Romeo, who wants to live in a world where everyone has a chance at a decent life?

Becca Rothfeld is the nonfiction book critic for The Washington Post.

The Alternative

How to Build a Just Economy

By Nick Romeo

PublicAffairs. 372 pp. $32

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review of a novel example

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The Orange on the Frozen Ice

How true detective: night country ranks in the canon of polar horror..

Mild spoilers for all six episodes of True Detective: Night Country below.

As someone born in the Land of the Midnight Sun, and a longtime traveler through its wilderness, I noticed my ears perk up when the trailers rolled out for Issa López’s Max series True Detective: Night Country . The frigid setting of Alaska is near and dear to my heart; this season, which concludes on Sunday, also promised to combine some of my favorite genres—noir, suspense, and supernatural horror. To live in wintertime Alaska is to cultivate an affinity for extreme cold and darkness, or at least a stoic indifference. The oldest, most rural communities are akin to ice-bright stars in a constellation—geographically isolated, adrift upon a black sea. Reachable by radio wave, by sailing, by flight. Their streets and roads spiral from town center axes into surrounding hills worn to the gumline by eons of wind, connecting to nothing, vanishing like the ends of hemorrhaged veins into the vast empty. It’s a land where voices echo and the wind moaning across the tundra sounds an awful lot like ghosts. Season 4’s aesthetic captures the essence of loneliness, of estrangement, particular to the Arctic.

Where does Night Country land in the tradition of “polar” horror and suspense? One can trace this season’s roots to 19 th -century works The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe (1838) and Jules Verne’s An Antarctic Mystery (1897), via Night Country ’s foregrounding of Tsalal Research Station, where eight scientists have vanished under exceedingly ominous circumstances. Night Country also joins a cinematic catalog that includes, among many others, 1951’s The Thing From Another World (and John Carpenter’s seminal 1982 remake); Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001); Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1997); 30 Days of Night (2007); and the more recent streaming series Fortitude (Season 1, 2015) and The Terror (Season 1, 2018). While Night Country bears certain hallmarks of these works (conspiracy, corruption, paranoia, isolation), an ethereal undercurrent of magical realism sets it apart from the pack. Despite the show’s heritage as the latest installment of a well-established series and its complement of inescapable references to a broader array of like-minded narratives, Night Country turns out to be as slippery as a seal and just as elusive.

Season 4 dispenses with the violent, broken, hypermasculine protagonists of Season 1, inverting the formula by centering women and affording them greater agency in what is otherwise classic mystery noir. Historically, this has been a male-dominated subgenre in terms of POV characters, which makes Night Country ’s take refreshing. Smilla’s Sense of Snow —the 1992 novel by Peter Høeg, as well as the 1997 film, each of which featured an alienated, yet persistent female protagonist—certainly left tracks for López to follow. The thing about noir is that irrespective of gender, everybody’s generally in crisis. Characters react to trauma along a predictable spectrum. They self-medicate via sex and liquor, or stronger. And when push comes to shove, hash is bound to get settled with violence.

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Rather than a 180-degree reversal, divergences between Seasons 1 and 4 tend to be a matter of mirroring and jagged, splintered refraction. The detectives at the heart of this darkness drink, fornicate, fight at the drop of a deerstalker hat, and brood with the best of male hard-bitten protagonists from Alaska to Scandinavia. Jodie Foster’s Liz Danvers is a cool and competent foil, as we’d expect; meanwhile, Kali Reis’ Evangeline Navarro seethes with volcanic wrath. Both cops harbor secrets. Their collegial enmity and bitterness easily rival the dysfunctional Season 1 duo of Rustin Cohle and Martin Hart.

If you squint, Liz Danvers presents as a version of Clarice Starling, hero of The Silence of the Lambs . Night Country posits a Clarice who never escaped her small-town provenance, never exorcised the demons of the barn, never shipped off to finishing school at Quantico. No, this character inherits the post of local sheriff and is duly subsumed by the squalor and pettiness of the role. Consequently, Danvers is less refined, less constrained than Starling. Indeed, beneath her dogged, by-the-book persona, she’s wildly undisciplined, a boozy philanderer willing to abet a murder or two if the cause is righteous. Devastated by personal tragedy, terminally cynical, and trapped in the purgatorial amber of small-town Alaska, she’s the deep roller Dr. Lecter warned her alter ego about.

