what does the book review mean

How to Write a Book Review: The Complete Guide

by Sue Weems | 23 comments

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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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How to Write a Book Review: Awesome Guide

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

What Is a Book Review?

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

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

Book Review Template

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

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

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

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

Step 1: Planning

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

Consider these points before writing:

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

Step 2: Introduction

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

Step 3: Body

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

Step 4: Conclusion

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

Step 5: Rate the Book (Optional)

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

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Writing Tips

Here is the list of tips for the book review:

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

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

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

Book Review Examples

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

Book review

Kenneth Grahame’s ‘The Wind in the Willows’

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

Book Review

Dr. John’s ‘Pollution’

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

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How To Write A Book Review?

What to include in a book review, what is a book review, related articles.

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A book review is a thorough description, critical analysis, and/or evaluation of the quality, meaning, and significance of a book, often written in relation to prior research on the topic. Reviews generally range from 500-2000 words, but may be longer or shorter depends on several factors: the length and complexity of the book being reviewed, the overall purpose of the review, and whether the review examines two or more books that focus on the same topic. Professors assign book reviews as practice in carefully analyzing complex scholarly texts and to assess your ability to effectively synthesize research so that you reach an informed perspective about the topic being covered.

There are two general approaches to reviewing a book:

• Descriptive review: Presents the content and structure of a book as objectively as possible, describing essential information about a book's purpose and authority. This is done by stating the perceived aims and purposes of the study, often incorporating passages quoted from the text that highlight key elements of the work. Additionally, there may be some indication of the reading level and anticipated audience.
• Critical review: Describes and evaluates the book in relation to accepted literary and historical standards and supports this evaluation with evidence from the text and, in most cases, in contrast to and in comparison with the research of others. It should include a statement about what the author has tried to do, evaluates how well you believe the author has succeeded in meeting the objectives of the study, and presents evidence to support this assessment. For most course assignments, your professor will want you to write this type of review.

Book Reviews. Writing Center. University of New Hampshire; Book Reviews: How to Write a Book Review. Writing and Style Guides. Libraries. Dalhousie University; Kindle, Peter A. "Teaching Students to Write Book Reviews." Contemporary Rural Social Work 7 (2015): 135-141; Erwin, R. W. “Reviewing Books for Scholarly Journals.” In Writing and Publishing for Academic Authors . Joseph M. Moxley and Todd Taylor. 2 nd edition. (Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 1997), pp. 83-90.

How to Approach Writing Your Review

NOTE:   Since most course assignments require that you write a critical rather than descriptive book review, the following information about preparing to write and developing the structure and style of reviews focuses on this approach.

I.  Common Features

While book reviews vary in tone, subject, and style, they share some common features. These include:

• A review gives the reader a concise summary of the content . This includes a description of the research topic and scope of analysis as well as an overview of the book's overall perspective, argument, and purpose.
• A review offers a critical assessment of the content in relation to other studies on the same topic . This involves documenting your reactions to the work under review--what strikes you as noteworthy or important, whether or not the arguments made by the author(s) were effective or persuasive, and how the work enhanced your understanding of the research problem under investigation.
• In addition to analyzing a book's strengths and weaknesses, a scholarly review often recommends whether or not readers would value the work for its authenticity and overall quality . This measure of quality includes both the author's ideas and arguments and covers practical issues, such as, readability and language, organization and layout, indexing, and, if needed, the use of non-textual elements .

To maintain your focus, always keep in mind that most assignments ask you to discuss a book's treatment of its topic, not the topic itself . Your key sentences should say, "This book shows...,” "The study demonstrates...," or “The author argues...," rather than "This happened...” or “This is the case....”

II.  Developing a Critical Assessment Strategy

There is no definitive methodological approach to writing a book review in the social sciences, although it is necessary that you think critically about the research problem under investigation before you begin to write. Therefore, writing a book review is a three-step process: 1) carefully taking notes as you read the text; 2) developing an argument about the value of the work under consideration; and, 3) clearly articulating that argument as you write an organized and well-supported assessment of the work.

A useful strategy in preparing to write a review is to list a set of questions that should be answered as you read the book [remember to note the page numbers so you can refer back to the text!]. The specific questions to ask yourself will depend upon the type of book you are reviewing. For example, a book that is presenting original research about a topic may require a different set of questions to ask yourself than a work where the author is offering a personal critique of an existing policy or issue.

Here are some sample questions that can help you think critically about the book:

• Thesis or Argument . What is the central thesis—or main argument—of the book? If the author wanted you to get one main idea from the book, what would it be? How does it compare or contrast to the world that you know or have experienced? What has the book accomplished? Is the argument clearly stated and does the research support this?
• Topic . What exactly is the subject or topic of the book? Is it clearly articulated? Does the author cover the subject adequately? Does the author cover all aspects of the subject in a balanced fashion? Can you detect any biases? What type of approach has the author adopted to explore the research problem [e.g., topical, analytical, chronological, descriptive]?
• Evidence . How does the author support their argument? What evidence does the author use to prove their point? Is the evidence based on an appropriate application of the method chosen to gather information? Do you find that evidence convincing? Why or why not? Does any of the author's information [or conclusions] conflict with other books you've read, courses you've taken, or just previous assumptions you had about the research problem?
• Structure . How does the author structure their argument? Does it follow a logical order of analysis? What are the parts that make up the whole? Does the argument make sense to you? Does it persuade you? Why or why not?
• Take-aways . How has this book helped you understand the research problem? Would you recommend the book to others? Why or why not?

Beyond the content of the book, you may also consider some information about the author and the general presentation of information. Question to ask may include:

• The Author: Who is the author? The nationality, political persuasion, education, intellectual interests, personal history, and historical context may provide crucial details about how a work takes shape. Does it matter, for example, that the author is affiliated with a particular organization? What difference would it make if the author participated in the events they wrote about? What other topics has the author written about? Does this work build on prior research or does it represent a new or unique area of research?
• The Presentation: What is the book's genre? Out of what discipline does it emerge? Does it conform to or depart from the conventions of its genre? These questions can provide a historical or other contextual standard upon which to base your evaluations. If you are reviewing the first book ever written on the subject, it will be important for your readers to know this. Keep in mind, though, that declarative statements about being the “first,” the "best," or the "only" book of its kind can be a risky unless you're absolutely certain because your professor [presumably] has a much better understanding of the overall research literature.

NOTE: Most critical book reviews examine a topic in relation to prior research. A good strategy for identifying this prior research is to examine sources the author(s) cited in the chapters introducing the research problem and, of course, any review of the literature. However, you should not assume that the author's references to prior research is authoritative or complete. If any works related to the topic have been excluded, your assessment of the book should note this . Be sure to consult with a librarian to ensure that any additional studies are located beyond what has been cited by the author(s).

Book Reviews. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Book Reviews. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Hartley, James. "Reading and Writing Book Reviews Across the Disciplines." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 57 (July 2006): 1194–1207;   Motta-Roth, D. “Discourse Analysis and Academic Book Reviews: A Study of Text and Disciplinary Cultures.”  In Genre Studies in English for Academic Purposes . Fortanet Gómez, Inmaculada  et  al., editors. (Castellò de la Plana: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I, 1998), pp. 29-45. Writing a Book Review. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing Book Reviews. Writing Tutorial Services, Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. Indiana University; Suárez, Lorena and Ana I. Moreno. “The Rhetorical Structure of Academic Journal Book Reviews: A Cross-linguistic and Cross-disciplinary Approach .” In Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos, María del Carmen Pérez Llantada Auría, Ramón Plo Alastrué, and Claus Peter Neumann. Actas del V Congreso Internacional AELFE/Proceedings of the 5th International AELFE Conference . Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza, 2006.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  Bibliographic Information

Bibliographic information refers to the essential elements of a work if you were to cite it in a paper [i.e., author, title, date of publication, etc.]. Provide the essential information about the book using the writing style [e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago] preferred by your professor or used by the discipline of your major . Depending on how your professor wants you to organize your review, the bibliographic information represents the heading of your review. In general, it would look like this:

[Complete title of book. Author or authors. Place of publication. Publisher. Date of publication. Number of pages before first chapter, often in Roman numerals. Total number of pages]. The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History . By Jill Lepore. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. xii, 207 pp.)

Reviewed by [your full name].

II.  Scope/Purpose/Content

Begin your review by telling the reader not only the overarching concern of the book in its entirety [the subject area] but also what the author's particular point of view is on that subject [the thesis statement]. If you cannot find an adequate statement in the author's own words or if you find that the thesis statement is not well-developed, then you will have to compose your own introductory thesis statement that does cover all the material. This statement should be no more than one paragraph and must be succinctly stated, accurate, and unbiased.

If you find it difficult to discern the overall aims and objectives of the book [and, be sure to point this out in your review if you determine that this is a deficiency], you may arrive at an understanding of the book's overall purpose by assessing the following:

• Scan the table of contents because it can help you understand how the book was organized and will aid in determining the author's main ideas and how they were developed [e.g., chronologically, topically, historically, etc.].
• Why did the author write on this subject rather than on some other subject?
• From what point of view is the work written?
• Was the author trying to give information, to explain something technical, or to convince the reader of a belief’s validity by dramatizing it in action?
• What is the general field or genre, and how does the book fit into it? If necessary, review related literature from other books and journal articles to familiarize yourself with the field.
• Who is the intended audience?
• What is the author's style? Is it formal or informal? You can evaluate the quality of the writing style by noting some of the following standards: coherence, clarity, originality, forcefulness, accurate use of technical words, conciseness, fullness of development, and fluidity [i.e., quality of the narrative flow].
• How did the book affect you? Were there any prior assumptions you had about the subject that were changed, abandoned, or reinforced after reading the book? How is the book related to your own personal beliefs or assumptions? What personal experiences have you had related to the subject that affirm or challenge underlying assumptions?
• How well has the book achieved the goal(s) set forth in the preface, introduction, and/or foreword?
• Would you recommend this book to others? Why or why not?

III.  Note the Method

Support your remarks with specific references to text and quotations that help to illustrate the literary method used to state the research problem, describe the research design, and analyze the findings. In general, authors tend to use the following literary methods, exclusively or in combination.

• Description : The author depicts scenes and events by giving specific details that appeal to the five senses, or to the reader’s imagination. The description presents background and setting. Its primary purpose is to help the reader realize, through as many details as possible, the way persons, places, and things are situated within the phenomenon being described.
• Narration : The author tells the story of a series of events, usually thematically or in chronological order. In general, the emphasis in scholarly books is on narration of the events. Narration tells what has happened and, in some cases, using this method to forecast what could happen in the future. Its primary purpose is to draw the reader into a story and create a contextual framework for understanding the research problem.
• Exposition : The author uses explanation and analysis to present a subject or to clarify an idea. Exposition presents the facts about a subject or an issue clearly and as impartially as possible. Its primary purpose is to describe and explain, to document for the historical record an event or phenomenon.
• Argument : The author uses techniques of persuasion to establish understanding of a particular truth, often in the form of addressing a research question, or to convince the reader of its falsity. The overall aim is to persuade the reader to believe something and perhaps to act on that belief. Argument takes sides on an issue and aims to convince the reader that the author's position is valid, logical, and/or reasonable.

IV.  Critically Evaluate the Contents

Critical comments should form the bulk of your book review . State whether or not you feel the author's treatment of the subject matter is appropriate for the intended audience. Ask yourself:

• Has the purpose of the book been achieved?
• What contributions does the book make to the field?
• Is the treatment of the subject matter objective or at least balanced in describing all sides of a debate?
• Are there facts and evidence that have been omitted?
• What kinds of data, if any, are used to support the author's thesis statement?
• Can the same data be interpreted to explain alternate outcomes?
• Is the writing style clear and effective?
• Does the book raise important or provocative issues or topics for discussion?
• Does the book bring attention to the need for further research?
• What has been left out?

Support your evaluation with evidence from the text and, when possible, state the book's quality in relation to other scholarly sources. If relevant, note of the book's format, such as, layout, binding, typography, etc. Are there tables, charts, maps, illustrations, text boxes, photographs, or other non-textual elements? Do they aid in understanding the text? Describing this is particularly important in books that contain a lot of non-textual elements.

NOTE:   It is important to carefully distinguish your views from those of the author so as not to confuse your reader. Be clear when you are describing an author's point of view versus expressing your own.

