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The 13 Best Book Review Sites and Book Rating Sites

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Nobody likes to spend money on a new book only to face that overwhelming feeling of disappointment when it doesn't live up to your expectations. The solution is to check out a few book review sites before you hit the shops. The greater the diversity of opinions you can gather, the more confidence you can have that you'll enjoy the title.

Which book review and book rating sites are worth considering? Here are the best ones.

1. Goodreads

Goodreads is arguably the leading online community for book lovers. If you want some inspiration for which novel or biography to read next, this is the book review site to visit.

There's an endless number of user-generated reading lists to explore, and Goodreads itself publishes dozens of "best of" lists across a number of categories. You can do a book search by plot or subject , or join book discussions and reading groups with thousands of members.

You can participate in the community by adding your own rankings to books you've read and leaving reviews for other people to check out. Occasionally, there are even bonus events like question and answer sessions with authors.

2. LibraryThing

LibraryThing is the self-proclaimed largest book club in the world. It has more than 2.3 million members and is one of the best social networking platforms for book lovers .

With a free account, you can add up to 200 books to your library and share them with other users. But it's in the other areas where LibraryThing can claim to be one of the best book review sites.

Naturally, there are ratings, user reviews, and tags. But be sure to click on the Zeitgeist tab at the top of the page. It contains masses of information, including the top books by rating, by the number of reviews, by authors, and loads more.

3. Book Riot

Book Riot is a blog. It publishes listicles on dozens of different topics, many of which review the best books in a certain genre. To give you an idea, some recent articles include Keeping Hoping Alive: 11 Thrilling YA Survival Stories and The Best Historical Fiction Books You’ve Never Heard Of .

Of course, there's also plenty of non-reading list content. If you have a general affinity for literature, Book Riot is definitely worth adding to the list of websites you browse every day.

Bookish is a site that all members of book clubs should know about. It helps you prep for your next meeting with discussion guides, book quizzes, and book games. There are even food and drink suggestions, as well as playlist recommendations.

But the site is more than just book club meetings. It also offers lots of editorial content. That comes in the form of author interviews, opinion essays, book reviews and recommendations, reading challenges, and giveaways.

Be sure to look at the Must-Reads section of the site regularly to get the latest book reviews. Also, it goes without saying that the people behind Bookish are book lovers, too. To get a glimpse of what they’re reading, check out their Staff Reads articles.

5. Booklist

Booklist is a print magazine that also offers an online portal. Trusted experts from the American Library Association write all the book reviews.

You can see snippets of reviews for different books. However, to read them in full, you will need to subscribe. An annual plan for this book review site costs $184.95 per year.

6. Fantasy Book Review

Fantasy Book Review should be high on the list for anyone who is a fan of fantasy works. The book review site publishes reviews for both children's books and adults' books.

It has a section on the top fantasy books of all time and a continually updated list of must-read books for each year. You can also search through the recommended books by sub-genres such as Sword and Sorcery, Parallel Worlds, and Epic Fantasy.

7. LoveReading

LoveReading is one of the most popular book review sites in the UK, but American audiences will find it to be equally useful.

The site is divided into fiction and non-fiction works. In each area, it publishes weekly staff picks, books of the month, debuts of the month, ebooks of the month, audiobooks of the month, and the nationwide bestsellers. Each book on every list has a full review that you can read for free.

Make sure you also check out their Highlights tab to get book reviews for selected titles of the month. In Collections , you'll also find themed reading lists such as World War One Literature and Green Reads .

Kirkus has been involved in producing book reviews since the 1930s. This book review site looks at the week's bestselling books, and provides lengthy critiques for each one.

As you'd expect, you'll also find dozens of "best of" lists and individual book reviews across many categories and genres.

And while you're on the site, make sure you click on the Kirkus Prize section. You can look at all the past winners and finalists, complete with the accompanying reviews of their books.

Although Reddit is a social media site, you can use it to get book reviews of famous books, or almost any other book for that matter! Reddit has a Subreddit, r/books, that is dedicated to book reviews and reading lists.

The subreddit has weekly scheduled threads about a particular topic or genre. Anyone can then chip in with their opinions about which books are recommendable. Several new threads are published every day, with people discussing their latest discovery with an accompanying book rating or review.

You'll also discover a weekly recommendation thread. Recent threads have included subjects such as Favorite Books About Climate Science , Literature of Indigenous Peoples , and Books Set in the Desert . There’s also a weekly What are you Reading? discussion and frequent AMAs.

For more social media-like platforms, check out these must-have apps for book lovers .

10. YouTube

YouTube is not the type of place that immediately springs to mind when you think of the best book review sites online.

Nonetheless, there are several engaging YouTube channels that frequently offer opinions on books they've read. You’ll easily find book reviews of famous books here.

Some of the most notable book review YouTube channels include Better Than Food: Book Reviews , Little Book Owl , PolandBananasBooks , and Rincey Reads .

Amazon is probably one of your go-to site when you want to buy something. If you don’t mind used copies, it’s also one of the best websites to buy second-hand books .

Now, to get book reviews, just search and click on a title, then scroll down to see the ratings and what others who have bought the book are saying. It’s a quick way to have an overview of the book’s rating. If you spot the words Look Inside above the book cover, it means you get to preview the first few pages of the book, too!

Regardless of the praises or criticisms you have heard from other book review sites, reading a sample is the most direct way to help you gauge the content’s potential and see whether the author’s writing style suits your tastes.

12. StoryGraph

StoryGraph is another good book review site that's worth checking out. The book rating is determined by the site's large community of readers. Key in the title of a book you're interested in and click on it in StoryGraph's search results to have an overall view of its rating.

Each book review provides information on the moods and pacing of the story. It also indicates whether the tale is plot or character-driven, what readers feel about the extent of character development, how lovable the characters generally are, and the diversity of the cast.

13. London Review of Books

The London Review of Books is a magazine that covers a range of subjects such as culture, literature, and philosophy. Part of its content includes amazingly detailed book reviews. If you feel that most modern book reviews are too brief for your liking, the London Review of Books should suit you best.

You'll gain insight into the flow and themes of the story, as well as a more thorough picture of the events taking place in the book.

Read Book Reviews Before You Buy

The book review sites we've discussed will appeal to different types of readers. Some people will be more comfortable with the easy-to-interpret book rating systems; others will prefer extensive reviews written by experienced professionals.

Although it’s easy to be tempted by a gorgeous book cover, it’s always best to have a quick look at the book reviews before actually buying a copy. This way, you can save your money and spend it on the books that you’ll be proud to display on your shelves for a long time. And check out recommendations, as well, to help you find what's worth reading.

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Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons from a Small-Town Obituary Writer Hardcover – April 28, 2015

• Print length 176 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Algonquin Books
• Publication date April 28, 2015
• Dimensions 5.35 x 0.85 x 7.35 inches
• ISBN-10 1616201673
• ISBN-13 978-1616201678
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Algonquin Books (April 28, 2015)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 176 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1616201673
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1616201678
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.35 x 0.85 x 7.35 inches
• #2,095 in Happiness Self-Help
• #3,015 in Motivational Self-Help (Books)
• #3,889 in Personal Transformation Self-Help

About the author

Heather lende.

Thank you so much for reading what I write, especially my newest book, Find the Good. (And for wanting to know a little more about me. Although my life is pretty much an open book.)My personal essays and columns have been widely distributed- from NPR and Country Living to the Christian Science Monitor and Woman's Day magazine- where I was a contributing editor for a few years. I write obituaries for the Chilkat Valley News and an Alaska Dispatch News column. I live in tiny Haines, Alaska where my husband owns a lumberyard and we have a big family. I blog and post photos at my website and on facebook. (Haines is a pretty place.) My big story is that as soon as my first book, New York Times bestseller If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name was published in 2005, I was run over by a truck, which Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs pretty much covers. I'm better now, and so grateful that I laugh when I say, "I feel like I've been hit by a truck."

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 58% 24% 12% 3% 2% 58%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 58% 24% 12% 3% 2% 24%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 58% 24% 12% 3% 2% 12%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 58% 24% 12% 3% 2% 3%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 58% 24% 12% 3% 2% 2%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the book uplifting, encouraging, and heartwarming. They praise the writing quality as well-written, easy to read, and personal. Readers describe the humor as delightful and sweet without being cloying. Opinions are mixed on the pacing, with some finding it gentle and thoughtful, while others find it boring and drawn-out.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book uplifting, encouraging, and heartwarming. They say it's filled with wholesome and inspired thoughts and personal stories about life. Readers also appreciate the wisdom and take-away message.

"...it was one that will remain in my thoughts for a while. An encouraging book for those who strive to see the good in everyone and also for those who..." Read more

"...Warm, small town stories about finding the good in life. The messages are sincere , but common sense. Cultivate friendship. Get a dog. Exercise...." Read more

"...She gracefully tells the stories of others lives . The good and the bad...." Read more

" It was a good book . I feel like so many people in the town have died but it is her job to write obituaries...." Read more

Customers find the writing quality of the book well-written, easy to read, and beautiful. They say it gives a sense of reliance in our undependable lives. Readers also mention the author writes in a very personal way.