Evangeline Navarro is the nucleus of Season 4: the living, reacting causeway traversing worlds and cultures. She is a damaged crusader who won’t abandon an old murder investigation and a seer with one foot in the realms beyond, plagued by whispering spirits. Most important, she bears witness to the numinous. In a moment of overboiling frustration, she fishes an orange from her parka pocket and hurls it across the ice. The orange mysteriously rolls back to her from the opposite direction, and we are reminded of an earlier scene featuring a close-up of a copy of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985), abandoned half-read at Tsalal Station. This conjures to mind a passage of the novel wherein Judge Holden, the big bad, enthralls a band of scalp hunters with his fireside meditation on the natures of God, man, and warfare. He flings a coin into the desert night, only for the object to unerringly arc back into his hand. The recurring orange and coin suggest the mutability of physics, of reality at large. Time is circular, distance illusory, free will a charade. All matter, all space, condenses to an origin point if your field of view is broad enough. Or maybe it’s a parlor trick and we’re rubes. Chicanery and magic bear a close resemblance in the dark. The same could be argued of events in Ennis, the perspectives of its residents.

I appreciate Easter eggs as much as the next guy, but Season 4 verges on overstuffed in the areas of fan service, hidden cookies, and callbacks. Danvers’ child, Holden, as in Judge Holden. “Time is a flat circle.” Harking back to Season 1, and against all logic, the Tuttle empire has dramatically expanded in scope. Rustin Cohle’s dad, Travis, is a revenant; his dad’s lover, Rose Aguineau, a druid. Obsession with vision, as demonstrated by the appearance of a one-eyed polar bear (an echo of Rust’s tiny mirror ). The recurring spiral, which acts as a warning of thin ice, insignia of a blood cult, or more esoterically, a representation of the orbital pattern of a frozen dwarf planet named Sedna. The Thing represented in various character names (Blair and Clark), the cover of a DVD, and the gruesome “corpsicle,” which resembles the alien creature from Carpenter’s aforementioned 1982 film caught midtransformation .

It’s a thin line between love and hate, as the song goes.

Conversely, director/writer López gets that less is more in terms of philosophizing. She deftly winnows the fat from Season 1’s exchanges between Hart and Cohle and their various antagonists. Instead of warmed-over Thomas Ligotti or Nietzsche-adjacent monologues, López hits us with rarer, pithier quotes, then steps away to let them do their work. A chief example of this occurs when Rose, Ennis’ local hermit, says to her collaborator, after deep-sixing a corpse, “I guess you’re thinking the worst part is done. It’s not. What comes after, forever, that’s the worst fucking part.” On another occasion, someone remarks that Navarro’s belief in God must be a comfort as it suggests we’re not alone in the abyss of creation. She responds, “No, we’re alone. God too.” Thus ends the interaction. This is in keeping with the austere nature of the backdrop, and the prosaic bleakness of life on the Alaskan frontier.

Irrational explanations aren’t explicit or coherent this season as they would be in a wholly fantastical drama. Rather, mystical elements align with the overall direction of the series. Things that go bump in the night are coyly open to interpretation until the last moment; even then, López provides a fig leaf of rationality for those who shy from the occult. So it goes with the denouement of Night Country . The riddle’s answer is ambiguous; several strings are left dangling. However, this time the cleanest, most obvious solution happens to be the ineffable one: Trooper Navarro is an avatar/vessel of the Inuit goddess Sedna , awakened to exact vengeance upon the men who violated nature and poisoned her faithful. Sedna is angry, and she works in not-so-mysterious ways.

The “Yellow King” storyline that kicked off True Detective in 2014 was set in the South, the geographical and narrative antipodes of Night Country —an oppositional scenario that at once delineates artistic incongruencies (hot vs. cold, light vs. dark) while reifying what the seasons share in common, namely a quest for truth carried out across physical and emotional wastelands.

Season 1 teased supernatural horror fans before ultimately revealing that the otherworldly elements were merely trappings. Brilliant as the initial arc was, it pulled some punches during the latter stages, seeming to lack the courage of its convictions; an existential nightmare undercut with the unmasking of a Scooby-Doo villain and a dose of unearned optimism. By contrast, Night Country grows stronger, weirder, with each episode. The twisting narrative and stellar acting performances build to a crescendo, fulfilling an initial audacious promise that there is more beneath heaven than dreamt of in our philosophy. Not only is the world stranger than we imagine, we passengers on this odyssey will simply have to live with that revelation. I count myself among those who doubted that López would really go there despite the eeriness of the first couple of episodes.

Usually, there’s an all-too-human monster at the end of a terrible dream. But sometimes there’s an angel or a devil. What comes after has always been waiting; it will be, forever. Season 4’s dreamlike aftermath leaves us as haunted as the denizens of Ennis.