V.  Examine the Front Matter and Back Matter

Front matter refers to any content before the first chapter of the book. Back matter refers to any information included after the final chapter of the book . Front matter is most often numbered separately from the rest of the text in lower case Roman numerals [i.e. i - xi ]. Critical commentary about front or back matter is generally only necessary if you believe there is something that diminishes the overall quality of the work [e.g., the indexing is poor] or there is something that is particularly helpful in understanding the book's contents [e.g., foreword places the book in an important context].

Front matter that may be considered for evaluation when reviewing its overall quality:

• Table of contents -- is it clear? Is it detailed or general? Does it reflect the true contents of the book? Does it help in understanding a logical sequence of content?
• Author biography -- also found as back matter, the biography of author(s) can be useful in determining the authority of the writer and whether the book builds on prior research or represents new research. In scholarly reviews, noting the author's affiliation and prior publications can be a factor in helping the reader determine the overall validity of the work [i.e., are they associated with a research center devoted to studying the problem under investigation].
• Foreword -- the purpose of a foreword is to introduce the reader to the author and the content of the book, and to help establish credibility for both. A foreword may not contribute any additional information about the book's subject matter, but rather, serves as a means of validating the book's existence. In these cases, the foreword is often written by a leading scholar or expert who endorses the book's contributions to advancing research about the topic. Later editions of a book sometimes have a new foreword prepended [appearing before an older foreword, if there was one], which may be included to explain how the latest edition differs from previous editions. These are most often written by the author.
• Acknowledgements -- scholarly studies in the social sciences often take many years to write, so authors frequently acknowledge the help and support of others in getting their research published. This can be as innocuous as acknowledging the author's family or the publisher. However, an author may acknowledge prominent scholars or subject experts, staff at key research centers, people who curate important archival collections, or organizations that funded the research. In these particular cases, it may be worth noting these sources of support in your review, particularly if the funding organization is biased or its mission is to promote a particular agenda.
• Preface -- generally describes the genesis, purpose, limitations, and scope of the book and may include acknowledgments of indebtedness to people who have helped the author complete the study. Is the preface helpful in understanding the study? Does it provide an effective framework for understanding what's to follow?
• Chronology -- also may be found as back matter, a chronology is generally included to highlight key events related to the subject of the book. Do the entries contribute to the overall work? Is it detailed or very general?
• List of non-textual elements -- a book that contains numerous charts, photographs, maps, tables, etc. will often list these items after the table of contents in the order that they appear in the text. Is this useful?

Back matter that may be considered for evaluation when reviewing its overall quality:

• Afterword -- this is a short, reflective piece written by the author that takes the form of a concluding section, final commentary, or closing statement. It is worth mentioning in a review if it contributes information about the purpose of the book, gives a call to action, summarizes key recommendations or next steps, or asks the reader to consider key points made in the book.
• Appendix -- is the supplementary material in the appendix or appendices well organized? Do they relate to the contents or appear superfluous? Does it contain any essential information that would have been more appropriately integrated into the text?
• Index -- are there separate indexes for names and subjects or one integrated index. Is the indexing thorough and accurate? Are elements used, such as, bold or italic fonts to help identify specific places in the book? Does the index include "see also" references to direct you to related topics?
• Glossary of Terms -- are the definitions clearly written? Is the glossary comprehensive or are there key terms missing? Are any terms or concepts mentioned in the text not included that should have been?
• Endnotes -- examine any endnotes as you read from chapter to chapter. Do they provide important additional information? Do they clarify or extend points made in the body of the text? Should any notes have been better integrated into the text rather than separated? Do the same if the author uses footnotes.
• Bibliography/References/Further Readings -- review any bibliography, list of references to sources, and/or further readings the author may have included. What kinds of sources appear [e.g., primary or secondary, recent or old, scholarly or popular, etc.]? How does the author make use of them? Be sure to note important omissions of sources that you believe should have been utilized, including important digital resources or archival collections.

VI.  Summarize and Comment

State your general conclusions briefly and succinctly. Pay particular attention to the author's concluding chapter and/or afterword. Is the summary convincing? List the principal topics, and briefly summarize the author’s ideas about these topics, main points, and conclusions. If appropriate and to help clarify your overall evaluation, use specific references to text and quotations to support your statements. If your thesis has been well argued, the conclusion should follow naturally. It can include a final assessment or simply restate your thesis. Do not introduce new information in the conclusion. If you've compared the book to any other works or used other sources in writing the review, be sure to cite them at the end of your book review in the same writing style as your bibliographic heading of the book.

Book Reviews. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Book Reviews. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Gastel, Barbara. "Special Books Section: A Strategy for Reviewing Books for Journals." BioScience 41 (October 1991): 635-637; Hartley, James. "Reading and Writing Book Reviews Across the Disciplines." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 57 (July 2006): 1194–1207; Lee, Alexander D., Bart N. Green, Claire D. Johnson, and Julie Nyquist. "How to Write a Scholarly Book Review for Publication in a Peer-reviewed Journal: A Review of the Literature." Journal of Chiropractic Education 24 (2010): 57-69; Nicolaisen, Jeppe. "The Scholarliness of Published Peer Reviews: A Bibliometric Study of Book Reviews in Selected Social Science Fields." Research Evaluation 11 (2002): 129-140;.Procter, Margaret. The Book Review or Article Critique. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Reading a Book to Review It. The Writer’s Handbook. Writing Center. University of Wisconsin, Madison; Scarnecchia, David L. "Writing Book Reviews for the Journal Of Range Management and Rangelands." Rangeland Ecology and Management 57 (2004): 418-421; Simon, Linda. "The Pleasures of Book Reviewing." Journal of Scholarly Publishing 27 (1996): 240-241; Writing a Book Review. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing Book Reviews. Writing Tutorial Services, Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. Indiana University.

Writing Tip

Always Read the Foreword and/or the Preface

If they are included in the front matter, a good place for understanding a book's overall purpose, organization, contributions to further understanding of the research problem, and relationship to other studies is to read the preface and the foreword. The foreword may be written by someone other than the author or editor and can be a person who is famous or who has name recognition within the discipline. A foreword is often included to add credibility to the work.

The preface is usually an introductory essay written by the author or editor. It is intended to describe the book's overall purpose, arrangement, scope, and overall contributions to the literature. When reviewing the book, it can be useful to critically evaluate whether the goals set forth in the foreword and/or preface were actually achieved. At the very least, they can establish a foundation for understanding a study's scope and purpose as well as its significance in contributing new knowledge.

Distinguishing between a Foreword, a Preface, and an Introduction . Book Creation Learning Center. Greenleaf Book Group, 2019.

Locating Book Reviews

There are several databases the USC Libraries subscribes to that include the full-text or citations to book reviews. Short, descriptive reviews can also be found at book-related online sites such as Amazon , although it's not always obvious who has written them and may actually be created by the publisher. The following databases provide comprehensive access to scholarly, full-text book reviews:

• ProQuest [1983-present]
• Book Review Digest Retrospective [1905-1982]

Some Language for Evaluating Texts

It can be challenging to find the proper vocabulary from which to discuss and evaluate a book. Here is a list of some active verbs for referring to texts and ideas that you might find useful:

• account for
• demonstrate
• distinguish
• investigate

Examples of usage

• "The evidence indicates that..."
• "This work assesses the effect of..."
• "The author identifies three key reasons for..."
• "This book questions the view that..."
• "This work challenges assumptions about...."

Paquot, Magali. Academic Keyword List. Centre for English Corpus Linguistics. Université Catholique de Louvain.

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How to Write A Book Review: Definition, Structure, Examples

• July 2, 2023

Table of Contents:

Understanding the purpose of a book review, telling possible readers, providing constructive feedback, building a community of readers, increasing visibility, the structure of a book review, introduction, summary of the book, critical analysis, style of writing, plot and structure, messages and main ideas, difference and effect, examples and supporting evidence, examples of well-written book reviews, example 1: non-fiction book review, example 2: fiction book review, to kill a mockingbird by harper lee, essential elements, strategy and detailed insights.

Every writer must know to write a book review. It is an important skill for people who love to read and want to become writers. Not only does it help writers, but it also helps other users choose what to read.

It’s important to know why you write a book review before you get started on the actual process of doing so. A book review is important for many reasons, such as:

A well-written review summarizes the book, its main ideas, and what the reader should take from it. This helps potential readers decide if they want to read the book.

Reviews help writers figure out what worked and what didn’t in their book by telling them what worked and what didn’t. Helpful critiques can help writers improve their writing skills and improve their next works.

Book reviews help readers talk about what they’ve read, which builds a sense of community and shared experiences. American Author House help people talk about books and see them from different points of view.

Good reviews can greatly affect how well-known and sold a book is. They change how online sites work and help get the author’s work in front of more people.

Now that we know how important book reviews are, let’s look at how they are put together and what they should include.

The opening should immediately grab the reader’s attention and set the stage for your review. Most of the time, writing a book review has the following parts:

• Information about the book: Give the title, author’s name, release date, and subject as your first information. This helps people know which book you are talking about.
• Hook: Engage your readers with a catchy line that shows what the book is about or what makes it special. This could be a question that makes you think, an interesting quote, or a short story.
• Thesis Statement: Give a short and convincing summary of your feelings about the book. This gives the rest of your review a sense of direction.

Give a summary of the book’s plot, major ideas, and main characters in this part. Don’t give away details that could ruin the story for the reader. Focus on giving people a general idea of the book and how it feels.

The critical analysis is the heart of your book review, where you provide your thoughts and opinions. Think about how to write a book review. Read some of the following tips:

Evaluate the author’s writing style, including how they use words, pace, and tell a story. Talk about how well it tells the story and keeps the reader interested.

Look at how the story goes and how the book is put together. Comment on how well the story makes sense, moves along, and flows. Talk about whether the story keeps readers interested and whether the framework makes it easier to follow.

Analyze the major characters, how they change, and how they are important to the story. Talk about their good points, bad points, and general trustworthiness. Talk about the connections between the characters and how they affect the story.

Check out the book’s core ideas, messages, or social comments. Talk about how well the author handles these topics and if they make sense to the reader.

Think about how original the book is and how it affects the reader. Talk about whether the story shows something new or gives you new ideas. Then write a book review. Discuss how the book made you feel, what it taught you, and how it changed your morals.

Give specific examples and quotes from the book to back up your reasoning. These examples should back your arguments and help readers understand your view. Choose parts that are especially moving, well-written, or show how good the book is.

You can write a book review and conclude by combining your general opinion and summarizing your main points. Give a final suggestion to the people based on what you’ve learned. Use this part to leave a strong impact and get people interested in reading the rest of the book.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg If you want to explore more examples of well-written book reviews and gain inspiration, you can check out our article on The Pros and Cons of Self-Publishing on Amazon .

In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg explores the science behind habits and their impact on our lives. Using real-life examples and engaging anecdotes, Duhigg provides a fascinating look into how habits are formed, how they can be changed, and their influence on personal and professional success.

Duhigg’s writing style is informative and engaging, making complex concepts accessible to many readers. His meticulous research is evident throughout the book, as he presents compelling case studies and scientific findings to support his claims. The book’s structure seamlessly guides readers through exploring habit formation, change, and its applications in various domains.

By dissecting the underlying psychology of habits, Duhigg sheds light on the power of routine and the potential for personal transformation. The book offers actionable insights and practical strategies to help readers harness the power of habits in their own lives.

The Power of Habit is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the influence of habits on personal and professional development. Duhigg’s compelling storytelling and evidence-based approach make this book a valuable resource for individuals seeking to make positive life changes.

Summary: To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic novel set in the racially-charged atmosphere of the 1930s Deep South. Harper Lee’s timeless masterpiece explores themes of racial inequality, justice, and the loss of innocence through the eyes of Scout Finch, a young girl growing up in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama.

Lee’s evocative writing transports readers to a bygone era, vividly depicting the social complexities and prejudices of the time. Through Scout’s innocent perspective, the reader witnesses the profound impact of racism and intolerance on the community. The memorable characters, such as Atticus Finch and Boo Radley, are flawlessly developed, each contributing to the overarching narrative with depth and nuance.

The novel’s exploration of moral courage, empathy, and the pursuit of justice resonates as powerfully today as it did upon its publication. Lee’s ability to tackle sensitive subjects with sensitivity and authenticity sets To Kill a Mockingbird apart as a timeless work of literature.