"This is a short , quick read. Warm, small town stories about finding the good in life. The messages are sincere, but common sense...." Read more

"...It’s full of inspiration and hope. It’s so well written . The little snippets of other’s lives as she researched their obituaries were so interesting...." Read more

"...That’s pretty good for a book on death. It was easy to read a couple of essays put it down and then pick it up when I had another moment." Read more

"...This we a fun and fairly short read and really helped me get out of my own head at night. I definitely recommend it for anyone." Read more

Customers find the book entertaining.

"...With compassion, humor , and heart, this book of wisdom includes glimpses into people's lives, the quirks and treasures that we hide (or don't), and..." Read more

"...I enjoyed it, it was light, and made me laugh out loud more than once, along with a possible damp eye a few times. What more can u ask for?" Read more

"I love this piece of joy and humor. This book was a fun and happy read and certainly makes you appreciate life! Thank you Heather Lende!" Read more

Customers find the book sweet, delightful, and uplifting. They also say it's charming and realistic.

"...The insights are earnest, some quirky, some lackluster. This is a pleasant , sparse book that serves as a reminder to appreciate life...." Read more

"...in working with the chronically ill, I related to this charming and real boom about a small town obituary writer...." Read more

"...morbidly on death - - is wise without being moralistic, sweet without being cloying , and sensitive without being maudlin...." Read more

"I’m glad I read it. Life lessons from a small town. Short and sweet " Read more

Customers find the book quick, enjoyable, and short. They say it's well worth their time and a must-read.

"...If you have read her first two books, this third installment is a must-read ...." Read more

"A short read but filled with wholesome and inspired thoughts and beautiful personal stories about life...." Read more

"The short chapters were the perfect quick read for the end of my day...." Read more

"... Worth the wait !" Read more

Customers find the book honest, uplifting, and real.

"...Being from Baltimore (read “small-timore”), I loved the genuinely honest accounts of when personal life and work life collide in uncomfortable, yet..." Read more

"Loved this book, uplifting and real !" Read more

"...It was honest and life-affirming, and I find her writing style pretty much perfect...." Read more

"...And honest . Love this author" Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some mention it's gentle and thoughtful, while others say it's not compelling, boring, and not very thought-provoking.

"...With compassion, humor, and heart , this book of wisdom includes glimpses into people's lives, the quirks and treasures that we hide (or don't), and..." Read more

"This one was a little depressing , but I love following Heather ',s life, ups and downs. SHE HAS A GOOD WAY WITH A STORY. I'm a follower." Read more

"...the good life rather dwelling morbidly on death - - is wise without being moralistic , sweet without being cloying, and sensitive without being..." Read more

"...I feel like the author is not a good source of advice and spent the majority of the book discussing her personal life...." Read more

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BKMT READING GUIDES

Find the Good by Heather Lende

Introduction

As the obituary writer in a spectacularly beautiful but often dangerous spit of land in Alaska, Heather Lende knows something about last words and lives well lived. Now she’s distilled what she’s learned about how to live a more exhilarating and meaningful life into three words: find the good. It’s that simple--and that hard. Quirky and profound, individual and universal, Find the Good offers up short chapters that help us unlearn the habit--and it is a habit--of seeing only the negatives. Lende reminds us that we can choose to see any event--starting a new job or being laid off from an old one, getting married or getting divorced--as an opportunity to find the good. As she says, “We are all writing our own obituary every day by how we live. The best news is that there’s still time for additions and revisions before it goes to press.” Ever since Algonquin published her first book, the New York Times bestseller If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, Heather Lende has been praised for her storytelling talent and her plainspoken wisdom. The Los Angeles Times called her “part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott,” and that comparison has never been more apt as she gives us a fresh, positive perspective from which to view our relationships, our obligations, our priorities, our community, and our world. An antidote to the cynicism and self-centeredness that we are bombarded with every day in the news, in our politics, and even at times in ourselves, Find the Good helps us rediscover what’s right with the world. “Heather Lende’s small town is populated with big hearts--she finds them  on the beach, walking her granddaughters, in the stories of ordinary peoples’ lives, and knits them into unforgettable tales. Find the Good is a treasure.” —Jo-Ann Mapson, author of Owen’s Daughter “ Find the Good is excellent company in unsteady times . . . Heather Lende is the kind of person you want to sit across the kitchen table from on a rainy afternoon with a bottomless cup of tea. When things go wrong, when things go right, her quiet, commonsense wisdom, self-examining frankness, and good-natured humor offer a chance to reset, renew, rebalance.”  —Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted “With gentle humor and empathy [Lende] introduces a number of people who provide examples of how to live well . . . [ Find the Good ] is simple yet profound.”  — Booklist “In this cynical world, Find the Good is a tonic, a literary wellspring, which will continue to run, and nurture, even in times of drought. What a brave and beautiful thing Heather Lende has made with this book.” —John Straley, Shamus Award winner and former writer laureate of Alaska “Heather Lende is a terrific writer and terrific company: intimate, authentic, and as quirky as any of her subjects.” —Marilyn Johnson, author of The Dead Beat

Editorial Review

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Recommended to book clubs by 2 of 2 members.

Member Reviews

This is a sweet little book about finding happiness wherever and whenever it finds you.

How does one describe a book about the writing of obituaries without becoming maudlin? It is easy when describing this book, written by an obituary writer. It is simply not depressing, rathe... (read more)

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Blog – Posted on Friday, Mar 29

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

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

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

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

Are you interested in becoming a book reviewer? We recommend you check out Reedsy Discovery , where you can earn money for writing reviews — and are guaranteed people will read your reviews! To register as a book reviewer, sign up here.

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?

Find out the answer. Takes 30 seconds!

What must a book review contain?

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

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

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

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

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

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Book review examples for fiction books

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

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

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

Examples of literary fiction book reviews

Kirkus Reviews reviews Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man :

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

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

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

Lyndsey reviews George Orwell’s 1984 on Goodreads:

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

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

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

The New York Times reviews Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examples of children’s and YA fiction book reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Publishers Weekly reviews Elizabeth Lilly’s Geraldine :

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

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

Examples of genre fiction book reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holy hell, what did I just read??

➽ A fantasy military school

➽ A rich world based on modern Chinese history

➽ Shamans and gods

➽ Detailed characterization leading to unforgettable characters

➽ Adorable, opium-smoking mentors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Too much puzzle-solving, not enough suspense.

Book review examples for non-fiction books

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stacked Books reviews Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WRITING STYLE: 3.5/5

SUBJECT: 4/5

CANDIDNESS: 4.5/5

RELEVANCE: 3.5/5

ENTERTAINMENT QUOTIENT: 3.5/5

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

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

Emily May reviews Michelle Obama’s Becoming on Goodreads:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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FIND THE GOOD

Unexpected life lessons from a small-town obituary writer.

by Heather Lende ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 2015

Optimistic, slightly humorous reflections on living a fully engaged, meaningful life.

An unlikely source delivers tidbits on living well.

An obituary writer might be the last person readers would expect to provide wise advice, but  Alaska Dispatch News  columnist Lende ( Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs: Family, Friendships, and Faith in Small-Town Alaska , 2010, etc.) turns out to have just the right perspective, as her job centers on finding and writing about the best part of each deceased person's life. In these short observations, the author examines what makes the people in the small town of Haines, Alaska, tick. She follows the intricate weave of relationships between family and friends that creates a close-knit community, and she expands on these ideas to create nuggets of insight universal to everyone. "Find the good” is the essence of living a noble, meaningful life, and Lende explores this mantra in a variety of ways. She writes of the fisherman who refused a good-paying state job so he could spend more time with his family; of the man who drowned because he had no life vest, which prompted the town to raise money for personal floatation suspenders for every fisherman; and of the woman diagnosed with terminal cancer who continued to teach because it brought her the greatest joy and forced her to live in the moment. Each brief life story is a distillation of the highs and lows of that person's life, and Lende considers the many unexpected ways in which ordinary people touched one another, even if they were not always aware of it. Honest and simple yet full of lasting strength, the author’s prose demonstrates what makes a life better rather than worse—including something as simple as picking up heart-shaped stones on the beach with a grandchild.

Pub Date: April 28, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-61620-167-8

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015

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More by Heather Lende

BOOK REVIEW

by Heather Lende

by Heather Lende Ehud Havazelet

BRAVE ENOUGH

by Cheryl Strayed ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2015

These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.

A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.

What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist ( Wild ), novelist ( Torch ), and radio-show host ( “Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-101-946909

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015

More by Cheryl Strayed

edited by Cheryl Strayed

by Cheryl Strayed

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

IndieBound Bestseller

by Glennon Doyle ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2020

Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.

More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.

In her third book, Doyle ( Love Warrior , 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.

Pub Date: March 10, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Dial Books

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

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Independent Book Review

A Celebration of Indie Press and Self-Published Books

30+ Top-Notch Book Review Sites for Readers & Writers

Here are 30+ top-notch book review sites for booksellers, librarians, readers, & writers. Learn more about 30 bookish companies helping spread the word about the best & latest books.