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Our next-generation model: Gemini 1.5

Feb 15, 2024

The model delivers dramatically enhanced performance, with a breakthrough in long-context understanding across modalities.

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A note from Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai:

Last week, we rolled out our most capable model, Gemini 1.0 Ultra, and took a significant step forward in making Google products more helpful, starting with Gemini Advanced . Today, developers and Cloud customers can begin building with 1.0 Ultra too — with our Gemini API in AI Studio and in Vertex AI .

Our teams continue pushing the frontiers of our latest models with safety at the core. They are making rapid progress. In fact, we’re ready to introduce the next generation: Gemini 1.5. It shows dramatic improvements across a number of dimensions and 1.5 Pro achieves comparable quality to 1.0 Ultra, while using less compute.

This new generation also delivers a breakthrough in long-context understanding. We’ve been able to significantly increase the amount of information our models can process — running up to 1 million tokens consistently, achieving the longest context window of any large-scale foundation model yet.

Longer context windows show us the promise of what is possible. They will enable entirely new capabilities and help developers build much more useful models and applications. We’re excited to offer a limited preview of this experimental feature to developers and enterprise customers. Demis shares more on capabilities, safety and availability below.

Introducing Gemini 1.5

By Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, on behalf of the Gemini team

This is an exciting time for AI. New advances in the field have the potential to make AI more helpful for billions of people over the coming years. Since introducing Gemini 1.0 , we’ve been testing, refining and enhancing its capabilities.

Today, we’re announcing our next-generation model: Gemini 1.5.

Gemini 1.5 delivers dramatically enhanced performance. It represents a step change in our approach, building upon research and engineering innovations across nearly every part of our foundation model development and infrastructure. This includes making Gemini 1.5 more efficient to train and serve, with a new Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture.

The first Gemini 1.5 model we’re releasing for early testing is Gemini 1.5 Pro. It’s a mid-size multimodal model, optimized for scaling across a wide-range of tasks, and performs at a similar level to 1.0 Ultra , our largest model to date. It also introduces a breakthrough experimental feature in long-context understanding.

Gemini 1.5 Pro comes with a standard 128,000 token context window. But starting today, a limited group of developers and enterprise customers can try it with a context window of up to 1 million tokens via AI Studio and Vertex AI in private preview.

As we roll out the full 1 million token context window, we’re actively working on optimizations to improve latency, reduce computational requirements and enhance the user experience. We’re excited for people to try this breakthrough capability, and we share more details on future availability below.

These continued advances in our next-generation models will open up new possibilities for people, developers and enterprises to create, discover and build using AI.

Context lengths of leading foundation models

Highly efficient architecture

Gemini 1.5 is built upon our leading research on Transformer and MoE architecture. While a traditional Transformer functions as one large neural network, MoE models are divided into smaller "expert” neural networks.

Depending on the type of input given, MoE models learn to selectively activate only the most relevant expert pathways in its neural network. This specialization massively enhances the model’s efficiency. Google has been an early adopter and pioneer of the MoE technique for deep learning through research such as Sparsely-Gated MoE , GShard-Transformer , Switch-Transformer, M4 and more.

Our latest innovations in model architecture allow Gemini 1.5 to learn complex tasks more quickly and maintain quality, while being more efficient to train and serve. These efficiencies are helping our teams iterate, train and deliver more advanced versions of Gemini faster than ever before, and we’re working on further optimizations.

Greater context, more helpful capabilities

An AI model’s “context window” is made up of tokens, which are the building blocks used for processing information. Tokens can be entire parts or subsections of words, images, videos, audio or code. The bigger a model’s context window, the more information it can take in and process in a given prompt — making its output more consistent, relevant and useful.

Through a series of machine learning innovations, we’ve increased 1.5 Pro’s context window capacity far beyond the original 32,000 tokens for Gemini 1.0. We can now run up to 1 million tokens in production.

This means 1.5 Pro can process vast amounts of information in one go — including 1 hour of video, 11 hours of audio, codebases with over 30,000 lines of code or over 700,000 words. In our research, we’ve also successfully tested up to 10 million tokens.

Complex reasoning about vast amounts of information

1.5 Pro can seamlessly analyze, classify and summarize large amounts of content within a given prompt. For example, when given the 402-page transcripts from Apollo 11’s mission to the moon, it can reason about conversations, events and details found across the document.