Conclusion:

To Kill a Mockingbird is a literary masterpiece that confronts the complexities of racial injustice with grace and insight. Harper Lee’s remarkable storytelling and profound themes. If you’re interested in exploring more classic literature and book reviews, you can find valuable insights in our article about Fantastic Fiction: Discovering the Best Fantasy and Sci-Fi Books .

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How to Write a Book Review: Introduction

• Introduction

Steps to Write a Book Review

• Other Resources on Writing Reviews

Writing Book Reviews

Academic book reviews are helpful in enabling people to decide if they want to read a given book. A book review is not a book report, which you may hae done in elementary school. A book report describes the basic contents. Book reviews go far deeper than that. This guide will explain what an academic book review is and how to write one well.

Introduction to Writing Book Reviews

• What is a Book Review?
• Benefits of Writing Book Reviews

 What is a Book Review?

• Describes the purpose of the book
• Describes the contents of the book (subject of each chapter)
• Analyzes the approach/argument(s) of the book: Does it seem accurate? Does it make sense? Is the argument strong or weak?
• Assesses whether the book did what the author said it would do
• Suggests potential audiences for the book (pastors, students, professors, lay people) and potential uses, such as a textbook
• Based upon a careful reading of the entire book
• Uses a structured, formal, academic tone
• Most often appears in academic journals, though more informal versions may appear in magazines and blogs
• May include comparisons to other works in the same subject, e.g., if you are reviewing a book on Paul's theology, it would help to compare it briefly to another book on Paul's theology
• In an academic setting, a review assumes an academic audience

A book review requires the reviewer to read the book carefully and reflect on its contents. The review should tell a reader what the book seeks to do and offer an appraisal of how well the author(s) accomplished this goal. That is why this is a "critical" book review. You are analyzing the book, not simply describing it. A review assumes that the readers know the vocabulary of the discipline. For example, a reviewer of a book on the Gospel of Matthew could use "Q" and not need to explain it because it is assumed that the audience knows what Q is in the context of talking about the canonical gospels.

A book review does not

• Seek to be entertaining and/or engaging
• Describe your feelings regarding the book, e.g., “I loved it,” “it was terrible,” or “I disagree completely.”
• Superficial treatment similar to the blurb on the back of the book
• Offers an ad hominem (against the person) attack on the author

Here are two examples of typical academic book reviews:

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lsdar&AN=ATLAiFZU171223002713&site=eds-live&authtype=ip,sso&custid=s8984749

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lsdar&AN=ATLAi9KZ180630003303&site=eds-live&authtype=ip,sso&custid=s8984749

You may see non-academic book reviews that are more inform al or use humor but that is not appropriate for an academic book review.

Why would you write a book review? There are a few reasons.

• Meet a course requirement
• Understand a book better and grow as a scholar
• Write reviews for publications in the future, such as magazines

1. Your professor assigned it. You are probably reading this page because a professor gave you an assignment to write a review. This is straightforward. Your professor may have a specific set of requirements or directions and you need to follow those, even if they differ from what you read here. In either case, assume that your review is for a large audience. 

2. Writing a review will help you understand a book better. When you are going to write a good book review, you need to read the entire book carefully. By assigning a book review, the professor is seeking to help you understand the book better. A book review is a critical assessment of a book. “Critical” here means analytical. What did the author seek to do and how convincing was it? Your professor wants you to read the book carefully enough to explain both. A critical assessment recognizes that the status of an author/scholar is no guarantee that the book accomplishes its goal. The skill of critical assessment is valuable in all your research work, both now and after graduation.

3. You may have an opportunity in the future to write a book review for a denominational publication, a magazine like Christianity Today , a church newsletter, or in a blog post, which is very common.

So, a book review can fulfill a course requirement, make you better at critical assessment of the views of others, and create opportunities to use that skill for various publications.

Step 1: Read the book carefully.

Step 2: Write the basics.

Step 3: Fill in the details.

These steps are explained in the next tab of this research guide.

This is not for Book Reflections

If you have a (personal) reflection on a book assigned, what this guide says, besides step #1, likely does not apply to your assignment. You need to ask your professor for guidance on writing a reflection. There are two reasons.

1. A book reflection is not a standard, academic type of document. Therefore, general help based upon reading book reviews is not relevant.

2. Book reflections are heavily dependent upon exactly what a professor asks for. These frequently require comparing good and bad points of the book. That is not a feature of book reviews as such and reviews do not include your personal reflections.

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

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

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

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

What is a Book Review?

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

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

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

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

Table of Contents

Book Review Template

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

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

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

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

Choosing Your Literature

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

Crafting the Master Plan

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

The Devil is in the Details

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

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

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

The Key Questions to Ponder

When planning your book review, consider the following questions:

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

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

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

Identify Your Book and Author

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

Ponder the Title

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

Judge the Book by Its Cover (Just a Little)

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

Present Your Thesis

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summarize Without Spoilers

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

Support Your Viewpoint with Quotes

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

Analyze the Quotes

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

Structure Your Body Paragraphs

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

For example:

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

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

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

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

Summarize Your Analysis

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

Offer Your Final Conclusion

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

Address the Book’s Appeal

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

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

Be Subtle and Balanced

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

Bringing It All Together

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

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

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

Why Rate the Book?

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

How to Rate the Book

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

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

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

Tips for Rating the Book

Here are some tips for rating the book effectively:

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

Wrapping Up

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

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

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

Hook ’em with an Intriguing Introduction

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

Embrace the World of Fiction

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

Opinionated with Gusto

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

Express Your Love (or Lack Thereof)

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

Templates and Examples and Expert Help: Your Trusty Sidekicks

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

Be a Champion for New Writers and Literature

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

Criticize with Clarity, Not Cruelty

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

Avoid the Comparison Trap

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

Top 7 Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

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

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

Succumbing to the Lure of Plot Summaries

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

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

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

Unleashing the Spoiler Kraken

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

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

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

Riding the Personal Bias Express

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

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

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

Wielding the Vague Language Saber

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

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

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

Ignoring the Contextualization Compass

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

Example: “This book is dull and unoriginal.”

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

Overindulging in Personal Preferences

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

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

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

Forgetting the Target Audience Telescope

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

Example: “This book is great for everyone.”

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

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

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

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Writing a Book Review

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This resource discusses book reviews and how to write them.

Book reviews typically evaluate recently-written works. They offer a brief description of the text’s key points and often provide a short appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the work.

Readers sometimes confuse book reviews with book reports, but the two are not identical. Book reports commonly describe what happens in a work; their focus is primarily on giving an account of the major plot, characters, and/or main idea of the work. Most often, book reports are a K-12 assignment and range from 250 to 500 words. If you are looking to write a book report, please see the OWL resource, Writing a Book Report.

By contrast, book reviews are most often a college assignment, but they also appear in many professional works: magazines, newspapers, and academic journals. They typically range from 500-750 words, but may be longer or shorter. A book review gives readers a sneak peek at what a book is like, whether or not the reviewer enjoyed it, and details on purchasing the book.

Before You Read

Before you begin to read, consider the elements you will need to included in your review. The following items may help:

• Author: Who is the author? What else has s/he written? Has this author won any awards? What is the author’s typical style?
• Genre: What type of book is this: fiction, nonfiction, romance, poetry, youth fiction, etc.? Who is the intended audience for this work? What is the purpose of the work?
• Title: Where does the title fit in? How is it applied in the work? Does it adequately encapsulate the message of the text? Is it interesting? Uninteresting?
• Preface/Introduction/Table of Contents: Does the author provide any revealing information about the text in the preface/introduction? Does a “guest author” provide the introduction? What judgments or preconceptions do the author and/or “guest author” provide? How is the book arranged: sections, chapters?
• Book Jacket/Cover/Printing: Book jackets are like mini-reviews. Does the book jacket provide any interesting details or spark your interest in some way? Are there pictures, maps, or graphs? Do the binding, page cut, or typescript contribute or take away from the work?

As You Read

As you read, determine how you will structure the summary portion or background structure of your review. Be ready to take notes on the book’s key points, characters, and/or themes.

• Characters: Are there characters in the work? Who are the principal characters? How do they affect the story? Do you empathize with them?
• Themes/Motifs/Style: What themes or motifs stand out? How do they contribute to the work? Are they effective or not? How would you describe this author’s particular style? Is it accessible to all readers or just some?
• Argument: How is the work’s argument set up? What support does the author give for her/findings? Does the work fulfill its purpose/support its argument?
• Key Ideas: What is the main idea of the work? What makes it good, different, or groundbreaking?
• Quotes: What quotes stand out? How can you demonstrate the author’s talent or the feel of the book through a quote?

When You Are Ready to Write

Begin with a short summary or background of the work, but do not give too much away. Many reviews limit themselves only to the first couple of chapters or lead the reader up to the rising action of the work. Reviewers of nonfiction texts will provide the basic idea of the book’s argument without too much detailed.

The final portion of your review will detail your opinion of the work. When you are ready to begin your review, consider the following:

• Establish a Background, Remember your Audience: Remember that your audience has not read the work; with this in mind, be sure to introduce characters and principles carefully and deliberately. What kind of summary can you provide of the main points or main characters that will help your readers gauge their interest? Does the author’s text adequately reach the intended audience? Will some readers be lost or find the text too easy?
• Minor principles/characters: Deal only with the most pressing issues in the book. You will not be able to cover every character or idea. What principles/characters did you agree or disagree with? What other things might the author have researched or considered?
• Organize: The purpose of the review is to critically evaluate the text, not just inform the readers about it. Leave plenty room for your evaluation by ensuring that your summary is brief. Determine what kind of balance to strike between your summary information and your evaluation. If you are writing your review for a class, ask your instructor. Often the ratio is half and half.
• Your Evaluation: Choose one or a few points to discuss about the book. What worked well for you? How does this work compare with others by the same author or other books in the same genre? What major themes, motifs, or terms does the book introduce, and how effective are they? Did the book appeal to you on an emotional or logical way?
• Publisher/Price: Most book reviews include the publisher and price of the book at the end of the article. Some reviews also include the year published and ISBN.

When making the final touches to your review, carefully verify the following:

• Double-check the spelling of the author name(s), character names, special terms, and publisher.
• Try to read from the vantage point of your audience. Is there too much/enough summary? Does your argument about the text make sense?
• Should you include direct quotes from the reading? Do they help support your arguments? Double-check your quotes for accuracy.

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

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

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

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

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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The power and importance of book reviews, by barnes & noble press /, october 2, 2023 at 9:15 am.

There are countless books competing for readers’ attention, which is why the power and importance of book reviews cannot be overstated. They serve as gateways to a book’s world. And offer potential readers insight into what they can expect.

Plus, book reviews are crucial for discoverability, marketing, and boosting sales. Let’s dive into why book reviews are so important, especially for indie authors, as well as explore valuable tips on how to use and solicit book reviews effectively.

The Significance of Book Reviews

1. discoverability.

In today’s digital age, discoverability is a major challenge for self-published and indie authors. With millions of books available online, how does a new book find its way into the hands of readers? This is where book reviews can play a pivotal role.

When a book receives reviews, it gains visibility. Readers searching for their next read often rely on reviews to make informed decisions. Reviews can highlight the unique qualities of a book, its genre, and its target audience. This information helps potential readers find books that align with their interests and preferences.

Furthermore, books with a substantial number of positive reviews are more likely to be recommended by algorithms on online retailers like BN.com, making them more discoverable to a wider audience.

2. Marketing

Book reviews are invaluable marketing tools. They serve as social proof of a book’s quality and worthiness. Positive reviews provide validation to potential readers that the book is worth their time and money. Authors and publishers can leverage these reviews in various marketing strategies such as:

Book Blurbs: Excerpts from positive reviews can be used as book blurbs on the cover and inside pages of a book. A compelling blurb can capture a reader’s attention and encourage them to explore the book further.

Author Websites and Social Media: Authors can showcase reviews on their websites and social media profiles. Sharing positive feedback from readers creates a positive online presence and fosters a sense of trust with potential readers.

Email Marketing: Book reviews can be featured in email newsletters to subscribers. This keeps the audience engaged and informed about the book’s reception.

Book Trailers and Promotional Videos: Reviews can be incorporated into book trailers and promotional videos to highlight the book’s appeal and encourage viewers to make a purchase.

3. Boosting Sales

Ultimately, the end goal of reviews is to boost sales. Positive reviews not only increase a book’s visibility and credibility but also serve as persuasive tools. When readers see that others have enjoyed a book, they are more likely to purchase it. Reviews contribute to the snowball effect of book sales, as more reviews attract more readers, which in turn leads to more reviews.