Top-Notch Book Review Sites for Readers & Writers

Book reviews are for all of us.

Readers need to know whether books with the best covers are worth the time they’re about to put into it. They find it helpful (and fun!) to check out reviews after reading the books, too, so they can see what other real-life humans had to say about it.

Authors & publishers need to get book reviews to build buzz and credibility for their product. Librarians & booksellers need to hear from trusted sources that the book they are about to buy for their collection has the capability to get picked up & to satisfy. 

Book review sites have transformed the book-recommending landscape.

We can write reviews on product pages, on social media apps, and some of us, for publications that have been around since before the internet. Book reviewing has changed. But maybe it also hasn’t.

What kind of book review sites are you looking for? Chances are, this list has you covered.

Here are 30+ book review sites to read, write, and bookmark. 

1. Independent Book Review

Does this logo look familiar? (Hint: You’re sitting on it).

IBR, the website you’re on RIGHT NOW, is all about indie books . There are so many books in the world right now, but if you feel like you keep seeing the same ones recommended over and over, start reading indie!

Independent presses & self-published authors are doing some incredible work right now. IBR reviews books, curates lists, does indie bookstore round-ups, and uses starred reviews & best-of-the-year lists to show which books are going to blow your mind.

2. Book Marks

Lit Hub rules. You already knew this.

But do you know about Book Marks? They’re a branch of the Lit Hub network, and they are an excellent way for booksellers and librarians to get shorter recaps from multiple sources and voices.

Their staff peruses book review sites and shares pull-quotes from them in book lists & more. By reading all of these sites, they can give the book a rating based on the average: “Rave, Positive, Mixed, or Pan.”

My favorite book-buying platform, Bookshop , uses Book Marks’ scale for their books’ ratings, and I love getting access to that.

3. Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly has been around since 1872. By now, they’re a review churning machine. They cover so much of the book industry in so many different ways, reviewing nearly 9,000 books per year and providing publication announcements, agency announcements, industry job listings , bestseller lists, industry stats, a self-publishing partner, and more. 

4. Kirkus Reviews

Another one that’s been around since before the internet! 1933 to be exact. Kirkus is a widely recognized publication that book buyers & librarians follow carefully. I dare you to find a bookstore or library that doesn’t have multiple books with Kirkus Reviews plastered on their front and back covers.

5. Booklist

The American Library Association runs Booklist , a platform dedicated to helping libraries, educators, and booksellers choose books. They’ve got a magazine (since 1905!), book reviews, lists, awards, and one of my favorite bookish podcasts out there: Shelf Care .

6. Library Journal & School Library Journal

As you might be able to guess, Library Journal & School Library Journal focus on librarians too! They review a ton of books, and they write often about library-related news, collection management, technology, programs, and more. If you’re an author hoping to land your book in libraries, these are essential targets.

7. BookPage

You may have seen BookPage in your local library or bookstore. Some shops provide it for free so that patrons can look through it to find which books to buy in-store. Their website is clean and intriguing and always full of the most up-to-date releases and bestsellers.

Speaking of libraries! Have you seen our gifts for librarians ?

8. Foreword

Foreword is such an enthusiastic and dedicated champion of indie books, and they’ve been doing it since the 90s! I love how much attention university presses get here too. Their reviews are well-written & thorough, in both print & digital, and I always find something to speed-purchase once the Foreword Indie winners come out.

9. LoveReading

LoveReading is a top book-recommendation website in the UK. They’ve got starred reviews, lists, staff picks, a LitFest , eBooks, and they even donate 25% of the cover price of their books to schools of your choice. It’s reader-friendly and apparent how much they appreciate the wonder of books. 

10. Washington Independent Review of Books

What’s not to love about The Independent?

Back in 2011, a group of writers & editors were frustrated by newspapers dropping book review sections and decided to do something about it. The Washington Independent Review of Books is quite a lovely something! This nonprofit posts every day: from reviews to interviews to essays and podcasts. They host events too!

11. Book Riot

Try being a reader and not finding something you love on Book Riot. Book lists, podcasts, personalized recommendations, newsletters, book deals—this site is a haven.

It doesn’t post solo book reviews like other sites, but they do share mini-reviews in book lists and talk about reading in unique & passionate ways. The Book Riot Podcast is such a winner too! I love listening to Jeff & Rebecca laugh about the latest in books & reading.

12. Electric Lit

From novel excerpts to original short fiction & poetry, they might not only be a book review site,  but they do offer a lot in the world of book recommendations. Their Recommended Reading lit mag features unique staff picks and short, insightful book reviews.

13. The Millions

The writing in The Millions is something to behold. They are an artful source for all things book reviews & recommendations. They write stunning essays about books & reading and long reviews of new and old books. They’ve got some of my favorite Most Anticip ated lists too.

What are the biggest benefits of reading ? 🧐

14. Bookforum

Did you hear? Bookforum is back ! This book review magazine announced in December 2022 that they were closing, and my heart sank a little bit. This company means so much to the publishing industry and has for 20+ years, so when I saw (last week!) that they are returning, I did more than a few jumps for joy.

Welcome back, Bookforum! Can’t wait to see what you’ve got coming for us in book world coverage.

BOMB is in it for the art. Art, literature, film, music, theater, architecture, and dance. There are reviews and interviews, and the literature section is a real delight. The reviews are like poignant essays, and the author interviews are in-depth and feature some fascinating minds.

16. The Asian Review of Books

The only dedicated pan-Asian book review publication! It’s widely cited and features some of the best in Asian books and art, so booksellers and librarians have a source to trust to stock their collections with high-quality pan-Asian lit.

Have you seen our gifts for book lovers yet?

17. Chicago Review of Books

I love so much of what Chicago Review of Books does. They have a clean & sleek design that features some of the buzziest books as well as plenty of hidden gems from our favorite indie presses. I’m a particularly big fan of the spotlight they put on books in translation .

18. Rain Taxi

I love Rain Taxi ’s style! They champion unique books, publish their own fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, and put a real emphasis on art for their magazine covers . It’s a beautiful print magazine to subscribe to, but they also share free online editions & digital archives. They even run the Rain Taxi Reading Series & Twin Cities Book Festival if you’re a real-lifer in Minnesota!

19. The Rumpus

Oh, The Rumpus ! This mostly volunteer-run online magazine publishes reviews, interviews, essays, fiction, and poetry. The reviews are in-depth and personal and heart-melting, and in addition to the site, they’ve got cool perks like the Poetry Book Club  and Letters in the Mail . The book club is where you get a pre-release book and meet the poet via Slack with other club members at the end of the month, and Letters in the Mail are actual postcards sent in the mail to you twice a month from your favorite authors.

20. Book Reporter

The selection in Book Reporter is carefully curated & enticing: hot new releases, forthcoming books, major presses, & indies. And there are plenty of unique ways to learn about them, like video interviews and monthly lists & picks. It launched in 1996 and is in The Book Report Network, which includes Reading Group Guides , a super useful resource for book clubs.

21. BookTrib .

BookTrib does such a great job of making their site browsable. The different ways you can enjoy what they offer—from book lists to giveaways to ebook deals —are difficult to keep your purchase finger off of.

23. Lit Reactor

Writers & readers—where bookish people meet! LitReactor’s book reviews are in the magazine portion of their website, and they’ve got plenty of them! Reviews, interviews, lists, introspectives, writing tips, and reading discussions. I’ve found some really unique content on Lit Reactor, like this ranking of literary parents . The website is a haven for writers especially, as there are workshops, writing blog posts, and even a forum to participate in.

24. Crime Fiction Lover

Dark alleys. Stray bullets. Hard-boiled detectives. Runaway thrills. If you’re a mystery-thriller reader, you’ve got to know about Crime Fiction Lover. They’ve got a passionate group of readers and writers talking about the best books in the genre and the ones that are soon to come out too.

25. SF Book Reviews

Speculative fiction fans unite! SF Book Reviews has been reviewing sci-fi and fantasy books since 1999, and while they’re a relatively small staff, they publish regularly, feature books of the month, and work wonders for their fantastical community.

26. Historical Novel Society

For all you historical fiction fans out there, the Historical Novel Society has reviewed more than 20,000 books in its twenty years. This one works like a membership for “writers and readers who love exploring the past.” You get a quarterly print magazine as a member, and if you’re a writer, you can join critique groups and ask for book reviews.

27. The Poetry Question

The Poetry Question writes about poetry published by indie presses and indie authors. They are a small passionate team dedicated to showing the world why indie presses continue to be a leading source for award-winning poetry.

28. Goodreads

Did you know that there are over 125 million members on Goodreads? When users review books, they can have conversations with fellow readers and follow reviewers too. If you’re looking for the biggest community, there’s no doubt Goodreads is the one. I like using sites like this because it helps you catalog books, one of my favorite ways to build a strong reading habit . 

29. The Storygraph

A big community of active users that’s Amazon free! Come review books, use half & quarter stars (!), and complete reading challenges. You got this.