Reasoning across a 402-page transcript: Gemini 1.5 Pro Demo

Gemini 1.5 Pro can understand, reason about and identify curious details in the 402-page transcripts from Apollo 11’s mission to the moon.

Better understanding and reasoning across modalities

1.5 Pro can perform highly-sophisticated understanding and reasoning tasks for different modalities, including video. For instance, when given a 44-minute silent Buster Keaton movie , the model can accurately analyze various plot points and events, and even reason about small details in the movie that could easily be missed.

Multimodal prompting with a 44-minute movie: Gemini 1.5 Pro Demo

Gemini 1.5 Pro can identify a scene in a 44-minute silent Buster Keaton movie when given a simple line drawing as reference material for a real-life object.

Relevant problem-solving with longer blocks of code

1.5 Pro can perform more relevant problem-solving tasks across longer blocks of code. When given a prompt with more than 100,000 lines of code, it can better reason across examples, suggest helpful modifications and give explanations about how different parts of the code works.

Problem solving across 100,633 lines of code | Gemini 1.5 Pro Demo

Gemini 1.5 Pro can reason across 100,000 lines of code giving helpful solutions, modifications and explanations.

Enhanced performance

When tested on a comprehensive panel of text, code, image, audio and video evaluations, 1.5 Pro outperforms 1.0 Pro on 87% of the benchmarks used for developing our large language models (LLMs). And when compared to 1.0 Ultra on the same benchmarks, it performs at a broadly similar level.

Gemini 1.5 Pro maintains high levels of performance even as its context window increases. In the Needle In A Haystack (NIAH) evaluation, where a small piece of text containing a particular fact or statement is purposely placed within a long block of text, 1.5 Pro found the embedded text 99% of the time, in blocks of data as long as 1 million tokens.

Gemini 1.5 Pro also shows impressive “in-context learning” skills, meaning that it can learn a new skill from information given in a long prompt, without needing additional fine-tuning. We tested this skill on the Machine Translation from One Book (MTOB) benchmark, which shows how well the model learns from information it’s never seen before. When given a grammar manual for Kalamang , a language with fewer than 200 speakers worldwide, the model learns to translate English to Kalamang at a similar level to a person learning from the same content.

As 1.5 Pro’s long context window is the first of its kind among large-scale models, we’re continuously developing new evaluations and benchmarks for testing its novel capabilities.

For more details, see our Gemini 1.5 Pro technical report .

Extensive ethics and safety testing

In line with our AI Principles and robust safety policies, we’re ensuring our models undergo extensive ethics and safety tests. We then integrate these research learnings into our governance processes and model development and evaluations to continuously improve our AI systems.

Since introducing 1.0 Ultra in December, our teams have continued refining the model, making it safer for a wider release. We’ve also conducted novel research on safety risks and developed red-teaming techniques to test for a range of potential harms.

In advance of releasing 1.5 Pro, we've taken the same approach to responsible deployment as we did for our Gemini 1.0 models, conducting extensive evaluations across areas including content safety and representational harms, and will continue to expand this testing. Beyond this, we’re developing further tests that account for the novel long-context capabilities of 1.5 Pro.

Build and experiment with Gemini models

We’re committed to bringing each new generation of Gemini models to billions of people, developers and enterprises around the world responsibly.

Starting today, we’re offering a limited preview of 1.5 Pro to developers and enterprise customers via AI Studio and Vertex AI . Read more about this on our Google for Developers blog and Google Cloud blog .

We’ll introduce 1.5 Pro with a standard 128,000 token context window when the model is ready for a wider release. Coming soon, we plan to introduce pricing tiers that start at the standard 128,000 context window and scale up to 1 million tokens, as we improve the model.

Early testers can try the 1 million token context window at no cost during the testing period, though they should expect longer latency times with this experimental feature. Significant improvements in speed are also on the horizon.

Developers interested in testing 1.5 Pro can sign up now in AI Studio, while enterprise customers can reach out to their Vertex AI account team.

Learn more about Gemini’s capabilities and see how it works .

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OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

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OpenAI has built a striking new generative video model called Sora that can take a short text description and turn it into a detailed, high-definition film clip up to a minute long.

Based on four sample videos that OpenAI shared with MIT Technology Review ahead of today’s announcement, the San Francisco–based firm has pushed the envelope of what’s possible with text-to-video generation (a hot new research direction that we flagged as a trend to watch in 2024 ).

“We think building models that can understand video, and understand all these very complex interactions of our world, is an important step for all future AI systems,” says Tim Brooks, a scientist at OpenAI.