Tips for Using and Soliciting Book Reviews

1.leverage existing platforms.

There are numerous platforms where authors and publishers can encourage readers to leave reviews. Some of the most popular ones include Kirkus and the app Likewise. Be active on these platforms, engage with readers, and kindly ask for reviews when appropriate. Make sure to provide direct links to the review pages to simplify the process for readers.

2.Build Relationships with Bloggers and Reviewers

Book bloggers and professional reviewers can be powerful allies in the quest for reviews. Reach out to them, introduce your book, and politely inquire if they would be interested in reviewing it. Be respectful of their time and preferences and provide a copy of your book in a format they prefer (e.g., physical copy, eBook, audiobook).

3. Create an Advance Review Team

Before your book’s official release, assemble a group of dedicated readers who are willing to provide early reviews. This advanced review team can help generate initial buzz and establish credibility for your book. Offer them free copies and express your gratitude for their support.

4. Engage with Your Readers

Interact with your readers through social media, email newsletters, and author events. Encourage them to share their thoughts and reviews on the different online platforms and social channels. Engaging with your audience not only builds a loyal fan base but also increases the likelihood of receiving reviews.

5. Offer Incentives Responsibly

While it’s generally discouraged to offer incentives for reviews, there are ethical ways to encourage honest feedback. Consider running giveaways or contests where participants can enter by leaving a review – maybe even for a NOOK GlowLight! Always ensure that your approach aligns with the guidelines of the platform you’re using.

6. Be Patient and Gracious

Not every reader will leave a review, and not every review will be positive. It’s essential to be patient and gracious in your interactions with readers. Avoid engaging in arguments or disputes over negative reviews; instead, focus on positive feedback and use constructive criticism to improve your future work.

Truly, book reviews are indispensable for authors and publishers looking to enhance discoverability, boost marketing efforts, and increase sales. Positive reviews provide much-needed validation and visibility in an increasingly competitive literary landscape. By strategically using and soliciting reviews, authors can connect with their target audience, build their brand, and create a buzz that propels their books to success. So, if you’re a self-published author or indie publisher, don’t underestimate the power of book reviews—it’s the key to unlocking your book’s potential!

More Industry Tips & Tricks:

• How to Overcome Writer’s Block in 5 Ways
• 6 Reasons to Create Special Edition Print Books
• Why Authors Should Self-Publish Audiobooks
• How to Boost Your NOOK Readership with the Free B&N NOOK App
• 3 Tips to Tailor Your Metadata for B&N Readers
• 5 Facts About B&N Press Self-Publishing

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• a critical description, evaluation, or analysis of a book, especially one published in a newspaper or magazine.
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Director Peter Bogdanovich wrote in the New York Times Book Review that John Wayne is “authoritative and thoroughly engaging.”

In an interview with The New York Times Book Review, she was asked to “name one book that made you who you are today.”

Charles McGrath is a former editor of The New York Times Book Review and before that deputy editor at The New Yorker.

One big difference in the Book Review now compared to a decade ago is the presence on the bestseller list of e-books.

The Book Review has done a good job of staying on top of things.

The comparison of a review to a portrait fixes attention on one essential quality of a book-review.

His father came out and stretched in a wicker chair with the Times book-review section.

A book review (written by a woman) which I have at hand contains some generalizations which bear on the subject.

Such banquets are spread for the frugal, not one of whom would swap that immortal cook-book review for a dinner with Lucullus.

There was a book-review in it a few days ago that I—I liked very much.'

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book review

Definition of book review

Word history.

1837, in the meaning defined at sense 1

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A Book Blogger’s Guide to Acronyms, Terms and Slang

Posted February 24, 2017 by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction in Let's Discuss / 73 Comments

Last week I posted about OTPs and several people said that they didn’t know the acronym. It occurred to me that there are LOTS of book blogging terms that aren’t particularly obvious. When I first started out as a blogger, I  often  stared in puzzlement at words or acronyms that meant nothing to me. Heck, even nowadays I still run across terms I’m not sure about. I thought it might be fun to try to gather together as many of these as I could and explain them … for those of us just starting out or anyone who’s not sure what some of these mean!

Bookish Relationship Terms:

OTP: One True Pairing (that couple that you will root for till the end of time) FM: Fated Mates (the couple that’s fated for each other) NOTP:  (Pronounced No-TP) Basically the opposite of an OTP. You do  not want this couple together! BROTP/Bromance:  A friendship (between guys) that you adore! Ship: If you ship a couple, it means that you want them to get together (comes from the word “relationship”). HEA/HFN: Happily Ever After/Happy for Now Book Boyfriend/Girlfriend: The fictional boy (or girl) you only wish could be your real-life love. Insta-love/Insta-lust: The phenomenon that happens all too often in books when the couple meets and instantly falls in love (or, sometimes, lust). Love Triangle:  When the main character can’t decide between two romantic partners—most frustrating when this is drawn out for multiple books in a series. Slash Fiction: A type of fan fiction where two same-sex characters are paired together (often guys). Sometimes slash can just refer to the imagined pairing of two same-sex characters (not necessarily within fan fiction). OMYM/OWYM: Older man, younger woman/Older woman, younger man

Other Reading Emotion Terms:

The Feels: This means that you were overwhelmed with emotion when reading the book often meaning that lots of different emotions were involved. It’s high praise to say that a book gave you all the feels! Book Hangover:  When a book leaves you emotionally drained. Often this leads to the reader not being able to jump right into another book and sometimes leads to a … Reading Slump/Blogging Slump: Feeling uninspired to read and/or blog. Or sometimes just a slump where you read a string of underwhelming books or post a bunch of unimaginative posts. Mood Reader/Free-Range Reader: Someone who typically picks up a book based on their current mood or just picks up whatever they feel like in the moment. In contrast, many bloggers have reading schedules (either based on ARCs to review or challenges).

Reading/Reviewing Terms:

TBR: To-Be-Read. The books that you plan to read, sometimes imminently (or sometimes just all of the random books you’ve ever wanted to read). Often refers to the shelf on Goodreads DNF: Did not finish. (A book you started to read but couldn’t get through.) RTC: Review to come Binge-Read: Reading all (or many) of the books in a series in a row. Spoiler: Anything in your review/discussion that reveals important details from a book. TSTL: (Too stupid to live) A hero or heroine who keeps making really bad decisions, almost gets killed, and doesn’t learn from their mistakes. Cliffie: A cliffhanger. (When the book ends in the middle of a dramatic moment and you have to wait till the next book to find out what happens.) CW/TW: Content Warning/Trigger Warning (A warning about content that might trigger some people.)

Character/Plot Terms:

MC/FMC/MMC: Main character (book is told from their POV). FMC refers to female main character and MMC refers to male. POV: Point of view (the perspective that the book is told from). POC/BIPOC: People of color/Black, Indigenous, and people of color Daphne: A female character who has to be rescued all the time (in reference to Daphne from Scooby Doo ) Mary Sue: A character who is too perfect and/or too good (which, strangely, originated from a Star Trek parody story ). Manic Pixie Dream Girl: A type of female character depicted as vivacious and appealingly quirky, whose main purpose within the narrative is to inspire a greater appreciation for life in a male protagonist. Twist: An unexpected event in a book—typically one that changes the direction of the plot or characters dramatically. Info-Dump: When the author gives you lots of background information all at once via narration or dialogue. Bechdel Test: Refers to the way that women are represented in a book. A book is generally said to have “passed” if the book has at least two female characters who talk to each other about something other than men. Unreliable Narrator: A narrator whose POV is not trustworthy (could be due to lying, misinformation on the part of the MC, mental health or memory issues, etc.). Morally Gray: A character who straddles the line between being likable and unlikable, or villainous and heroic. This person often has more bad qualities than good, but the reader can see the positives peeking through. Cinnamon Roll: A really sweet and lovable character. Grumpy/Sunshine: A pairing of a generally grumpy character with a sweet, happy character.

Genres/Age Ranges:

PB: Picture book. MG: Middle Grade (typically geared toward ages 8-12). YA: Young Adult (typically geared toward high school-aged readers—or features main characters in that age range). NA: New Adult (typically geared toward college age or just out of college—or features main characters in that age range). Contemp: Contemporary fiction, meaning that it takes place in modern day and generally doesn’t have any magical, sci-fi or fantasy elements. SF/SFF : Sci-Fi or Fantasy. PNR: Paranormal Romance (usually adult). UF/Paranormal: Urban Fantasy is, again, typically used to describe adult titles. YA and under is more often referred to as paranormal (or contemporary fantasy). DR/DROM: Dark romance (Romance with dark and undertones and/or trauma. Usually spicy.) Magical Realism/Contemporary Fantasy: A book that is set in the real world with a magical or fantastical twist. (Some would say that the term magical realism should only be associated with books of Latin American origin.) Verse Novel: A novel that is written in verse (poems). Must have a complete narrative arc (so, not a poetry collection but an actual story written in verse).

Format/Publishing Terms:

ARC/Galley/Uncorrected Proof/eARC/DRC:  These are all terms that refer to an Advanced Reader’s Copy—a (typically unfinalized) copy of the book that publishers provide to reviewers before the publication date. eARC and DRC (Digital Review Copy) both refer to electronic copies of a book. Physical Copy:  (Often in reference to an ARC) Means that you have a hardcover or paperback version of the book, not an ebook. Finished Copy/FC: The book in its final, published form. PB: Paperback. HC: Hardcover. New Release: A book that has been released recently (usually in the current calendar year). Backlist:  A book that was released before the current calendar year. OOP: Out of print. This book is no longer being published, so you’ll have to get a used copy! Self-Published:  Published by the author (often via Amazon). Traditionally Published: Published by one of the major publishing houses. Indie/Small-Press: Published by a small independent publisher. ISBN:  International Standard Book Number. A unique number that identifies a published book. MS: Manuscript (the copy of the book that’s actually written or typed by the author). WIP: Work in progress (a book that the author is currently working on). Blurb: The synopsis that you find on the back of the book and sites like Amazon and Goodreads. Street Teams: A team of bloggers and/or readers who enthusiastically promote an author or a series. Sometimes street team members get special perks from the author like first dibs on ARCs. Pre-order Incentive/Campaign: A special offer where the author or publisher sends out special gifts to people who have pre-ordered a particular book. I have a list of current pre-order incentives on my blog that’s updated weekly!

Meme: According to Merriam-Webster a meme is defined as “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” In the book blogging world, it’s typically a link-up centered on a theme where lots of bloggers participate and link up to a master post. There are lots of these. Here are just a few that I could think of:

• TTT: Top Ten Tuesday – A different bookish top ten list every week.
• CWW/WoW: Can’t Wait Wednesday (used to be Waiting on Wednesday) – Lists an upcoming book the blogger is looking forward to.
• Sunday Post: A weekly wrap-up.
• StS: Stacking the Shelves – Books that have been newly acquired.
• It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?:  Tell what you’re reading that week.
• Teaser Tuesday:  List a teaser sentence from the book you’re currently reading.
• That’s What He Said Thursday:  Share a line from your current book boyfriend.
• Cover Characteristic:  Features a different type of cover element each week.
• Feature & Follow Friday:  A meme that encourages following back.

Tag:  Usually a post with a list of quick categories or questions around a theme. The blogger puts up their post and then “tags” other bloggers, encouraging them to complete the list as well. Blog Hop/Giveaway Hop:  A linky that is designed so that participants “hop” from blog to blog visiting many of the linked posts. (Often this is done with a giveaway, so that there is a link-up of lots of blogs participating in a giveaway and people can hop to all of them to enter many different giveaways). Buddy Read/Readalong: When a group of two or more people read a book at the same time so they can discuss it as they go. OTSP Secret Sister: A monthly bookish secret sister project put together by a few bloggers as part of their “On the Same Page” feature. Reading/Blogging Challenge: A challenge to read a certain number of books that meet a certain criteria or to accomplish some type of blogging task. I have a HUGE list of reading challenges on my blog!

Blog Tour: An organized publicity tour for a book where multiple bloggers post about the book on their blogs. Usually tours take place over a short period of time (typically two weeks or less), often near the release date. Blog tours often include a giveaway (but not always). Tour stops might include:

• Spotlight: A tour stop that just gives basic information about the book such as cover, description, release date, author info, buy links, etc.
• Guest Post: Where the author writes a short guest post about a topic relevant to the book that’s included in the tour stop.
• Interview: An interview with the author (usually questions are written by the blogger).
• Excerpt: A tour stop that includes an excerpt of the book.
• Review:  A tour stop that includes a review of the book.