29. Bookwyrm

Bookwyrm is small (around 5,000 members at the time of this writing), but doesn’t that sound kind of nice? There are active members and a genuine collective goal in talking books. Grow with it. I think you’ll be comfy here. There are other communities within the Bookwyrm umbrella too, like Bookrastinating .

30. Reedsy Discovery

I hold a special place in my heart for book review sites dedicated to helping writers! I got into this business as a book marketer, and I experienced first-hand, through hundreds of books, how hard it was to get exposure & validation for small press and self-published authors. 

Reedsy Discovery is a branch of Reedsy (the author resource company) that connects authors & reviewers so that people can read free books, sometimes receive tips for it, and authors can get more reviews in the process. Readers can choose from the latest books as well as the ones that are getting the best reviews.

31. Netgalley

Netgalley is a book review site for pre-released books. Reviewers sign up for a free account, request galleys from publishers and indie authors, and get to read them before they’re published so that they can leave reviews for the book, preferably on Amazon, Goodreads, or their blog. They also run Bookish , the editorial arm of Netgalley, which has book recommendations, interviews, and more.

32. Online Book Club

This review site combines a bunch of cool things! The 4-million member community gives me a lot of Goodreads vibes, especially with the Bookshelves app . But Online Book Club is a place for you to get eBook deals and talk about books in reviews and forums.

What are your favorite book review sites to follow? Let us know in the comments!

Thank you for reading “ Top-Notch Book Review Sites for Readers & Writers !” If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Check out http://www.literaryvault.com for best book reviews and author interviews. The literary Vault is a blog run and owned by a 13-year-old passionate reader who loves to share her passion and recommendations with others.

Thank you for the information!

Book review sites serve as invaluable resources for both readers and writers, offering insightful critiques, recommendations, and discussions on a wide range of literary works. Whether you’re seeking your next captivating read or looking to promote your own book, these platforms provide a wealth of information and opportunities for engagement. https://ghostwritersplanet.com/

I think BookBrowse.com definitely deserves to be on this list!

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The 10 Best Book Reviews of 2020

Adam morgan picks parul sehgal on raven leilani, merve emre on lewis carroll, and more.

The pandemic and the birth of my second daughter prevented me from reading most of the books I wanted to in 2020. But I was able to read vicariously  through book critics, whose writing was a true source of comfort and escape for me this year. I’ve long told my students that criticism is literature—a genre of nonfiction that can and should be as insightful, experimental, and compelling as the art it grapples with—and the following critics have beautifully proven my point. The word “best” is always a misnomer, but these are my personal favorite book reviews of 2020.

Nate Marshall on Barack Obama’s A Promised Land ( Chicago Tribune )

A book review rarely leads to a segment on The 11th Hour with Brian Williams , but that’s what happened to Nate Marshall last month. I love how he combines a traditional review with a personal essay—a hybrid form that has become my favorite subgenre of criticism.

“The presidential memoir so often falls flat because it works against the strengths of the memoir form. Rather than take a slice of one’s life to lay bare and come to a revelation about the self or the world, the presidential memoir seeks to take the sum of a life to defend one’s actions. These sorts of memoirs are an attempt maybe not to rewrite history, but to situate history in the most rosy frame. It is by nature defensive and in this book, we see Obama’s primary defensive tool, his prodigious mind and proclivity toward over-considering every detail.”

Merve Emre on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ( The Point )

I’m a huge fan of writing about books that weren’t just published in the last 10 seconds. And speaking of that hybrid form above, Merve Emre is one of its finest practitioners. This piece made me laugh out loud and changed the way I think about Lewis Carroll.

“I lie awake at night and concentrate on Alice,  on why my children have fixated on this book at this particular moment. Part of it must be that I have told them it ‘takes place’ in Oxford, and now Oxford—or more specifically, the college whose grounds grow into our garden—marks the physical limits of their world. Now that we can no longer move about freely, no longer go to new places to see new things, we are trying to find ways to estrange the places and objects that are already familiar to us.”

Parul Sehgal on Raven Leilani’s Luster ( The New York Times Book Review )

Once again, Sehgal remains the best lede writer in the business. I challenge you to read the opening of any  Sehgal review and stop there.

“You may know of the hemline theory—the idea that skirt lengths fluctuate with the stock market, rising in boom times and growing longer in recessions. Perhaps publishing has a parallel; call it the blurb theory. The more strained our circumstances, the more manic the publicity machine, the more breathless and orotund the advance praise. Blurbers (and critics) speak with a reverent quiver of this moment, anointing every other book its guide, every second writer its essential voice.”

Constance Grady on Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall ( Vox )

Restoring the legacies of ill-forgotten books is one of our duties as critics. Grady’s take on “the least famous sister in a family of celebrated geniuses” makes a good case for Wildfell Hall’ s place alongside Wuthering Heights  and Jane Eyre  in the Romantic canon.

“[T]he heart of this book is a portrait of a woman surviving and flourishing after abuse, and in that, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall feels unnervingly modern. It is fresh, shocking, and wholly new today, 200 years after the birth of its author.”

Ismail Muhammad on Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley ( The Atlantic )

Muhammad is a philosophical critic, so it’s always fun to see him tackle a book with big ideas. Here, he makes an enlightened connection between Wiener’s Silicon Valley memoir and Michael Lewis’s 1989 Wall Street exposé, Liar’s Poker.

“Like Lewis, Wiener found ‘a way out of unhappiness’ by writing her own gimlet-eyed generational portrait that doubles as a cautionary tale of systemic dysfunction. But if her chronicle acquires anything like the must-read status that Lewis’s antic tale of a Princeton art-history major’s stint at Salomon Brothers did, it will be for a different reason. For all her caustic insight and droll portraiture, Wiener is on an earnest quest likely to resonate with a public that has been sleepwalking through tech’s gradual reshaping of society.”

Hermione Hoby on Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs ( 4 Columns )

Hoby’s thousand-word review is a great example of a critic reading beyond the book to place it in context.

“When Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs  was first published in 2008, the then-governor of Tokyo, the ultraconservative Shintaro Ishihara, deemed the novel ‘unpleasant and intolerable.’ I wonder what he objected to? Perhaps he wasn’t into a scene in which the narrator, a struggling writer called Natsuko, pushes a few fingers into her vagina in a spirit of dejected exploration: ‘I . . . tried being rough and being gentle. Nothing worked.’”

Taylor Moore on C Pam Zhang’s How Much Of These Hills Is Gold ( The A.V. Club )

Describing Zhang’s wildly imaginative debut novel is hard, but Moore manages to convey the book’s shape and texture in less than 800 words, along with some critical analysis.

“Despite some characteristics endemic to Wild West narratives (buzzards circling prey, saloons filled with seedy strangers), the world of How Much Of These Hills Is Gold feels wholly original, and Zhang imbues its wide expanse with magical realism. According to local lore, tigers lurk in the shadows, despite having died out ‘decades ago’ with the buffalo. There also exists a profound sense of loss for an exploited land, ‘stripped of its gold, its rivers, its buffalo, its Indians, its tigers, its jackals, its birds and its green and its living.’”

Grace Ebert on Paul Christman’s Midwest Futures ( Chicago Review of Books )

I love how Ebert brings her lived experience as a Midwesterner into this review of Christman’s essay collection. (Disclosure: I founded the Chicago Review of Books five years ago, but handed over the keys in July 2019.)

“I have a deep and genuine love for Wisconsin, for rural supper clubs that always offer a choice between chicken soup or an iceberg lettuce salad, and for driving back, country roads that seemingly are endless. This love, though, is conflicting. How can I sing along to Waylon Jennings, Tanya Tucker, and Merle Haggard knowing that my current political views are in complete opposition to the lyrics I croon with a twang in my voice?”

Michael Schaub on Bryan Washington’s Memorial ( NPR )

How do you review a book you fall in love with? It’s one of the most challenging assignments a critic can tackle. But Schaub is a pro; he falls in love with a few books every year.

“Washington is an enormously gifted author, and his writing—spare, unadorned, but beautiful—reads like the work of a writer who’s been working for decades, not one who has yet to turn 30. Just like Lot, Memorial  is a quietly stunning book, a masterpiece that asks us to reflect on what we owe to the people who enter our lives.”

Mesha Maren on Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season ( Southern Review of Books )

Maren opens with an irresistible comparison between Melchor’s irreverent novel and medieval surrealist art. (Another Disclosure: I founded the Southern Review of Books in early 2020.)

“Have you ever wondered what internal monologue might accompany the characters in a Hieronymus Bosch painting? What are the couple copulating upside down in the middle of that pond thinking? Or the man with flowers sprouting from his ass? Or the poor fellow being killed by a fire-breathing creature which is itself impaled upon a knife? I would venture to guess that their voices would sound something like the writing of Mexican novelist Fernanda Melchor.”

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How to Write a Book Review: The Complete Guide

by Sue Weems | 23 comments

If you've ever loved (or hated) a book, you may have been tempted to review it. Here's a complete guide to how to write a book review, so you can share your literary adventures with other readers more often! 