But there’s a disclaimer. OpenAI gave us a preview of Sora (which means sky in Japanese) under conditions of strict secrecy. In an unusual move, the firm would only share information about Sora if we agreed to wait until after news of the model was made public to seek the opinions of outside experts. [Editor’s note: We’ve updated this story with outside comment below.] OpenAI has not yet released a technical report or demonstrated the model actually working. And it says it won’t be releasing Sora anytime soon. [ Update: OpenAI has now shared more technical details on its website.]

The first generative models that could produce video from snippets of text appeared in late 2022. But early examples from Meta , Google, and a startup called Runway were glitchy and grainy. Since then, the tech has been getting better fast. Runway’s gen-2 model, released last year, can produce short clips that come close to matching big-studio animation in their quality. But most of these examples are still only a few seconds long.  

The sample videos from OpenAI’s Sora are high-definition and full of detail. OpenAI also says it can generate videos up to a minute long. One video of a Tokyo street scene shows that Sora has learned how objects fit together in 3D: the camera swoops into the scene to follow a couple as they walk past a row of shops.

OpenAI also claims that Sora handles occlusion well. One problem with existing models is that they can fail to keep track of objects when they drop out of view. For example, if a truck passes in front of a street sign, the sign might not reappear afterward.  

In a video of a papercraft underwater scene, Sora has added what look like cuts between different pieces of footage, and the model has maintained a consistent style between them.

It’s not perfect. In the Tokyo video, cars to the left look smaller than the people walking beside them. They also pop in and out between the tree branches. “There’s definitely some work to be done in terms of long-term coherence,” says Brooks. “For example, if someone goes out of view for a long time, they won’t come back. The model kind of forgets that they were supposed to be there.”

Impressive as they are, the sample videos shown here were no doubt cherry-picked to show Sora at its best. Without more information, it is hard to know how representative they are of the model’s typical output.   

It may be some time before we find out. OpenAI’s announcement of Sora today is a tech tease, and the company says it has no current plans to release it to the public. Instead, OpenAI will today begin sharing the model with third-party safety testers for the first time.

In particular, the firm is worried about the potential misuses of fake but photorealistic video . “We’re being careful about deployment here and making sure we have all our bases covered before we put this in the hands of the general public,” says Aditya Ramesh, a scientist at OpenAI, who created the firm’s text-to-image model DALL-E .

But OpenAI is eyeing a product launch sometime in the future. As well as safety testers, the company is also sharing the model with a select group of video makers and artists to get feedback on how to make Sora as useful as possible to creative professionals. “The other goal is to show everyone what is on the horizon, to give a preview of what these models will be capable of,” says Ramesh.

To build Sora, the team adapted the tech behind DALL-E 3, the latest version of OpenAI’s flagship text-to-image model. Like most text-to-image models, DALL-E 3 uses what’s known as a diffusion model. These are trained to turn a fuzz of random pixels into a picture.

Sora takes this approach and applies it to videos rather than still images. But the researchers also added another technique to the mix. Unlike DALL-E or most other generative video models, Sora combines its diffusion model with a type of neural network called a transformer.

Transformers are great at processing long sequences of data, like words. That has made them the special sauce inside large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google DeepMind’s Gemini . But videos are not made of words. Instead, the researchers had to find a way to cut videos into chunks that could be treated as if they were. The approach they came up with was to dice videos up across both space and time. “It’s like if you were to have a stack of all the video frames and you cut little cubes from it,” says Brooks.

The transformer inside Sora can then process these chunks of video data in much the same way that the transformer inside a large language model processes words in a block of text. The researchers say that this let them train Sora on many more types of video than other text-to-video models, varied in terms of resolution, duration, aspect ratio, and orientation. “It really helps the model,” says Brooks. “That is something that we’re not aware of any existing work on.”

“From a technical perspective it seems like a very significant leap forward,” says Sam Gregory, executive director at Witness, a human rights organization that specializes in the use and misuse of video technology. “But there are two sides to the coin,” he says. “The expressive capabilities offer the potential for many more people to be storytellers using video. And there are also real potential avenues for misuse.” 

OpenAI is well aware of the risks that come with a generative video model. We are already seeing the large-scale misuse of deepfake images . Photorealistic video takes this to another level.

Gregory notes that you could use technology like this to misinform people about conflict zones or protests. The range of styles is also interesting, he says. If you could generate shaky footage that looked like something shot with a phone, it would come across as more authentic.

The tech is not there yet, but generative video has gone from zero to Sora in just 18 months. “We’re going to be entering a universe where there will be fully synthetic content, human-generated content and a mix of the two,” says Gregory.