Cover Reveal:  An organized reveal of the cover for an upcoming book where the cover is featured on blogs and in social media. Book Blitz: This type of tour typically includes a giveaway and lots of spotlight posts (sometimes all on the same day or over just a couple of days up to a week) but features no reviews, guest posts, interviews, etc. Social Media Blitz: A tour that is organized just to be featured on social media (just spotlights). Top Post of the Day: If a tour company says that the tour post needs to be your top post of the day, that means that it should be the last  thing you post that day (most tour companies ask that you post by a certain time, say 10AM, so that would mean you couldn’t put up any other posts after 10AM on that day).

Bookish and Social Media Abbreviations/Terms:

NG: NetGalley (a site that provides digital review copies). EW: Edelweiss (another site that provides digital review copies). GR : Goodreads (a site where you can post reviews and more!). FB: Facebook. BookTube: Bookish vlogs (video blogs) posted to YouTube. Bookstagram: Instagram feeds that are dedicated to pictures of books. TBD: The Book Depository (you’ll see this abbreviation on international giveaways a lot).

Book Conferences:

There are TONS of book conferences out there, but these are the ones I hear bloggers talking about most:

ALA : American Library Association (Technically this is the name of the organization, but when bloggers say they’re going to ALA, they’re talking about the organization’s bi-annual convention.) BEA/BookCon : Book Expo America (which is now being renamed to just Book Expo, I believe). Book Expo is the main conference, which is only open to industry professionals (including bloggers, though that’s being limited a bit more than it was in the past). BookCon takes place immediately after BEA and is open to the public. RT Booklover’s Convention:  This is the Romantic Times convention, which focuses mostly on adult romance (though it’s branched out into more YA in recent years). It has lots of break-out sessions for aspiring writers, bloggers, and readers and also features author signings and tons of fun parties and activities! Apollycon: Jennifer Armentrout sponsors this conference. YALLFEST: A YA Conference that happens yearly in Charleston, NC. YALC :   the UK’s Young Adult Literature Convention.

Other Random Terms:

Blogosphere: The blogging community as a whole. The book blogosphere would be the community of book bloggers. Blogoversary:  The anniversary of your first blog post! (Lots of different spellings for this one.) Shelfie: A mixture of “shelf” and “selfie”—basically a picture of your bookshelves. Book Spine Poetry:  Creating a poem from the titles of your books. Often done using a pictures of all the books stacked up to show the poem. Fan Fiction: Fiction written by fans that uses a published author’s world and/or characters. #ownvoices: The Twitter hashtag that was created to promote books written about marginalized groups of people that are written by authors who belong to those groups. Basically promotes diverse books being written by diverse authors. Listicle: A piece of writing or other content presented wholly or partly in the form of a list (such as Top Ten Tuesday). Affiliate Links: If a blogger uses affiliate links, and you make a purchase after clicking on their link, the blogger will get a small commision. Always a nice way to support a favorite blogger! Auto-Buy Author:  An author that you love so much that you will buy (and read!) every single one of their books, no matter what it is.

Book Title Abbreviations:

We book bloggers are busy people and we can’t be expected to constantly type out long book titles, right? Besides, when Twitter’s 140 character limit is involved titles like A Court of Thorns and Roses  are just darn impractical! So, what do we do? We abbreviate them, of course! ACoTaR is a really common one I see all the time (notice that the words that aren’t capitalized in the title often aren’t capitalized in the abbreviation either). But this abbreviating can be seen all the time, especially in comments or when the name of the book has already been mentioned once. Usually this treatment is reserved for long titles, but sometimes we just get plain lazy—I’ve seen people abbreviate two or three word titles this way from time to time.

Looking for more literary definitions? Check out this Glossary of Literary Terms over at Notes in the Margin!

Whew! Any of these new to you? I’m sure I’m missing some important terms and abbreviations here. If you think of any that I should add to the list, let me know in the comments!

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73 responses to “ A Book Blogger’s Guide to Acronyms, Terms and Slang ”

It’s so funny how, when you’re part of a group, you forget or don’t even realize that you have all these terms and slang words and whatnot that other people don’t actually understand. You just get so used to using them and seeing them and hearing them all the time. This is awesome though! And I’m sure it’ll be helpful to a lot of people. I didn’t know BROTP was a thing lol. And I also never actually knew the difference between a tour and a blitz, so thanks for that 🙂

Glad I could help clear up those differences. Every once in awhile I’ll still run across something on a blog and think, “What the heck is that?” We really do have our own language!

So many bookish words. I’ve been around long enough that none of them are new to me, but I didn’t know very much about the tour words. I’ve never been part of a blog tour.

At first I wasn’t going to include the tour-specific words, but the more I started looking at these terms, the more I kept adding! 🙂

Man when I was new I needed this!!! I had no idea what half od the terms/acronyms were!!

There are so MANY of them! It can be its own language sometimes!

Ehat does smvt mean?

I’ve been reading some new books lately and I’ve come across the book tag “spg” and I’ve tried to look on Google but no answers

Hmmm … I don’t know this one off the top of my head. Can you point me to an example?

Awesome post! This is definitely super helpful, especially for newer bloggers. I’ve been blogging for two and a half years and there was a couple that’s I wasn’t sure about. Like the OTP thing I only discovered when you posted about it the other day, and is it bad that I’ve never been entirely sure what middle grade fiction is? I had assumed it was for a lower age than YA, but didn’t know for sure! I hadn’t come across the term until I started blogging, it was just like ‘children’s books’, and ‘YA books’ as far as I knew!

It’s funny how terms will crop up and totally throw you off. I vaguely remember being surprised by the MG term when I was a new blogger too. Now we can feel all wisdomy and stuff. (Right? Yep, comments like that make people want to learn from my wisdom for sure. LOL!)

Nice! I really like this post – I knew MOST of these, but there were a few that I don’t think I’ve really come across. I’d suggest “slash” for another one, which basically means a gay relationship. This is commonly used in fan fiction, but I feel like people use it in book reviews, etc. too.

I’ll have to add slash fiction to the list! Thanks!

Great post! You put lots of time in all this detail. Thank you!

It was fun to gather all these terms!

I did the same thing! As a newbie blogger there were a LOT of acronyms I didn’t know. This is very handy. 🙂 Seeing all these together though I have a new appreciation for the blogger “language” we all seem to share. I remember being particularly puzzled by “shipping” for a while!

This should be on a “how- to” for new bloggers… 🙂

Yes, you just don’t realize how much lingo is involved in the bookish world until you compile it. And I could probably come up with tons more if I did more publishing terms.

This is great! Everyone should read this before venturing into the book blogosphere- half the time I feel like I am not even speaking English anymore when I am talking to bookish people, or writing a post or whatever. (The worst though is when you start saying these things in real life, to people who have NO IDEA what you are talking about- I do this wayyy too frequently 😉 )

Yeah, if you start talking to your neighbor about your OTP they might look at you a little funny! 🙂

I remember in the beginning of my blogging days, I had to ask so many questions about these abbreviations. I think it’s great that you’ve made a list. There are two more abbreviations I can think about for your : TSTL (too stupid to live) is a hero or heroine who keep making really bad decisions, almost gets killed, and doesn’t learn from their mistakes. There is also Cliffie which means cliffhanger, and many people loathe those. On another note, are you coming to RT in May?

Those are great ones to add! Thanks!!

As far as RT goes, I was going to go, but then I realized that ALA is going to be in Chicago this summer and just decided to do that instead. I can’t justify the expense of going to a far-off conference when there’s an awesome one close by. I really did love RT, though, and I definitely want to go again. Maybe 2018 … 🙁

It was like getting used to the jargon we use on my job when I first got on-line and into blogs. Very helpful list!

True—it seems every niche has its own lingo, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that book blogging is the same!

So I always wondered where “ship” came from, wow, that made me feel ridiculous that I never figured it out ?. And I had to Google what OTP meant last year, cause I was completely clueless lol. Fabulous and ever so helpful post, Nicole!

Kinda random, but I saw that RT Booklover’s Convention is coming to Reno in 2018! I’m SO excited since that’s about 50 minutes away from me, well without snow. Have you been to that convention before?

RT is AMAZING! If it’s close to you, you definitely need to go. I was seriously considering going this year, but ALA is going to be in Chicago, so I feel like I should just attend that instead, since it’s a major conference and the costs would be so much lower. I haven’t been to ALA before, so I don’t know exactly what to expect but Shannon (It Starts at Midnight) went to the midwinter one and said it was fabulous, so I’m giving it a try.

Here’s the deal with RT—it’s much more laid back and relaxed than something like BEA. I would randomly bump into authors in line or around the hotel and chat with them. That almost NEVER happens at the more industry-type conferences. Plus, the atmosphere at RT is just plain fun! There are lots of games and activities where you really interact a lot. It is more adult romance focused (so some of the games and activities are funny in a sex-centric sort of way). Oh, and there are tons of different panels, which I really loved. I definitely hope to go to RT again—I was thinking maybe in 2018, so … 🙂

That’s so exciting that ALA is right in Chicago, I hope you have an wonderful time!

The moment that I saw RT was going to be held in Reno I texted my friend, from back home, and said you HAVE to come with me. 🙂 I’m so excited and even more so after your insight, thank you! I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you attend RT in 2018! THAT WOULD BE AMAZING! =D

Maybe I can make it a reality in 2018. I’ve never been to Reno. 🙂

If you come, make sure that you have time to visit Lake Tahoe! Even if it’s just for an hour, so you can walk on a beach or grab an ice cream cone. I’ll go with! 🙂 It’s so gorgeous.

That sounds like a plan! 🙂

Omg….it’s like we speak another language. ?? I didn’t even realise how many they were but like I use these ALL THE TIME. And woah it’d be so confusing for newbies! I’m so glad you did this post, Nicole!!

The acronyms kill me though…especially if I’m a bit out of the loop. I’ve been seeing people raving about THUG on twitter and I was like “well I better look that up some time” but then I realised it was The Hate U Give. ? Which honestly isn’t that long of a title to type out, c’mon peoples! I was so confused haha. I think ACOTAR is like the only way people refer to A Court of Thorns And Roses now though. It’s super famous for the acronym so that’s fair.?

THUG would definitely have thrown me off too—I would have thought we were talking about some bad-boy book boyfriend or something. 🙂

A very comprehensive list, and I understand the need for acronyms in Twitter posts. Thanks! However, standard writing conventions require that you define the acronym or abbreviation the first time it is used in a document. Then, in the same document, you can use the shortened version from then on. It really ticks me off when I can’t figure out an acronym.

Yes, Twitter is it’s own special universe since we all have to try to condense our thoughts. I agree though, that it’s frustrating when people use an acronym (in longer formats) without ever defining it anywhere!

This is a very helpful guide to understand all the different abbreviations and words that many book bloggers use. It’s definitely an excellent resource for those who are new bloggers and also for bloggers who have been blogging for awhile. I didn’t even know some of the abbreviations that are listed in this guide so I am sure everyone can learn something new from it.

Yes, we practically have our own language! I’ve added even more terms since I first wrote this post, and I’m sure there are many more!

So many terms! I recognize a lot of them, but some were newer to me. Like OTP…that might take a bit of getting used to!

I know, some of these terms can really throw you when you see them the first time!

Wow! You covered it all! I knew most of them, but there were some I had never heard of before. You could add blogosphere to your list. I didn’t know what that meant at first. Also, a Daphne is a female character who has to be rescued all the time, and a Mary Sue is a character who is too perfect and too good. Just some suggestions 🙂 Great list!

Those are all great suggestions to add to the list! I think I only vaguely knew what Daphne meant. It’s a reference to Scooby Doo, right?

All great information to know, Nicole. Thanks for putting this all together. 🙂

Glad it’s helpful!

Great list – definitely came in handy for me. 🙂

This post is fabulous! I need to print this out!

Ha! Yes, sometimes we could all use a handy dandy cheat sheet. 🙂

I had started a glossary of terms in danielaark.com because I could never remember LOL This list has EVERYTHING! Awesome post Nicole!

Let me know if you think I missed any!