You finally reach the last page of a book that kept you up all night and close it with the afterglow of satisfaction and a tinge of regret that it’s over. If you enjoyed the book enough to stay up reading it way past your bedtime, consider writing a review. It is one of the best gifts you can give an author.

Regardless of how much you know about how to write a book review, the author will appreciate hearing how their words touched you.

But as you face the five shaded stars and empty box, a blank mind strikes. What do I say? I mean, is this a book really deserving of five stars? How did it compare to Dostoevsky or Angelou or Dickens?

Maybe there’s an easier way to write a book review.

Want to learn how to write a book from start to finish? Check out How to Write a Book: The Complete Guide .

The Fallacy of Book Reviews

Once you’ve decided to give a review, you are faced with the task of deciding how many stars to give a book.

When I first started writing book reviews, I made the mistake of trying to compare a book to ALL BOOKS OF ALL TIME. (Sorry for the all caps, but that’s how it felt, like a James Earl Jones voice was asking me where to put this book in the queue of all books.)

Other readers find themselves comparing new titles to their favorite books. It's a natural comparison. But is it fair?

This is honestly why I didn’t give reviews of books for a long time. How can I compare a modern romance or historical fiction war novel with Dostoevsky? I can’t, and I shouldn’t.

I realized my mistake one day as I was watching (of all things) a dog show. In the final round, they trotted out dogs of all shapes, colors, and sizes. I thought, “How can a Yorkshire Terrier compete with a Basset Hound?” As if he'd read my mind, the announcer explained that each is judged by the standards for its breed.

This was my “Aha!” moment. I have to take a book on its own terms. The question is not, “How does this book compare to all books I’ve read?” but “How well did this book deliver what it promised for the intended audience?”

A review is going to reflect my personal experience with the book, but I can help potential readers by taking a minute to consider what the author intended. Let me explain what I mean. 

How to Write a Book Review: Consider a Book’s Promise

A book makes a promise with its cover, blurb, and first pages. It begins to set expectations the minute a reader views the thumbnail or cover. Those things indicate the genre, tone, and likely the major themes.

If a book cover includes a lip-locked couple in flowing linen on a beach, and I open to the first page to read about a pimpled vampire in a trench coat speaking like Mr. Knightly about his plan for revenge on the entire human race, there’s been a breach of contract before I even get to page two. These are the books we put down immediately (unless a mixed-message beachy cover combined with an Austen vampire story is your thing).

But what if the cover, blurb, and first pages are cohesive and perk our interest enough to keep reading? Then we have to think about what the book has promised us, which revolves around one key idea: What is the core story question and how well is it resolved?

Sometimes genre expectations help us answer this question: a romance will end with a couple who finds their way, a murder mystery ends with a solved case, a thriller’s protagonist beats the clock and saves the country or planet.

The stories we love most do those expected things in a fresh or surprising way with characters we root for from the first page. Even (and especially!) when a book doesn’t fit neatly in a genre category, we need to consider what the book promises on those first pages and decide how well it succeeds on the terms it sets for itself.

When I Don’t Know What to Write

About a month ago, I realized I was overthinking how to write a book review. Here at the Write Practice we have a longstanding tradition of giving critiques using the Oreo method : point out something that was a strength, then something we wondered about or that confused us, followed by another positive.

We can use this same structure to write a simple review when we finish books. Consider this book review format: 

[Book Title] by [book author] is about ___[plot summary in a sentence—no spoilers!]___. I chose this book based on ________. I really enjoyed ________. I wondered how ___________. Anyone who likes ____ will love this book.

Following this basic template can help you write an honest review about most any book, and it will give the author or publisher good information about what worked (and possibly what didn’t). You might write about the characters, the conflict, the setting, or anything else that captured you and kept you reading.

As an added bonus, you will be a stronger reader when you are able to express why you enjoyed parts of a book (just like when you critique!). After you complete a few, you’ll find it gets easier, and you won’t need the template anymore.

What if I Didn’t Like It?

Like professional book reviewers, you will have to make the call about when to leave a negative review. If I can’t give a book at least three stars, I usually don’t review it. Why? If I don’t like a book after a couple chapters, I put it down. I don’t review anything that I haven’t read the entire book.

Also, it may be that I’m not the target audience. The book might be well-written and well-reviewed with a great cover, and it just doesn’t capture me. Or maybe it's a book that just isn't hitting me right now for reasons that have nothing to do with the book and everything to do with my own reading life and needs. Every book is not meant for every reader.

If a book kept me reading all the way to the end and I didn’t like the ending? I would probably still review it, since there had to be enough good things going on to keep me reading to the end. I might mention in my review that the ending was less satisfying than I hoped, but I would still end with a positive.

How to Write a Book Review: Your Turn

As writers, we know how difficult it is to put down the words day after day. We are typically voracious readers. Let’s send some love back out to our fellow writers this week and review the most recent title we enjoyed.

What was the last book you read or reviewed? Do you ever find it hard to review a book? Share in the comments .

Now it's your turn. Think of the last book you read. Then, take fifteen minutes to write a review of it based on the template above. When you're done, share your review in the Pro Practice Workshop . For bonus points, post it on the book's page on Amazon and Goodreads, too!

Don't forget to leave feedback for your fellow writers! What new reads will you discover in the comments?

Sue Weems is a writer, teacher, and traveler with an advanced degree in (mostly fictional) revenge. When she’s not rationalizing her love for parentheses (and dramatic asides), she follows a sailor around the globe with their four children, two dogs, and an impossibly tall stack of books to read. You can read more of her writing tips on her website .

23 Comments

The Ice Dragon by George R.R. Martin is about a girl that shows no emotion befriending a ice dragon.

I chose this book based on the cover that had a little girl riding a ice dragon, and wondered what is about.

I really enjoyed the interaction the little girl had with the dragon.

I wondered how how the girl’s bond with the dragon.

Anyone who likes a coming of age story set in a fantasy will love this book.

Thanks for sharing your practice, Azure!

You’re welcome.

A interesting, at times perplexing, subject! And one on my mind lately,as I’ve agreed to do a few. I do enjoy giving reviews and am delighted when I can say, “This was a great book!” Or even, “I enjoyed this book.” It gets perplexing when I agree to review a book — and simply don’t like it. Then what to say? I hate to disappoint the writer but I’ve promised to give my honest opinion.

I’ve found some books mediocre and yet I see a dozen other reviewers saying “A great story!” Tastes do vary. But when there are obvious flaws I tend to skip all the best-friend-and-cousin reviewers and find the first person who says, “This writer has a problem with…” Usually there’ll be a number of reviewers who spot the same problems I do.

I like upbeat main characters, but not aggressive, belligerent, and/or self-centered ones. I like to meet in a story the kind of people I’d like to meet in real life— not people I’d avoid if possible. I recently read a book where the main character came across as insipid and the story only mildly interesting. Other reviewers said it was great and I know for this specific audience — readers who want a certain slant to a story — it was quite suitable. So I tried to cut the book some slack. Everyone has their limit as to how much blood and gore, smooching and snuggling, they are willing to read about.

Once I agreed to review a book and would have tossed it after the first chapter — for several reasons. A lot of “writer inserting facts for reader’s benefit”; teach/preach paragraphs; excess of description; attitudes of MCs. Once it’s live on seller’s sites like Amazon, what can you say? The one thing good it had going for it was the story line or theme. With a pro editor’s help it could have been a great story.

As for a review, one book I read lately was “A Clue for the Puzzle Lady” by Parnell Hall. It’s one of those “Stayed up half the night to finish it” books; I think anyone who likes a compelling cozy mystery would probably like it. Downside: I didn’t care for the “Puzzle Lady.” She’s a lush, hangs out at the bar getting sloshed. The upside: her sensible niece has a starring role —trying to keep her aunt on the straight-and-narrow and the mystery keeps you guessing until the end.

Christine, Thanks for sharing your insight! It sounds like you are approached often to review new books. It does make it tricky if it’s a request, especially outside your own preferences. Thanks for chiming in about your process, as I’m sure others will appreciate the perspective too. I’ll have to take a look at the Puzzle Lady– I do enjoy cozy mysteries. Sue

Here’s another cozy mystery book review in case you’re interested. I’m not approached by writers that often, but there are the Story Cartel, Book Bub and Goodreads, all sites where authors ask for review volunteers.

Reel Estate Ripoff by Renee Pawlish

The detective Reed Ferguson is a fan of Humphry Bogart, movie memorabilia of that era, and fancies himself a bit of a Sam Slade. Though not your super-sleuth, rather inept at times, he’s a likeable character. Told in first person, the story has a Philip Marlowe tone to it, but much tamer. Dialogue and story line are well done, the story well plotted and believable. I’d gladly read more stories about this particular gumshoe.