The OpenAI team plans to draw on the safety testing it did last year for DALL-E 3. Sora already includes a filter that runs on all prompts sent to the model that will block requests for violent, sexual, or hateful images, as well as images of known people. Another filter will look at frames of generated videos and block material that violates OpenAI’s safety policies.

OpenAI says it is also adapting a fake-image detector developed for DALL-E 3 to use with Sora. And the company will embed industry-standard C2PA tags , metadata that states how an image was generated, into all of Sora’s output. But these steps are far from foolproof. Fake-image detectors are hit-or-miss. Metadata is easy to remove, and most social media sites strip it from uploaded images by default.  

“We’ll definitely need to get more feedback and learn more about the types of risks that need to be addressed with video before it would make sense for us to release this,” says Ramesh.

Brooks agrees. “Part of the reason that we’re talking about this research now is so that we can start getting the input that we need to do the work necessary to figure out how it could be safely deployed,” he says.

Update 2/15: Comments from Sam Gregory were added .

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EarlyGame

Definitely Not A Kids Show Anymore | Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender Review

N etflix favorite shtick seems to be adapting beloved video games, animes and books – just take The Witcher , One Piece or Bridgerton . Now, it was Avatar's turn to have a live-action adaptation. As one of the most beloved cartoons of all time and maybe the best example when it comes to great worldbuilding and character development, the anticipation was high for Netflix's go at the story.

Avatar: The Last Airbender follows the journey of Aang and his friends on their mission to stop the 100-year war started by the Fire Nation . As the Avatar, Aang is able to bend all four elements – fire, water, earth and air – and is destined to bring peace and balance to the world.

The original cartoon has three seasons and on February 22, 2024, Netflix released the live-action adaptation of the first one. With eight episodes in total and a runtime of roughly seven hours , the season covers Book One: Water.

This review will be spoiler free . Why? Because Netflix's Avatar is definitely worth watching, and I don't want to spoil your fun. Don't expect a perfect retelling of the original, though.

Netflix Keeps Avatar's Plot Intact But Amps Up The Brutality

Before release, fans were worried Netflix would butcher what made the cartoon special. And if your favorite part of the original was the lightheartedness and goofiness, you'll be in for a wild ride with the live-action version.

The mission for Team Avatar is clear: Aang needs to master all four elements, and the North Pole is their destination to properly get started on the water part. Getting there while dodging the Fire Nation and other dangerous situations proves to be difficult, but also makes an exciting story to tell – just like the original.

The plot doesn't stray too far from the source material, and the story is still coherent. Still, Netflix's adaptation adds new scenes and plot threads , forcing the show to cut some corners here and there, combine storylines that have previously been episodes of their own and leaving others out entirely.

The Netflix adaptions also pulls a few scenes from later seasons, and even changes the perspective of certain storylines. The overall plot doesn't suffer from these creative choices, but diehard fans who wanted nothing to be changed at all will probably have a hard time with parts of this adaptation.

Condensing the more silly expeditions of Team Avatar makes room for the more serious parts of the show – the war, especially. The lightheartedness of the original takes a step back to show the horrors the Fire Nation has put upon the world, and nearly every character we meet has a story to tell about someone or something they've lost. Speaking of the characters...

Phenomenal Casting And Some Character Changes

The more promo the show did, the more nervous fans got – Sokka's character development being one of the bigger worries. And yes, there are plenty of changes from the cartoon to the adaptation, but they do work out.

The characters still feel fleshed out, even if it may be in a slightly different way. Some of them even get some more depth to them, which I honestly didn't anticipate, but was pleasantly surprised by.

The show obviously aims for a more mature audience and that reflects the changes that have been made: while the foundation stays the same, our heroes each have their own demons to fight and some of them are much darker than in the original. There are some pretty hard gut-punches in there.

The actors do a great job portraying not only the dark aspects of the characters, though. Gordon Cormier as Aang embodies the Avatar with all his insecurities and big smiles, Ian Ousley makes for a great Sokka and Kiawentiio's Katara performance strikes true.

Ken Leung and Daniel Dae Kim as Commander Zhao and Fire Lord Ozai respectively give the villains the right amount of cunning and make them hateable in the best way. The highlight, though, may be Dallas Liu and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee: Prince Zuko and Uncle Iroh.

The duo steals the show at times, in parts because the actors do a great job at their portrayals and, surprisingly, because the Netflix show treats them to some never-before-seen, heart-wrenching scenes that drive home their respective hardships.