[…] A Blogger’s Guide to Acronyms. (Feed Your Fiction Addiction) Every bookish and blog-related acronym you’ve ever wondered about, and then some. […]

I think I learned OTP and “ship” before I started blogging, from reading Tumblr posts on Pinterest. Which seems silly. I had to work out “slash” on my own though. I think it’s because it would be described as M/M (em slash em) or F/F? And I hadn’t heard of ARCs before blogging. I guess any specialty area has its own jargon!

I don’t think I’d heard of any of these pre-blogging!

[…] A Book Blogger’s Guide to Acronyms, Terms, and Slang from Feed Your Fiction Addiction Discussion: Spoilers… How Soon is too Soon? from The Book Addict’s Guide Jo Talks Books: On Actual YAs in the YA Community from Book Lovers Blog […]

I didn’t know some of these terms. Namely, I didn’t know TBD, MS, PNR and HEA, but I knew the concept once it was explained. When I read BROTP (I knew what it was before reading it), why isn’t there an equivalent term for two girls? If there is, I haven’t heard of it. There isn’t a nice way to throw some version of “sister” in front of OTP, so I can’t imagine what would work.

Yeah, SOTP just doesn’t work all that well. I think there has to be a term for girl friends … now I feel the need to seek it out!

This is super helpful. I remember when I was new how I would always google the meaning of these book blogging terms and acronyms. Slash, RTC, TSTL, Daphne and Mary Sue are new to me though. I learned something today!

Confession: I had to look back at my post to remind myself what TSTL means. LOL! (That one was given to me by a commenter.) 🙂

[…] “A Book Blogger’s Guide to Acronyms, Terms, and Slang” from Feed Your Fiction Addiction […]

[…] A Book Blogger’s Guide to Acronyms, Terms and Slang […]

Help, I haven’t found what “EOB” or “EOBS” means.

I am VERY late to this comment but thought I’d still try to ask around to see if anyone knew of these acronyms. Most of the suggestions I got weren’t book-related (EOB can mean End of Business or Explanation of Benefits, but neither of those would be found on a book blog). I thought of End of Book? And then someone suggested End of Book Series? But those are guesses. Sorry I couldn’t help more!

[…] I have sourced much of this information from various places. However, a fantastic resource is this blog here. She has collated a ton of terms and info for your reference. […]

Elric: Song Of Black Sword (HB) *OP (Eternal Champion) Elric: Song Of Black Sword (HB) OP (Eternal Champion) I have seen the OP designation lately on a few books I buy from Amazon. Do you know what it means and why one has a star and one doesn’t. Thank you

I tried doing a little research and couldn’t figure it out either. If you ever find out what it is, come on by and let me know!

Thank you for this great post! I have known the acronyms YA and NA for some time, but my problem is how to find Mafia Romance novels for older adults, age 50+. So many of the protagonists are teenagers, and I’d prefer to read about more mature characters. Many books on Amazon and GoodReads don’t specify any age group, so you can only find out by reading the book. Thanks in advance for your advice.

MC also means Motorcycle Club

And RC means Riding Club, and while both ride motorcycles are completely different things

Thank you for this great post! I have known the acronyms YA and NA for some time, but my problem is how to find Mafia Romance novels for older adults, age 50+. So many of the protagonists are teenagers, and I’d prefer to read about more mature characters. Many books on Amazon and GoodReads don’t specify any age group, so you can only find out by reading the book. Thanks in advance for your advice.

Omg thxs for this! Was trying to explain what otp meant to my friend and this helped so much!

Glad I could help!

Overweight people are trying everything available to fitspresso weight loss, often without a great deal of success. Thousands of people have been using this fitspresso weight loss supplement for some time now and are only wanting more for their fitspresso weight loss plans.

Can you explain what OP means? I saw it on Reddit and nothing I read about OP makes sense in context.

I missed this, and I have no idea if you still need this info, but OP is generally short for “original poster” so you’ll see it in forums like Reddit or social media. Not generally used in blogging or specific to books, but if you saw it in some sort of forum, that’s probably what it meant.

any chance you would know what: BAGBALTPTICOYF acronym is? I found this in a book I just picked up: Blood Oath.

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• Oct 24, 2021

Book review: What Does It All Mean by Thomas Nagel

Updated: Dec 2, 2021

This intro to philosophical discussion takes on several basic philosophical questions. Nagel walks the reader through several common avenues of philosophical analysis until leaving the reader with several questions to answer for themselves. In this review, I will take on some of Nagel's questions.

How do we know anything?

Solipsism posits that the only thing that exists is our minds. But we don't know that. We know that it is all we can experience, but not all that is. Skepticism doubts that any external world exists. But again, there is no way to know that. Is it meaningful to believe that only one's own mind exists? No. Is it meaningful to assume that the world outside is something completely different than what it seems to be? Possibly.

We know that our sense organs are quite different than many other animals. However, we all seem to be measuring the aspects of the environment that we need to in order to survive in our bodies. Each type of body is adapted to survive in a niche of the environment. We can make a conjecture that the external world is the sum of all the senses of all the organisms that exist. But as a human, we can still only experience a sliver.

If it's possible that my mind is all that exists or that the external world is something drastically different than what I perceive, I have no way of proving it to myself or others, so it's a waste of time and energy to hold that position. I also can't prove that anything DOES exist outside my mind, so is it alright to go on believing in the external world anyway? The definition of "alright" is up to each one of us and I say it's alright. Regardless, I can understand that as a human, society and culture are constructed by tacit agreements or other agreements among humans. I don't have to believe in an external world, but I can believe in the consequences of actions that come from my own mind as I perceive it. The consequences of not believing in an external world can have severe consequences. If I jump off a cliff I will find out quickly whether the external world exists or not. It's not a wager most people will take. It's likely not just alright to keep believing in an external world, but necessary to continue to experience my mind. In fact, if my mind is all that exists, then my mind tells me quite often about dangers and things I should do to avoid my mind ending. Indeed, if the external world doesn't exist, since my mind seems to want me to believe quite strongly that an external world full of dangers exists, then it's quite all right to continue to believe in it.

Other Minds

How do you know that all the beings around you aren't just elaborate robots? Instinct isn't knowledge. There isn't any way for one to know that any other being has any inner experiences at all.

What can you really know about the conscious life in this world beyond the fact that you have a conscious mind? You can't really know at all. There is no way to know what people, organisms, and inanimate objects experience. However, from reading books and listening to people, one encounters thoughts which very much appear to be the result of self-reflection and inner reflection, which takes place as a result of consciousness. While the existence of books and speeches that seem to be encoded with inner reflection enter my sensory world quite often, this is still no evidence. Nevertheless, that these thoughts appear from others' mouths and hands compels one to lean more on the side of other humans having consciousness and an inner world.

Is it possible that there might be much less conscious life than you assume, or much more? Just as some stars shine more brightly than others, it does seem that some lifeforms have much more consciousness than others, and as a result, some creatures and objects have much less consciousness. This isn't evidence, but merely a statement based upon the distribution of characteristics within the universe concerning, height, weight, intelligence, life span, size, and so on. Within species, there appears to be a wide-range of possible manifestations of characteristics. Consciousness is likely similar.

The Mind-Body Problem

Is the mind purely physical or is there some spiritual component? Nagel talks about the taste of chocolate and how it is distinct from the chemical and electrical signals in the brain. A symphony orchestra plays music, but is the experience of music something non-physical? If the experiences we have as humans require a spirit separate from the physical aspects, why are there physical aspects at all? If the spirit requires the physical components of neurons and eyeballs, then the spirit is dependent upon the physical and thus physical itself. We can reduce this problem by taking various disabilities into account. Are blind people lacking in spirit? Are deaf people lacking in spirit? If not, then the physical experiences we have, have nothing to do with spirit at all and this includes our thoughts which are also just neurons firing with moods modulated by chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin.

The other way of saying that everything is physical, is also to say that everything is spiritual. Why can't physicalism be turned around and stated as if there is no dualism, then everything is spiritual even if it has a physical aspect to it. This seems to be a stretch though, since there is quite a lot of pain, suffering, disease, abuse, neglect, boredom, forgetfulness, and so on. How can spirit be forgetful? If everything is spiritual, what is the purpose of acquiring decades of experience and wisdom only for dementia to erase it all? A physical explanation makes far more sense where our bodies are here for the purpose of sexual reproduction (a physical process) to pass on physical genes and then be done with it. Everything about our nature as humans, points toward our bodies needing to be useful long enough to have and raise a few children and then the world no longer needs us around. Regardless of how each person experiences our inner world, we can objectively see how the environment treats other organisms and that physical processes wear down and destroy everything about each being, including the parts that some ascribe to being spiritual.

Is everything, including our thoughts, and every action we take in every circumstance inevitable, or determined before it happens? Existentialists believe that we aren't determined. It is up to each of us to discover meaning in our lives and work to become the people that we want to be. Even if everything is determined, it seems clear that it is determined that most people will not believe that everything is determined simply because of the psychological jail that is created as a result. If everyone believed that everything is determined people would not feel guilt, remorse, hope, responsibility, and so on. The fact that almost everyone feels all of those things is proof enough that if the entire universe unfolds in a determined way, that unfolding includes humans believing that their actions, thoughts, and feelings are not determined. It seems as if most of life is determined though: who we are born to, the times we are born into, the environment around us, geopolitics, and the economy. However, in each moment, we have several options, even if they are very small. Even the existence if a minuscule percentage of choices still constitutes choice. So, while we are not absolutely determined, it appears our free will is considerably small.

Death and the Meaning of Life

Thomas Nagel ends the book by taking on two topics: death and the meaning of life. He mainly contrasts religious belief which accepts an afterlife and the worship of a god at face value without question. Of course, these conclusions aren't acceptable for a philosopher as there is no evidence of, but plenty of evidence against this position being tenable. Here is where Nagel introduces humor, and suggests that if one is able to take oneself not very seriously, then death and the meaning of life aren't such bitter pills to swallow. It's only when we cling to these concepts with such seriousness that we feel we must have a purpose, that we must live on forever, that these problems become too hard to handle. I have to agree that if there is an antidote for existential angst, humor must be an ingredient.

An Eastern take

After asking all of these questions and spending all this time thinking about what is and what isn't, there is still another valid philosophical angle. This one comes from Buddhism. In Buddhism, spending time on questions like this is considered a waste. Since we know that we cannot know, Buddhists say that time should only be spent on working on the present moment. Buddhism isn't interested in metaphysical speculation, only in the pursuit of conquering his own mind without wasting time on unimportant and unnecessary philosophical puzzles. Zen Buddhism is concerned with what is going on around us and the simple, practical matters about life. This is summed up in this tale:

A monk told Joshu, "I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me."

Joshu asked, "Have you eaten your rice porridge?"

The monk replied, "I have eaten.""

Joshu said, "Then you had better wash your bowl."

At that moment the monk was enlightened.

From the perspective of Zen, all of these questions are a waste of time and only get in the way of our development.

But we can ask many questions about the Buddhist perspective as well. Does Buddhism have any motivation to encourage its followers not to ask questions? Just because someone who was called "enlightened" said some things, does that mean they should be listened to without question?

All religions draw lines in the sand and encourage followers to stay within the boundaries of dogma. Buddhism is no different. Not only does Buddhism encourage followers to deny their desires and urges, but also to deny themselves the pondering of metaphilosophical questions. Where's the fun in that?

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What Cass review says about surge in children seeking gender services

Report finds particularly complex factors may explain surge in birth-registered females referred to NHS Gids

In 2009 the NHS’s gender identity development service (Gids) saw fewer than 50 children a year. Since then, demand increased a hundredfold, with more than 5,000 seeking help in 2021-22.

In her review of gender services , Dr Hilary Cass said there had been a “dramatic increase” in presentations to gender clinics in the last decade, in particular by birth-registered females. In 2009, Gids treated 15 girls. By 2016, that figure had risen to 1,071.

“There has been a significant change in the population of young people over the last 10 to 15 years,” Cass told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday.

“So about 15 years ago, the service was seeing perhaps 50 predominantly birth registered boys in childhood. And over the last 10 years or so it’s switched to over 3,000 young people, and it’s mainly birth-registered girls presenting in early teens … often with quite complex additional problems.”

There is no single explanation for the increase in prevalence of gender incongruence or the specific rise in birth-registered females referred to Gids, her review concluded.