If you like cozy mystery books, I’ll send you a list later, Sue. Love them too and I’ve met many authors who write in this genre. Back on topic– you inspire me again to add some reviews to my Blog. I have been reading and writing many middle grade mysteries for a project! My latest favorite: “The World’s Greatest Detective” by Caroline Carson (who I hope to meet tomorrow in Arlington, VA!) My 12 year old grandson borrowed it and finished it before I could. “It’s the best mystery I ever read, Grandma! You’ ll never guess the ending with unpredictable twists!” What better review could we read. The target audience and I both highly recommend this 2017 mystery.

Adding it to my stack, Beth. Thanks!

Not wanting to sound life an idiot, but willing to risk it here among friends: What exactly is a cozy mystery?

Glad you asked! It’s a subgenre of mystery. The best examples of cozy mysteries are those by Agatha Christie. They usually avoid profanity, excessive gore/ violence, and sex. They focus more on the puzzle, sleuth, and their smaller world. Hope that helps!

Thanks, Sue.

Wonderful article. The first I have read by you. It especially gets those of us who don’t feel we have the formula down for review writing to be introduced to a form we can build upon with experience. You’ve kept it simple but you have given us the main ingredients needed for a good review. I printed this one off to look at the next few times I write reviews. Thank you.

Glad you found it helpful. Thanks for reading and commenting!

I haven’t gone into all this. It’s a matter of time, Joe. I gad about all over the place, not knowing where I am or where I’m going. Within weeks, I’ll be 87. I’ve books of my own that I’d like to see reviewed. Even sorting them out, however, even finding where any of them are, would be a time burden. You see the fix?

Hi Dave, You aren’t alone in feeling the press of time for getting your stories out into the world. May I gently offer this: start with finding and sorting one. If you can’t find it, write it anew. You’ve probably grown in time and perspective since you wrote the first draft, which will make for a stronger story. Good luck. I’m cheering you on!

This is an article for me, because I am happy to receive a rating. I haven’t sold many books. But, at least some thinks that it was worth the time to read. That was refreshing. And, I think I wrote two reviews, so far. It was on Amazon.com. Thank you.

You’re welcome!

Hi, Sue. Thanks for the helpful advice. I did a review on Amazon for the first of a 7-part thriller titled ‘Mosh Pit (The Rose Garden Incident)’ by Michael Hiebert. [Here it is.]

“5.0 out of 5 stars Advance copy review. By A fellow author on September 18, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition I Recommend This Book Strongly

I enjoyed reading this first part of the thriller. The author’s opening chapter/prologue was fast paced, and set me in the middle of the inciting incident along with two of the main characters. After that thrilling opening, I felt the ensuing chapters moved at a more leisurely pace, and was about to grade them as less praiseworthy when I watched a lecture by Brandon Sanderson on YouTube about building three dimensional characters and realised Michael Hiebert had done exactly that by introducing the reader to the minutiae of other characters who had parts to play in the development of the story. So, instead of cardboard cutouts of bland stock characters, the author shows us real people with real concerns that the reader can relate to.and actually care about. I look forward to reading the rest of this intriguing thriller, and highly recommend it to all lovers of well-written, and well-crafted thrillers.”

I also reviewed Part 2 of the series, but that review is too long to post here.

Footnote: The author, Michael Hiebert, was so pleased with my reviews, he recently asked me to beta-read a short story collection he plans to publish in November.

Great review, John! I like how you shared a bit of your process as a reader too, in recognizing what the writer was doing with their characterization. Thanks!

Thank you, Sue.

Five out of five stars When I picked up a copy of “The Girl with All the Gifts,” by M R Carey, at the used book store, I somehow had it in my head that it was a YA dystopian novel along the lines of “Divergent” or “The Hunger Games.” While I would definitely say that I was not right about that, I wouldn’t say that I was completely wrong. I was, however, completely unprepared for a zombie novel–which is a good thing, cause I wouldn’t have read it, and I’m glad I did. Think “The Walking Dead” meets (why do I want to say ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night”?) “Peter Pan.” I really enjoyed seeing things from, the main character, Melanie’s point of view. Her limited knowledge of her own situation was intriguing, to say the least (and probably why I thought of “The Curious Incident”). I was a bit disappointed when the POV changed to another character’s, but, as the novel progressed, I found myself sympathizing with nearly all the characters–with one exception, and I’ll leave that for you to ponder when you read it. I wondered how much of the science was real, but not enough for me to research it myself. Although, based on other reviews, I guess most of the science about the fungus is real. I also wondered about the fate of the remaining ‘lost boys’ of the cities. If you liked…. well, I don’t know. I’m not typically a fan of things zombie, so I don’t have a comparison, but the book was somewhat similar to “Divergent” and “The Hunger Games” in that the main character goes through a hellluva time and comes out the other side with a plan for her future.

“Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom is a true story about how one man found meaning in life when his doctors gave him a death sentence. Morrie was a college professor who passed on his new found wisdom in the last year of his life to a favorite student, the author, who chronicled his professor’s perspectives on death and dying.

I chose this book because of its philosophical topic, and because it is so well written that the words just jump off the page.

Knowing we are all mortal beings, I especially liked the insights, the tidbits of wisdom imparted by the dying man. Death is a subject that few, if any of us, ever talk about seriously with friends and family. The subject of death is verboten. We deny its existence. And, if we are religious, we pretend we will not really die, but we deceive ourselves and think we will live on in some afterlife existence for all eternity. But the professor, Morrie, learns some valuable life lessons from his impending death, and Mitch Albom was gracious enough to capture them in this short but eminently readable book.

I really liked the book because it is timeless. This true story will impart serious life lessons for all future generations, and will help us gain perspectives on our lives and the relationships with those we love the most.

R. Allan Worrell

Sue, I’ve been meaning to come back since this was first posted to tell you thanks for a great article. I seldom review books for alllllll the reasons you listed. This is a perfect tool and I’ll surely use it. Cathy

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Is It Time to Torch the Constitution?

All republican governments live in fear of the man on the white horse. A republican government, like ours, is a system of rules designed to prevent any one person or faction from hijacking the democratic decision-making process. The person on the white horse doesn’t respect the democratic decision-making process, is not a product of that process, and has no stake in its survival. The person on the white horse rides into town and says, Who needs rules? Let me take care of everything. And the public, glad to simplify life, or possibly dazzled by the promise of a glorious future, lets the rider take charge. Rules that no one enforces are just so much paper.

But republican governments also live in fear of the man on the street. Political decisions can’t be entrusted entirely to the will of a bare majority of voters, in part because voters tend to be relatively uninformed about politics, but, more important, because nothing prevents majorities, once in power, from oppressing minorities. A government under the complete control of a popularly elected majority is just as dangerous as a government under the complete control of a guy on a horse.

If you try to compose a list of rules that insulate the government from both evils, the autocrat and the mob, you get a pretty complex document. You get a document that hedges every grant of political power with conditions that make the power hard to exercise, including the power to alter the document. You get, in fact, the Constitution of the United States.

Discover notable new fiction and nonfiction.

The Constitution is 4,543 words long. That’s roughly four magazine pages, about the length of this article (though not nearly as enjoyable). You can read the whole thing in fifteen minutes. Yet this brief text—plus its still operative amendments, another 3,112 words—underwrites our entire system of government. That system currently employs, on national, state, and municipal levels, more than nineteen million people. All those employees represent “the state,” and are subject to the Constitution’s rules about what government can and cannot do.

The individual states have their own constitutions, and municipalities have their own charters, but nothing in them may contradict what is in the federal Constitution, because, in our version of republicanism, the authority of the federal Constitution is absolute. We know that this is so because the Constitution says it’s so, in the “supremacy clause” of Article VI: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof . . . shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”

Everyone agrees that, if the Constitution says you can’t do it, it can’t be done. The question is: Who tells us what the Constitution says you can and cannot do? And the answer is: the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the ultimate authority on the ultimate authority. That’s a lot of authority for nine unelected individuals to have.

This is why, when people are unhappy with the way the political system is working, they tend to blame one of two things: the Constitution or the Supreme Court. They argue either that the Constitution is flawed and needs to be changed, or that the Court is misinterpreting the Constitution and needs to be changed. When people are really unhappy, they argue both.

Erwin Chemerinsky is really unhappy. Chemerinsky is the dean of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley. He is highly respected in academic circles as a scholar of constitutional law, but his name got recognition in much wider circles last spring, after he hosted a dinner for law students at his house and one of them produced a microphone and an amplifier and started giving a pro-Palestine speech. Chemerinsky’s wife, Catherine Fisk, also a Berkeley law professor, grabbed the student and tried to wrestle the microphone away from her. In a video someone recorded (there’s always a video, somehow), Chemerinsky can be heard shouting, “This is my house! The First Amendment doesn’t apply!”

This was particularly awkward because, in 2017, Chemerinsky had published “Free Speech on Campus,” a book that urged expansive protections for student speech. Berkeley is a public university, and its agents may not—the Constitution says so!—censor speech because of its content. Was the student with the microphone being silenced by state actors (Chemerinsky and Fisk) because of what she was saying? Or is a dinner party for students (paid for by the university) at a professor’s home a private forum outside the reach of the First Amendment? These became matters of much debate. Either way, it is never a good idea to grab a student.