Netflix Had The Budget For Avatar, And They Used It Well

Those scenes prove that lots of thought went into the adaptation to make it a new and yet familiar experience. The showrunner Albert Kim and the directors (Michael Goi, Jabbar Raisani, Roseanne Liang and Jet Wilkinson) did a solid job at adapting the original with their own twists and turns. Especially Goi and Wilkinson makes for a great kickoff and finale, respectively.

The CGI locations are beautiful, with breathtaking shots of the Southern Air Temple or a lively Omashu, for example. The choreographs are well done, with fast-paced combat sequences and bending that finally feels right (looking at you, M. Night Shyamalan).

There are lots of iconic shots from the original that made their way into a lovingly adapted live-action version, proving they did have the diehard fans in mind. The costume design is solid, but gives "really good cosplay" vibes at times instead of "war torn world" like expected.

Fans will also be delighted by the music: familiar soundtracks capture the feeling of the original and even go a step further. Without spoiling anything: there's an orchestral version of Leaves From The Vine, and it made me want to tear-bend.

Verdict: Go Watch It, But Expect A Few Flaws

While there definitely are some flaws in the adaptation, taking the show for what it is without the rose-tinted glasses of the original cartoon, the show is pretty solid and paints a grim and dark picture of a world at war, with some glimpses of goofiness – we're following mostly kids, after all. Traumatized kids, but kids nonetheless.

While some punchlines fall flat in the face of the dark turns the show takes, it did manage to make me exhale through my nose slightly louder than usual in amusement. It also made me cry. And it made me scream "What!?" in disbelief.

And, most importantly, it made me anticipate a second season . At the end of the day, there is room to improve, but there's also a lot Netflix did right with their version of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Avatar: The Last Airbender Review – Not Kids A Show Anymore. | © Netflix

IMAGES

  1. How to Write a Good Book Review: A Basic Guide for Students

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  3. How to Write a Graphic Novel Review Guide with Examples

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  5. Helping You in Writing a Literature Review Immaculately

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COMMENTS

  1. 17 Book Review Examples to Help You Write the Perfect Review

    17 Book Review Examples to Help You Write the Perfect Review It's an exciting time to be a book reviewer. Once confined to print newspapers and journals, reviews now dot many corridors of the Internet — forever helping others discover their next great read.

  2. How to write a book review: format guide, & examples

    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.

  3. How to Write a Book Review (Meaning, Tips & Examples)

    Feb 08, 2024 7 min read Tags: Fiction, Language, Nonfiction, Writing Tips Want to write a perfect book review that readers enjoy? Discover how to pen a book review in 6 easy steps. To help you understand, we've included amazing examples of book reviews. We've also answered many questions you might have such as: How long should a book review be?

  4. 18+ Book Review Examples for Various Academic Levels

    1. Good Book Review Examples for Students 2. Short Book Review Examples for Fiction Books 3. Non-Fiction Book Review Examples Good Book Review Examples for Students You might be a professional writer, or you may not have any experience in writing book reviews.

  5. How to Write a Book Review: Definition, Structure, Examples

    6 min read Share the article Table of Contents A book review allows students to illustrate the author's intentions of writing the piece, as well as create a criticism of the book — as a whole. In other words, form an opinion of the author's presented ideas.

  6. How To Write an Engaging Book Review

    For example, a review may have three body paragraphs, one that discusses the book's themes, one that discusses its characters, and one that discusses the author's use of metaphor. A book review ends with a conclusion paragraph that summarizes the points made in the body paragraphs and shares any final thoughts the reviewer has about the book.

  7. The Only Book Review Templates You'll Ever Need

    Book blog reviews — short personal essays about the book; and Instagram reviews — one or two-paragraph reviews captioned under a nice photo. But while the text in all these review styles can be organized in different ways, there are certain boxes that all good book reviews tick.

  8. Book Reviews

    Becoming an expert reviewer: three short examples Reviewing can be a daunting task. Someone has asked for your opinion about something that you may feel unqualified to evaluate. Who are you to criticize Toni Morrison's new book if you've never written a novel yourself, much less won a Nobel Prize?

  9. How to Write a Book Review in 5 Steps

    A good rule is not to mention anything that happens after the midpoint of the story. Leave the rest for the readers to discover on their own. 2. Evaluate the Book's Qualities. Once you've explained the premise of the book, it's time to provide a more subjective evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the book.