But it says various factors may explain the increase in predominantly birth-registered females presenting to gender services in early adolescence:

Social media and the internet

Generation Z and Generation Alpha (those born since 2010) have grown up with “unprecedented” online lives, the report says. This has huge advantages, but also brings risks and challenges.

Greater access to the internet has given children and young people learning resources “but it has also made them vulnerable to new dangers”, according to the review.

“Biology hasn’t changed and adult biology hasn’t changed in the last few years,” Cass said this week. “So it’s not that that’s changed things.

“I don’t think that young people today are being exposed to more abuse, or trauma or so on, than previous generations. We do have to think very seriously about the impact of social media.”

The report says girls spend more hours using social media than boys. A study cited by Cass found 43% of girls used social media for three or more hours a day, compared with 22% of boys.

A systematic review highlighted by the Cass report found that use of social media was associated with body image concerns. Numerous other studies cited by the report implicate smartphone and social media use in mental distress and suicidality among young people, particularly girls.

All showed a clear dose-response relationship: the more hours spent online, the greater the effect.

Peer and socio-cultural influence

The report suggests that although the impact of societal influences on a child’s gender expression remains unclear, it’s clear that the influences of a child’s peers are “very powerful during adolescence”.

Although the report does not specifically state that girls are affected by social and cultural influences, such as peer pressure, more than boys, and so too their gender expression, other evidence has suggested this is the case.

Several studies have implied that girls are more affected by peer pressure than boys, and are more likely to develop a negative body image during adolescence.

Another societal influence that the report references as possibly having an impact on a young person’s gender expression includes information on gender dysmorphia and gender expression found online.

More specifically, a focus group of gender-questioning young people and their parents who spoke to the review said that they often found online information “that describes normal adolescent discomfort as a possible sign of being trans and that particular influencers have had a substantial impact on their child’s beliefs and understanding of their gender”.

One gender-questioning young person is quoted in the report affirming this view, saying a “lot of trans people make YouTube videos, which I think is a major informational source for a lot of people, and that’s mainly where I get my information from, not so much professional services”.

The report also stated that according to another focus group of gender-questioning young people, they often found it difficult to find “trusted sources of information, favouring lived experience social media accounts over mainstream news outlets”.

Greater societal acceptance of transgender identities has allowed young people to come out easily, the review found. It suggests that the increased numbers now reflect the true prevalence of gender incongruence in society.

Dangerous online influencers

Cass said her review team received reports of gender-questioning children being urged to hide things from their parents. “We haven’t done a comprehensive search but certainly when we were told about particular influencers, I followed some of those up,” Cass said. “Some of them give them very unbalanced information.

“And some [young people] were told that parents would not understand, so that they had to actively separate from their parents or distance their parents. All the evidence shows that that family support is really key to people’s wellbeing. So there was really some dangerous influencing going on.”

Cass says the influencers “are legion” but declined to identify any specially.

Mental health

The striking increase in young people presenting with gender dysphoria should be seen within the context of increasing rates of poor mental health and emotional distress among the broader adolescent population, particularly among girls, the Cass report found.

There has been a substantial increase in rates of mental health problems in children and young people, with increased anxiety and depression being most evident in teenage girls, UK national surveys between 1999 and 2017 show.

The Cass review found that there was a “marked increase” in young women aged between 16 and 24 presenting with anxiety, depression and self-harm. Some conditions – for example, eating disorders – have increased more than others, particularly in girls and young women.

Studies of rates of self-harm have shown similar increases. For example, the report says there was an almost 70% increase in girls aged between 13 and 16 presenting with self-harm. This was not seen in boys, the review noted.

“The increase in presentations to gender clinics has to some degree paralleled this deterioration in child and adolescent mental health,” the report says. “Mental health problems have risen in both boys and girls, but have been most striking in girls and young women.”

Girls were also more likely to have low self-esteem (12.8% versus 8.9% of boys), according to a study cited by the Cass review. They were also more likely to be unhappy with their appearance (15.4% versus 11.8% of boys).

Changes in concepts of gender and sexuality

The report states that the relationship between sexuality and gender identity is “complex and contested”, and that although a trans identity does not necessarily determine a person’s sexuality, it was “important to consider the relationship between sexual identity and gender identity given that sexuality contributes to a person’s sense of identity, and both may be fluid during adolescence”.

The report cites a 2016 research paper from Gids that looked at sexual orientation in 57% (97) of a clinic sample of patients over 12 years of age for whom this information was available.

Of the birth-registered females, 68% were attracted to females, 21% were bisexual, 9% were attracted to males and 2% were asexual. Of the birth-registered males, 42% were attracted to males, 39% were bisexual and 19% were attracted to females.

The report goes on to say that it is “common in adolescence to experience same-sex attraction and not to conform to gender stereotypes. In making sense of these feelings young people are now having to navigate an increasingly complex interplay between sex and gender.”

On the relationship between sexual orientation and gender identity, the review concludes that it “is an area that warrants better exploration and understanding”.

The report also stated that it had received several reports from parents of birth-registered females “that their child had been through a period of trans identification before recognising that they were cisgender same-sex attracted”.

• Transgender
• Children's health
• Young people

More on this story

No case for closing Scotland’s only NHS gender services clinic, says first minister

Veteran trans campaigner: ‘Cass review has potential for positive change’

Cass review must be used as ‘watershed moment’ for NHS gender services, says Streeting

‘This isn’t how good scientific debate happens’: academics on culture of fear in gender medicine research

Five thousand children with gender-related distress awaiting NHS care in England

Ban on children’s puberty blockers to be enforced in private sector in England

Adult transgender clinics in England face inquiry into patient care

‘Children are being used as a football’: Hilary Cass on her review of gender identity services

Thousands of children unsure of gender identity ‘let down by NHS’, report finds

Most viewed.

How far back can the IRS audit you? Here's what might trigger one.

It's rare IRS agents will come knocking on your door to perform an audit these days. Most audits are now done via mail or in person at an IRS office or the taxpayer's place of business, but they're scary, nevertheless.

When you're audited, it means your return was selected from a batch of returns for a closer inspection. This happens because your tax filing was among those that showed the "highest potential noncompliance," the IRS says . The agency uses data driven algorithms, third-party information, whistleblowers and information you provide to determine if income, expenses and credits are reported accurately.

The easiest way to avoid an audit is to be "accurate, honest, and modest," said Eric Scaringe, principal at certified public accounting firm UHY.

What triggers an IRS audit?

Mismatches. "One thing tax jurisdictions like more than money is information," Scaringe said.  "They look for mismatches, and use AI (artificial intelligence) tools to find it and send autogenerated notices. That's low hanging fruit."

For instance, make sure you enter your information from your W-2 income tax form correctly so it's consistent with the income that's stated on official income tax documents like a 1099 or W-2, said Erin Collins, National Taxpayer Advocate at the Taxpayer Advocate Service division of the IRS. Or else, you can expect an IRS inquiry. 

"We find a lot of taxpayers take their last paystub (of the year) and use that number," she said. But they can run into problems because that last paystub may not cover their typical pay period. 

She also recommends parents discuss who will be claiming a child on their return if they file separate returns. They should also ensure additional caretakers like grandparents don't try to claim a child on their return if they don't meet the IRS' requirements for doing so. Otherwise, an audit may be triggered if multiple people try to claim the same child as a dependent on their returns. 

People often get tripped up on the earned income tax credit (EITC) because IRS records show that a child claimed by the taxpayer does not meet the relationship or residency test to be considered a qualifying child, according to the Taxpayer Advocate , an independent organization within the IRS that works for taxpayers.

Michael Steffany, a senior tax attorney at Withersworldwide, said in his experience, "the IRS concentrates its efforts on those items most likely to result in a large amount of additional tax due."

"We continue to see high net worth taxpayers, as well as taxpayers with non-U.S. income and foreign entities, be a particular point of concentration," he added.

What happens if the IRS audits you: Here's how long it'll take

How does the IRS choose who to audit? 

The IRS says audits can also commonly be triggered through a random selection process in which a computerized system compares your return "against 'norms' for similar returns," the IRS said in an online post.

For example, a freelancer earning $100,000 might typically have $5,000 in travel costs. "If you’re out there and wrote $50,000 in travel costs, that's way outside the mean someone would deduct," said Mark Jaeger, vice president of tax operations at preparer TaxAct. "The IRS would flag that because you’re an outlier."  

Another trigger for an audit is if the information on your return is connected to someone else's, such as a business partner or investor, who is being audited.

Who gets audited by the IRS the most? 

In terms of income levels, the IRS in recent years has audited taxpayers with incomes below $25,000 and above $500,000 at higher-than-average rates, according to government data.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and acting IRS Commissioner Douglas O'Donnell have said that the nearly $80 billion the IRS will be receiving from the Inflation Reduction Act won't be put toward increasing audits above historical levels for taxpayers who earn less than $400,000 a year.

Steffany said the influx of funds is likely to increase the number of audits for high earners, which has fallen in recent years. Collins said that's due to the funding issues the IRS experienced.

Odds of being audited by the IRS

In 2022, 3.8 out of every 1,000 returns, or 0.38%, were audited by the IRS, according to a recent report using IRS data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. That was down from 4.1 out of every 1,000 returns filed, or 0.41%, the prior year.

Low-income wage-earners taking the EITC were 5.5 times more likely to be audited than anyone else "because they are easy marks in an era when IRS increasingly relies upon correspondence audits yet doesn’t have the resources to assist taxpayers or answer their questions," the report said.

You'll initially be contacted by snail mail. The IRS will provide all contact information and instructions in the letter you'll receive.

If the IRS conducts the audit by mail, it'll ask you for more information about certain items on your tax return such as income, expenses, and itemized deductions.

If you have too many books or records to mail, you can request a face-to-face audit and the agency will provide contact information and instructions in the letter you receive.

Typically, the IRS can include returns filed within the last three years in an audit. If it finds a "substantial error," it can add additional years but it usually doesn't go back more than the last six years.

If you receive an audit notice, you generally have 30 days to respond. Take that time to read the letter carefully to understand what the IRS is requesting. Not all notices are audits and not all are related to your latest tax return .

Once you understand, you can craft your response and provide the IRS with the information it's requesting. If it's a simple math error you agree with, you can often send money to cover what you owe or request a payment plan.

If it's more complicated, you'll have to write an explanation with documentation or find a tax pro to help you. You can also check the Taxpayer Advocate Service for some guidance.

Whatever you do, don't ignore the IRS. Failure to comply could result in additional interest and penalty charges for late response and/or providing incomplete information or losing your right to challenge the finding if you don't agree, the Taxpayer Advocate says .

More of your 2024 tax season questions answered

• What should you do with your tax refund check?
• How to save with credits on state tax returns
• What are the 2023 federal tax brackets?
• Are you missing important tax dates? Milestone birthdays to know.
• Tax return extensions: Who should request one?
• What is a 1098-E form?
• What is a federal tax credit?
• What is capital gains tax? 2024 rates.
• Is Social Security income taxable by the IRS?
• How much is the child tax credit for 2023?
• Does my state have an income tax?
• What does FICA mean?
• What does this IRS code mean? 826, 846, 570 and more.
• What does OASDI tax mean on my paycheck?
• What is the FairTax Act of 2023?

Medora Lee is a money, markets, and personal finance reporter at USA TODAY. You can reach her at [email protected] and  subscribe to our free Daily Money newsletter  for personal finance tips and business news every Monday through Friday.

Watch CBS News

The key players to know in the Trump "hush money" trial

By Graham Kates

Updated on: April 15, 2024 / 7:38 PM EDT / CBS News

When former President Donald Trump's criminal trial began in New York on Monday, it marked the culmination of a yearslong investigation and open a new chapter of a story that goes back even further, to an alleged affair in 2006.

It's a tale that weaves together presidential politics, tabloid headlines and the mundane intricacies of corporate ledgers. The trial will feature a unique cast of characters, some of whom are already household names, while others are stepping into the spotlight for the first time.

These are some of the key figures to know as the first ever criminal trial of a former president begins.

The defendant and key witnesses

• Donald Trump

Trump , who has locked up the Republican presidential nomination once again, is the defendant in the case, charged with 34 felony counts of falsification of business records. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on April 4, 2023. He has since raged against prosecutors and the judge, accusing them of conspiring against him for political gain. 

Prosecutors say he took part in a scheme to conceal reimbursements to his then-lawyer, who paid $130,000 in "hush money" to adult film star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels alleged she had an affair with Trump in 2006, which he denies. She signed a strict non-disclosure agreement in exchange for the money. 