Chemerinsky is a political progressive and a lively thinker. In 2014, he published a book titled “The Case Against the Supreme Court.” This was a blame-the-Court book. In it, he argued that “the Court has frequently failed, throughout American history, at its most important tasks, at its most important moments.”

He pointed out that from the eighteen-nineties to 1937 the Supreme Court struck down some two hundred state and federal laws regulating business, many intended to protect workers’ health and safety, others to pull the country out of the Depression. In 1927, the Court upheld the enforced sterilization of persons diagnosed with mental retardation. In 1944, it affirmed the constitutionality of the Roosevelt Administration’s policy of rounding up Japanese Americans and sending them to internment camps.

As everyone knows, between Plessy v. Ferguson, decided in 1896, and Brown v. Board of Education, decided in 1954, and in spite of the Fourteenth (equal protection) and Fifteenth (right to vote) Amendments, the Court barely lifted a finger to end segregation and disenfranchisement on the basis of race—not that Congress or the executive branch did much, either. The Court didn’t rule that the Constitution forbids discrimination on the basis of sex until 1971.

Though Chemerinsky approved of the Warren Court’s decisions on segregation (Brown), districting (one man, one vote), and defendants’ rights (Miranda v. Arizona and Gideon v. Wainwright)—he has represented criminal defendants before the Supreme Court himself—he maintained that the Warren Court nevertheless “did so much less than it needed to and should have done, even in the areas of its greatest accomplishments.” And, as you would expect, he was scathing about the Roberts Court, which seems bent on undoing much of the Warren-era progress on rights and business regulation. In 2022, Chemerinsky published a critique of the dominant judicial philosophy on the Roberts Court called “Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism.” He likes fire-alarm titles.

Chemerinsky had little to say that was critical of the Constitution, and he praised the difficulty of amending it. Something like 11,848 constitutional amendments have been introduced in Congress since 1789. (You can examine them on Jill Lepore ’s Amend Project Web site.) Congress has ratified only thirty-three by the required two-thirds majority, and only twenty-seven were then ratified by three-quarters of the states, becoming law. The first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, were written by James Madison to help the Constitution secure ratification, so they are essentially part of the Constitution itself, and two of those which followed are the prohibition amendment and its repeal—which nets fifteen amendments in two hundred and thirty-three years.

Isn’t this undemocratic, sticking us with a dead-hand document that we can’t change when the times do? Not at all, Chemerinsky explained. The reason the Constitution was made difficult to amend is the tyranny-of-the-majority problem. In times of crisis, majorities may want to suspend individual liberties, and the Constitution makes it very hard for them to do this (which doesn’t mean that it has never been done). “The Constitution is society’s attempt to protect itself from itself,” Chemerinsky concluded.

That was then. Chemerinsky’s new book is “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States” (Liveright), and the difficulty of amending the Constitution is Exhibit A. “The framers of the Constitution went too far in preventing amendments,” he now argues. As a result, we are stuck with a set of rules which not only makes addressing political problems harder but is itself responsible for many of the political problems we need to address. The Constitution’s “very existence as a largely unchanged document has become a sledgehammer wielded by a minority to prop up a system that engenders polarization and festering national discord,” he says. Chemerinsky doesn’t just want to amend the Constitution, either. He wants us to throw it out and come up with a new one.

You don’t publish a book called “No Democracy Lasts Forever” for style points, but, even allowing for that, it’s repetitive and hastily written. The haste would matter less if it did not lead to misleading and inaccurate assertions. For example, Chemerinsky tells us that, according to a poll taken in 2023, “only four percent of those surveyed said that the American political system ‘works well.’ ” But that’s not what the survey said. In the poll, administered by the Pew Research Center, four per cent of respondents said that the American political system is working “extremely or very well,” and twenty-three per cent said it was working “somewhat well.” That leaves a lot of Americans who think it’s not working well, but not ninety-six per cent.

Elsewhere, to illustrate how the Roberts Court has abandoned the deference previous Courts showed to democratically elected legislatures, he informs us that, from 1937 to 1995, the Court “did not strike down a single federal law for exceeding the scope of congressional power or infringing states’ rights.”

I’m not sure what this can possibly mean. The Court struck down dozens of federal laws between 1937 and 1995. The grounds differed, of course. Sometimes the Court ruled that the law violated a right, like the First Amendment right to freedom of speech or the Fifth Amendment right to due process, which would plainly exceed “the scope of congressional power.”

What Chemerinsky may have in mind are cases in which the Court ruled that Congress had exceeded the powers enumerated in Article I, which lays out the rules for what Congress can and cannot do. But that doesn’t make sense, either, because there were many Article I cases between 1937 and 1995 in which the Court struck down laws.

Even if he simply worded the sentence badly and meant that the Court did not strike down a federal law specifically because it infringed on states’ rights, the claim is still incorrect. In Oregon v. Mitchell (1970), the Court threw out parts of the Voting Rights Act amendments for usurping the right of states to administer elections, and in National League of Cities v. Usery (1976) it struck down federal laws regulating labor markets for state employees (though the decision was overruled in 1985). “Did not strike down a single federal law” is a hyperbolic way to make a legitimate point, which is that, over the past thirty years, constitutional jurisprudence has come to tilt toward states’ rights.

A principal target in the new book, unsurprisingly, is the Electoral College, defined in Article II and the Twelfth Amendment, which makes it possible for a candidate to lose the popular vote and still be elected President—as happened with George W. Bush, in 2000, and Donald Trump, in 2016, and as nearly happened with Trump again in 2020. Only in America is such a thing possible. Chemerinsky warns us that, because of this constitutional design flaw, “in theory, states that are home to only twenty-two percent of the country’s population can choose the president.”

That does sound pretty undemocratic. What Chemerinsky actually means, though, is that someone could be elected President despite winning only twenty-two per cent of the popular vote, not by carrying states with twenty-two per cent of the population. And how could that happen? If a candidate were to win each of the thirty smallest states by exactly one vote and not receive a single vote anywhere else in the country—something that is likely to occur around the time the last monkey finishes typing “Hamlet.” It’s a meaningless statistic.

Still, Chemerinsky does make, forcefully, valid points. His complaint about the Electoral College is hardly a new one—the loser of the popular vote was also elected President twice in the nineteenth century—but he’s probably right that, in a highly polarized electorate like ours, we are apt to see this happen fairly regularly. The problem is not so much that the wrong person wins as that the public loses faith in the process. Trump has already had some success at delegitimizing an election in which he lost the popular vote by a little more than seven million, historically a pretty large margin. Imagine if he had won the popular vote and lost the election.

Chemerinsky cites a statistic often produced to illustrate the anti-democratic effect of the formula the Constitution uses to assign Electoral College votes—one for each of a state’s congressional seats plus one for each of its two senators. He points out that, as a consequence, California has one electoral vote for every 709,624 residents and Wyoming has one for every 193,793 residents. (You don’t see it remarked quite as often that Texas has one electoral vote for every 790,251 residents and Vermont has one for every 215,821 residents. Nobody feels sorry for Texas.)

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On the other hand, the District of Columbia had no electoral votes at all until 1961 and still has no senators, despite the fact that more people live there than in Wyoming or Vermont. D.C. does get an honorary three electoral votes, hardly just compensation for the lack of representation in the Senate.

The composition of this chamber is another anti-majoritarian feature of our system. The deliberation at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 over the makeup of the Senate put the Framers’ “man on the street” anxiety on full display. The undemocratic elements of the Constitution can seem shocking by current standards, but the Framers grew up as Colonial subjects of a hereditary monarchy, most European nations in 1787 were hereditary monarchies, and heredity had been the principle of succession, de jure and de facto, in many societies for much of human history. Governments “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” was a fairly novel idea. It is not terribly surprising that the Convention looked for ways, consistent with the proposition that “all men are created equal,” to establish a governing class.

The Constitution therefore gave state legislatures the power to appoint senators (which is why, in Illinois, Stephen A. Douglas defeated Abraham Lincoln in the Senate race in 1858). This was partly a way of creating a legislative body less dependent on the popular will. Making the Senate a popularly elected body did not happen until 1913 and required a constitutional amendment (the Seventeenth).

The two-per-state rule was also believed to be necessary to get the smaller states to sign on to the finished product—though Madison did not see this rule as a benefit to the slave states, which is how it is sometimes interpreted. As he pointed out at the Convention, Northern states would do better on the two-per-state system because they outnumbered Southern states, eight to five.

And the rule looks more like a giveaway now than it did then. As Chemerinsky says, “smaller” is a relative term. At the time the Constitution was written, Virginia, the most populous state, had twelve times the population of Delaware, the least. According to the 2020 census, California’s population is now sixty-eight times as large as Wyoming’s. Yet they have equal representation in the Senate. Since 1998, Republican senators have never represented half the population, but they have been the Senate majority half that time. The stupidest part of the whole thing is that states are complete fictions. Their borders have changed many times, both before and after their admission to the Union. One day you’re a citizen of Massachusetts, and the next day you’re a citizen of Maine. Why should the system of representation honor that?