  10. How to Write a Book Review: The Ultimate Guide

    Book and Movie review writing examples (Student Writing Samples) BOOK REVIEW VIDEO TUTORIALS OTHER GREAT ARTICLES RELATED TO BOOK REVIEWS WHAT IS A BOOK REVIEW? Traditionally, book reviews are written evaluations of a recently published book in any genre.

  11. How to Write a Great Book Review: 6 Templates and Ideas

    Include a star rating if you wish. 6. Create Your Own Book Review Template. If you plan on becoming a regular book reviewer, it's a good idea to create your own unique template that you can use for every book you review, whether you're posting on a blog, website, or social media account.

  12. How to Write a Book Review: Formats + 7 Examples

    Examples of Book Reviews Types of Book Reviews: Academic, Personal, Retail Many need to learn how to write a book review because it's been assigned to them. Others want to write these reviews for their platform, like a blog or newsletter, which I'd classify as "personal".

  13. Book Review Examples

    In order to illustrate what a book review is, we have provided a book review example for your reference. Here is an example of a book review opening " The Devil's Company, a treat for lovers of historical fiction, sees the return of Benjamin Weaver in his third exciting romp through the varied and sometimes surreal landscape of 18th-century London.

  14. How to Write a Book Review

    1. Include general information Make sure to include all the relevant book information for your audience, including the title, author, genre, and publisher in your review. While not necessary, it is also helpful to include the number of pages, list price, and ISBN number. 2. Provide a brief plot summary

  15. How to Write a Book Review: 3 Main Elements of a Book Review

    Summary of the book's subject and themes: Summarizing the book's subject and primary themes, or the author's argument in the case of a nonfiction book, are essential elements of a book review. Include details about the main points, characters, and the book's genre. 1. Back up your argument with examples. Critical analysis needs ...

  16. How to Write a Book Review

    Book Review Examples to Help You Get Started A Complete Book Review Format Guide For Students Share this article Ever stare at a blank page, wondering how to spill your thoughts about a book onto it? You're not alone! Crafting a compelling book review can be as daunting as facing a dragon in a fantasy novel. The struggle is real.

  17. 25 Book Review Templates and Ideas to Organize Your Thoughts

    A Classic Book Review. This is probably the most common kind of book review template. It uses a few criteria, usually including Setting, Writing, Characters, and Plot (for a novel). The review then goes into some detail about each element, describing what the book did well, and where it fell short.

  18. With Examples of a Book Review

    4. Specific Praise. It's good to have content like, "This was a good book, I liked it a lot.". But it's better to have specifics. "The writing was captivating," "The characters were believable and I cared about them," "The plot had so many twists and turns I couldn't put the book down.".

  19. How to write a book review

    1. Start with a couple of sentences describing what the book is about. But without giving any spoilers or revealing plot twists! As a general rule, try to avoid writing in detail about anything that happens from about the middle of the book onwards. If the book is part of a series, it can be useful to mention this, and whether you think you'd ...

  20. 10+ Book Review Examples for Students of All Academic Levels

    Blog Book Review Book Review Examples Last updated on: Nov 20, 2023 Good Book Review Examples to Help you Write a Great Review By: Nova A. 5 min read Reviewed By: Chris H. Published on: Mar 30, 2021 A book review is a common assignment that allows the students to demonstrate the author's intentions in the book.

  21. All the Light We Cannot See: Book Review Example

    Book Review Example All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is a historical novel written in 2014. In 2015 the novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize as the best fiction book. The novel was on the list of The New York Times as one of the best-selling novels of 2014.

  22. Book Review Writing Examples

    Book Review Writing Examples Examples: Learn from the efforts of others Learning how to write strong reviews takes time and not a little effort. Reading the reviews others have done can help you get a feel for the flow and flavor of reviews. If I Never Forever Endeavor Review by Hayden, age 4, Southeast Michigan Mensa

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    "The Alternative" is a brisk and sensible book that details bold and ingenious proposals in measured tones. Romeo, a writer for the New Yorker and a professor of journalism at the University ...

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    Gemini 1.5 Pro also shows impressive "in-context learning" skills, meaning that it can learn a new skill from information given in a long prompt, without needing additional fine-tuning. We tested this skill on the Machine Translation from One Book (MTOB) benchmark, which shows how well the model learns from information it's never seen before.

  26. OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

    OpenAI has built a striking new generative video model called Sora that can take a short text description and turn it into a detailed, high-definition film clip up to a minute long.. Based on four ...

  27. Definitely Not A Kids Show Anymore

    The plot doesn't stray too far from the source material, and the story is still coherent. Still, Netflix's adaptation adds new scenes and plot threads, forcing the show to cut some corners here ...