Chemerinsky’s other reform proposals include abolishing the filibuster, under whose “Alice in Wonderland” rules forty-one senators representing fifteen per cent of the American people can block most legislation; ending partisan gerrymandering, a computer-aided practice that the Supreme Court has recently washed its hands of, not for the first time; increasing the size of the House of Representatives; and eliminating life tenure for federal judges and Supreme Court Justices, something no other democracy grants.

Life tenure, which is guaranteed by the Constitution, has emerged as a hot-button issue because, although Republicans have won the popular vote in only one of the last eight Presidential elections, six of the nine sitting Justices have been appointed by Republican Presidents and are unremovable. The Framers were possibly less concerned about this particular dead-hand problem because life expectancies were so much shorter in the eighteenth century. Clarence Thomas was appointed to the Court in 1991, and he could easily serve forty years, as I’m sure he has every intention of doing.

Chemerinsky also thinks that the Internet, and especially social media, must be policed. “Future elections will be decided because of false speech circulated over social media,” he predicts, although, as something of a First Amendment absolutist himself, he has trouble coming up with concrete suggestions for prohibiting the circulation of misinformation.

Among the various reforms he proposes, changing the two-senator rule is probably the steepest hill to climb. The Constitution expressly forbids changing it, which means that, to make representation in the Senate proportional, the Constitution would have to be amended twice—first to repeal the section of Article V providing that “no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate,” and then to deprive the states of equal suffrage in the Senate.

It might be possible to pass those amendments by popular vote, but that is not how ratification works. It requires the approval of three-quarters of the states, not three-quarters of the voters, and states cannot be expected to voluntarily reduce their representation in Congress. So we would need another amendment to suspend the three-quarters rule. . . . The Framers really have us in a box.

Apart from abolishing life tenure for federal judges, most of the other items on Chemerinsky’s must-do list—eliminating the filibuster, and so on—are not prohibited by the Constitution and therefore do not require amendments. They can all be achieved, in principle, by passing a law. But the status quo blocks such reforms in other ways. The anti-majoritarian elements of the Constitution, plus the filibuster and partisan gerrymandering, allow a minority to control the political process, and that minority can keep reforms from ever getting voted on. Hence Chemerinsky’s call for a new constitutional convention. Let’s start the whole thing over from the top.

Is it really that bad? Is our political system in such a uniquely terrible place? Paul Pierson and Eric Schickler think that it is, and they spell out their reasons in “Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era” (Chicago). To be fair, not a lot of style points here, either. The book is a kind of verbal thicket you have to fight your way through.

Pierson and Schickler, too, blame the Constitution, not so much because it was misconceived from the start as because it is now past its sell-by date. For most of American history, although there were some rough patches, the Constitution worked O.K., they think, but it “was simply not designed to meet the challenges we now face.” They compare the system of government the Framers built to “aging and rickety software.”

What Pierson and Schickler are concerned with is not political strife, of which there has been plenty and which democracies are designed to accommodate. It’s polarization, the emergence of two ideologically rigid political parties intolerant of compromise. Compromise is crucial to the system the Constitution designed. That system provides many veto points—“checks and balances”—that are intended to force competing interests to make compromises. “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” as Madison put it in Federalist No. 51.

The Constitution itself is the product of compromise. Thomas Jefferson (who was not present at the Convention; he was in Paris, not Philadelphia, normally a good trade-off, but in this case not) was an ideologue. But Madison was a pragmatist. He was trying to design a system that worked, and working systems require buy-in, and buy-in must be bought by giving something up.

Still, Madison could see that the Constitution left the door open for the rise of what he called a “faction,” which he defined as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” In other words, either a movement led by a man on a white horse or a tyranny-of-the-majority regime.

What prevents groups like those from taking power, Madison explained in Federalist No. 10, is not law. It’s geography. Building a majority requires compromise among different groups, all of which want their rights and interests protected in exchange for their coöperation, and the United States is so geographically large and dispersed, with so many local and regional issues at play, that a single-issue faction isn’t going to be able to accrue enough national power to take over the government. “The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States,” Madison wrote, “but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.”

Pierson and Schickler’s argument is that Madison’s solution no longer works. This is not just because the Internet has made the notion of “geographic dispersion” obsolete. It’s also because the nature of politics has changed.

“All politics is local” is a slogan commonly attributed to Tip O’Neill, the Massachusetts congressman and House Speaker, although people used it before his time. Pierson and Schickler think that this was once true, and that mediating institutions, like state political parties and even political bosses, could demand compromises in exchange for support of the national ticket. They add to this category labor unions, local media, lobbies, and regionally based interest groups—small-constituency entities that all used to operate as countervailing forces to the national parties. But today, Pierson and Schickler say (and they are not the first to say it), all politics is national, and all national politics is partisan. Even the media occupy two distinct political ecosystems.

The phrase they use for this phenomenon is the “stacking of cleavages.” There were always two sides, “cleavages,” on any political issue, but the cleavages were distributed across the ideological spectrum. There were Republicans who were liberal on, for example, the environment, and Democrats who were hawkish on foreign policy. Those intraparty fissures could be damaging. Vietnam split the Democrats in 1968. Culture-war extremism hurt the Republicans in 1992. But Pierson and Schickler think all that was good. Cleavages are what prevent ideological monoliths from forming.

Unless they stack. Unless being a Republican means automatically adopting a certain position on every issue, being a Democrat means adopting the opposite position on every issue, and being either a Republican or a Democrat means regarding the other party as an existential threat to democracy. The parties today are dominated by the extremists. Bipartisanship is treason.

Pierson and Schickler are in favor of constitutional reform, but they worry that the existing system gives small states disproportionate power to foil amendment efforts and that proposed amendments would probably just add more cleavages to each party’s stack. Their own reform proposals are mainly about re-democratizing the electoral process: automatic voter registration, a ban on partisan gerrymandering, the admission of Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states, and the adoption of nonpartisan primaries and ranked-choice voting, practices that are already in place in a few states.

But what about a new constitutional convention? If we convened one, would we get a better set of rules? In fact, writing a new Constitution has been suggested many times before, and the Constitution even makes provision for a constitutional convention. One notable writer supporting the idea is Sanford Levinson, of the University of Texas School of Law, who made the case in “Our Undemocratic Constitution,” published in 2006. He’s a liberal, and holding a constitutional convention may seem like a liberal idea, a response to the politicization of the federal judiciary under Trump and Mitch McConnell. But conservatives have made their own plans for such an undertaking: an outfit called the Convention of States calls for a constitutional convention to propose amendments “that will impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit its power and jurisdiction, and impose term limits on its officials and members of Congress.” Its supporters include characters like Trump’s Fox alter ego Sean Hannity and Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, who is under indictment in Georgia and Arizona. It’s also backed by a number of current and former Republican lawmakers, including Jeb Bush. Under the terms of Article V of the Constitution, three-quarters of the states may call a convention, and the Convention of States claims that nineteen states have already endorsed its petition.

One of the Founders, at least, worried about the dead-hand problem. “The earth belongs in usufruct to the living,” Jefferson wrote to Madison in 1789, the year the Constitution was ratified. “The dead have neither powers nor rights over it.” Jefferson thought that there ought to be a new Constitution every nineteen years. Now that would have been interesting!

The question is whether changing the software would actually make for a healthier politics. Lack of trust in government seems to be one of the main factors behind American political polarization, but trust levels here are not much different from trust levels in comparable countries. Voters in Japan, France, Korea, Australia, Israel, and the United Kingdom all report low levels of trust in government. Clearly, something besides the U.S. Constitution is responsible. If there was anything the Framers all desired, it was a government that voters could trust. Is it their fault if they failed, or is it ours? ♦

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25 Great Writers and Thinkers Weigh In on Books That Matter

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

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

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By Tina Jordan Noor Qasim and John Williams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vladimir Nabokov

On jean-paul sartre’s “nausea”.

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

Tennessee Williams

On paul bowles’s “the sheltering sky”.

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

Patricia Highsmith

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

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

Shirley Jackson

On red smith’s “out of the red”.

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

Eudora Welty

On e.b. white’s “charlotte’s web”.

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

Langston Hughes

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

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

Dorothy Parker

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

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

John F. Kennedy

On arthur larson’s “what we are for”.

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

Nora Ephron

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

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

Toni Morrison

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

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

John Kenneth Galbraith

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

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

Nikki Giovanni

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

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

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

On tom wicker’s “a time to die”.

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

James Baldwin

On alex haley’s “roots”.

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

Joan Didion

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

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

Derek Walcott

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

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

Margaret Atwood

On toni morrison’s “beloved”.

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

Ursula K. Le Guin

On j.g. ballard’s “war fever”.

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

Stephen King

On thomas harris’s “hannibal”.

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

Jhumpa Lahiri

On mohsin hamid’s “moth smoke”.

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

Mario Vargas Llosa

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

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

Colson Whitehead

On richard powers’s “the echo maker”.

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

Patti Smith

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

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

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

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

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