Trump has said he would be willing to testify, but it is unclear if his lawyers will call him to the stand.

Michael Cohen  

Cohen is the former lawyer whose payment is at the center of the case. 

The 34 charges against Trump represent 11 invoices, 11 checks and 12 Trump Organization ledger entries that all allegedly characterized reimbursements from Trump to Cohen as monthly payments for ongoing legal services in 2017 and 2018. 

Prosecutors allege that in fact they were reimbursements for $130,000 Cohen paid to the adult film star in 2016. The reimbursements totaled $420,000, prosecutors said, allowing Cohen to recoup tax losses and walk away with a bonus. Cohen, who in 2018 entered a guilty plea in a related federal case, is the key witness against Trump.

Stormy Daniels

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is the adult film star whom Cohen paid in October 2016.

The 2016 agreement in which she agreed to remain quiet was orchestrated by Cohen and Daniels' attorney. Trump used an alias, "David Dennison," and Daniels was called "Peggy Peterson." An accompanying letter identified the pseudonyms' true identities. 

Cohen wired the $130,000 to Daniels' lawyer through a shell company called Essential Consultants LLC, which he established just days earlier.

Keith Davidson  

Davidson was Daniels' attorney. In 2016, he twice approached executives of the National Enquirer about clients who claimed to have had affairs with Trump, and secured payments in exchange for the rights to their stories.

Karen McDougal 

McDougal was a former Playboy model who also alleged an affair with Trump . In 2016, the National Enquirer's parent company paid $150,000 for the rights to her story but never published her account, a tactic known as "catch and kill."

David Pecker and Dylan Howard

Pecker was the CEO of the National Enquirer's parent company, and Howard was the tabloid's editor. Both looked out for negative stories about Trump during the 2016 campaign, purchasing the rights to particularly salacious ones — "catching" them — and keeping them secret — "killing" them. Davidson contacted the pair before ultimately negotiating with Cohen personally to iron out the deal for Daniels' story.

Jeffrey McConney 

McConney is no stranger to the witness stand in Trump-related cases. The former controller of the Trump Organization, McConney oversaw the logging and processing of payments and other company finances for decades. Prosecutors say he instructed a payroll supervisor to log reimbursements to Cohen as monthly payments due under an ongoing retainer agreement. Prosecutors say no such agreement existed. He is not accused of wrongdoing.

The prosecutors

Alvin Bragg

Bragg was elected as the Manhattan district attorney in November 2021 and soon after took over the investigation into Trump, which was already more than two years old. Bragg's early tenure was marked by high-profile resignations of prosecutors who worked for his predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., and had pursued a sweeping financial crimes case. 

By the time Bragg took office, two Trump Organization companies and their longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, had already been charged with felonies relating to tax fraud. His team secured a guilty plea from Weisselberg in August 2022, and in December of that year, the companies were convicted at trial. 

On March 31, 2023, a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump in a case narrowly focused on alleged falsification of business records in connection to reimbursements for the payment to Daniels.

Susan Hoffinger

Hoffinger was hired by Bragg as his office's chief of the investigation division and executive assistant district attorney. She led the trial team that secured the conviction of two Trump Organization companies in 2022, on 17 felony counts related to tax fraud.

Joshua Steinglass

Steinglass was also a key member of that team, questioning key witnesses and delivering the closing argument. Steinglass is known for prosecuting high-profile murder and manslaughter cases.

Christopher Conroy  

Conroy is a veteran prosecutor whose work on major white-collar crimes includes half a decade leading the D.A.'s Major Economic Crimes Bureau.

Matthew Colangelo 

Colangelo is a former senior Justice Department official, a fact that Trump has cited in an effort to portray Bragg's investigation as tied to the Biden administration. Colangelo was hired in December 2022, partly because he was involved with the New York attorney general's civil investigation of Trump prior to working for the federal government. That case ended this year when Trump was ordered to pay the state more than $454 million to recoup "ill-gotten gains" from fraud.

Rebecca Mangold 

Mangold is a prosecutor in the District Attorney's Office's Major Economic Crimes Bureau. Previously, Mangold represented high-profile clients in complex financial fraud cases as a private attorney.

The defense attorneys

Todd blanche.

Blanche was a partner at an elite New York law firm until the day before Trump's arraignment in 2023, when he resigned his post. He wrote in his resignation letter that working for Trump was "an opportunity I should not pass up." In addition to Trump's New York case, Blanche, a former prosecutor, leads Trump's defense efforts in his Washington, D.C. and Florida federal criminal cases. As a defense attorney, Blanche was no stranger to Trump's circle, having represented Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn and former campaign manager Paul Manafort, as well as Igor Furman, a former associate of ex-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. 

Susan Necheles 

Necheles has been a core member of Trump's New York legal team for years. She represented the company during its 2022 trial. She and her law partner, Gedalia Stern, are the only attorneys from that case defending Trump in his upcoming criminal trial. Necheles' previous clients include organized crime figures and leading local Democratic politicians, such as former state Sen. Pedro Espada.

Emil Bove 

Bove was a federal prosecutor for nearly a decade in the Southern District of New York, where his roles included co-chief of the National Security and International Narcotics Unit. Bove worked as a defense attorney for two years before Blanche hired him in September. At the time, Blanche described Bove as "an expert in white collar" cases, and said "his trial skills are among the best in the business."

Juan Merchan

Merchan has been a judge in New York courts since 2006. Prior to that, he spent more than a decade as a litigator for the New York attorney general and as a Manhattan prosecutor. 

As a jurist, his high-profile cases include presiding over the Trump Organization's 2022 criminal trial, a 2012 case against the operator of an upscale prostitution ring and a 2011 case involving a police officer who lied in court about illegal searches he conducted. 

Merchan has been the focus of a long series of social media tirades by Trump, who accused the judge of bias, citing work Merchan's daughter does for a Democratic-aligned consulting firm. In 2023, a state ethics panel concluded her work did not compromise Merchan's impartiality.

Graham Kates is an investigative reporter covering criminal justice, privacy issues and information security for CBS News Digital. Contact Graham at [email protected] or [email protected]

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What I Learned When I Read 887 Pages of Plans for Trump’s Second Term

By Carlos Lozada

Opinion Columnist, a co-host of “Matter of Opinion” and the author of “The Washington Book.”

Every new administration that wins power away from the opposing party contends that whatever its predecessors did was terrible and that victory constitutes a popular mandate to fix or get rid of it all. Elections have consequences, politicians love to remind us, and a big one entails trying to change everything, right away.

It is possible to read “ Mandate for Leadership : The Conservative Promise” — an 887-page document proposing to remake the executive branch, department by department, agency by agency, office by office — as one more go-round in this Washington tradition. With contributions by dozens of conservative thinkers and activists under the leadership of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the book announces itself as part of a “unified effort to be ready for the next conservative administration to govern at 12:00 noon, Jan. 20, 2025.” There is much work ahead, it states, “just to undo the significant damage that will have been done during the Biden years.”

The book has not been blessed by Donald Trump or his campaign, and the authors emphasize that they want to help the next conservative president, “whoever he or she may be.” But with so many former Trump officials among its contributors, so much praise for him throughout its pages (he is mentioned some 300 times, compared with once for Nikki Haley) and such clear affinity between Trump’s impulses and the document’s proposals, it is easy to imagine “Mandate for Leadership” wielding influence in a second Trump term. It is an off-the-shelf governing plan for a leader who took office last time with no clear plan and no real ability to govern. This book attempts to supply him with both.

There is plenty here that one would expect from a contemporary conservative agenda: calls for lower corporate taxes and against abortion rights; criticism of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and the “climate fanaticism” of the Biden administration; and plans to militarize the southern border and target the “administrative state,” which is depicted here as a powerful and unmanageable federal bureaucracy bent on left-wing social engineering. Yet what is most striking about the book is not the specific policy agenda it outlines but how far the authors are willing to go in pursuit of that agenda and how reckless their assumptions are about law, power and public service.

“Mandate for Leadership,” which was edited by Paul Dans and Steven Groves of the Heritage Foundation, is not about anything as simplistic as being dictator for a day but about consolidating authority and eroding accountability for the long haul. It calls for a relentless politicizing of the federal government, with presidential appointees overpowering career officials at every turn and agencies and offices abolished on overtly ideological grounds. Though it assures readers that the president and his or her subordinates “must be committed to the Constitution and the rule of law,” it portrays the president as the personal embodiment of popular will and treats the law as an impediment to conservative governance. It elevates the role of religious beliefs in government affairs and regards the powers of Congress and the judiciary with dismissiveness.

And for all the book’s rhetoric about the need to “dismantle the administrative state,” it soon becomes clear that vanquishing the federal bureaucracy is not the document’s animating ambition. There may be plenty worth jettisoning from the executive branch, but “Mandate for Leadership” is about capturing the administrative state, not unmaking it. The main conservative promise here is to wield the state as a tool for concentrating power and entrenching ideology.

“Mandate for Leadership” is not the kind of book meant to be read straight through from beginning to end, certainly not by any one person. (Trust me.) Each chapter features one or more authors exploring a particular department or agency in detail, so grasping the entirety of the book’s proposals would require deep expertise in multiple fields — trade negotiations, environmental science, diplomacy, nuclear power, to name a few — and in the intricacies of Washington wonkdom. The book’s prose is dense, packed with bullet points and bureaucratese, and reading about so many obscure offices, page after page, left me sympathetic to its complaints about an elephantine fourth branch of government. The introduction asserts that “one set of eyes reading these passages will be those of the 47th president of the United States,” but I wouldn’t count on any future president poring over these pages, highlighter in hand, nodding sagely. “Mandate for Leadership” is not an exercise in persuasion but a statement of purpose.

The mayhem of the Trump presidency’s early days might have occurred partly by design — recall Steve Bannon’s strategy to “flood the zone” with an expletive — but it is not an experience that the authors of this volume wish to repeat. The book’s existence is an implicit admission that the Trump administration’s haphazard approach to governance was a missed opportunity. Executing a conservative president’s agenda “requires a well-conceived, coordinated, unified plan and a trained and committed cadre of personnel to implement it,” the document says on its opening page. The phrasing quickly grows militaristic: The authors wish to “assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day 1 to deconstruct the administrative state.”

That deconstruction can be blunt. Portions of “Mandate for Leadership” read as though the authors did a Control-F search of the executive branch for any terms they deemed suspect and then deleted the offending programs or offices. The White House’s Gender Policy Council must go, along with its Office of Domestic Climate Policy. The Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations is a no-no. The E.P.A. can do without its Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration should be dismantled because it constitutes “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.”

Sometimes search and destroy gives way to search and replace. At the Department of Health and Human Services, for instance, the Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force, which the Biden administration created five months before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, must be supplanted by a pro-life task force that ensures that all Health and Human Services divisions “use their authority to promote the life and health of women and their unborn children.” The document also asserts that the department should be known as the “Department of Life.” There is little interest here in the notion that different states can reach their own conclusions on abortion rights, as Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling. Instead, the next president should work with federal lawmakers “to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support.” (The focus on life is somewhat selective; while urging the next president to work on “restoring a culture of life in America,” the document also calls for “finality” in dealing with the dozens of inmates on death row.)

One of the book’s most frequent targets is D.E.I. — the diversity, equity and inclusion infrastructure erected throughout the federal government in recent years that “Mandate for Leadership” equates with racism. Just about every corner of the administration, from the Department of Labor to the U.S. Agency for International Development, must be scrubbed clean of D.E.I., and the measures to accomplish this can be brutish. At the Treasury Department, for instance, a new conservative administration would identify and interview every official who has taken part in D.E.I. programs to assess the scope of the efforts and ensure that they are eliminated, and it would “treat the participation in any critical race theory or D.E.I. initiative, without objecting on constitutional or moral grounds, as per se grounds for termination of employment.”

The excesses of diversity, equity and inclusion programs are hardly a concern only for the political right, but this isn’t just the countermanding of an ideology. It is a purging of anyone touched by it. Are you now or have you ever been a member of the D.E.I. party?

If “Mandate for Leadership” has its way, the next conservative administration will also target the data gathering and analysis that undergirds public policy. Every U.S. state should be required by Health and Human Services to report “exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence and by what method.” By contrast, the government should prohibit the collection of employment statistics based on race or ethnicity, and the Centers for Disease Control should discontinue gathering data on gender identity, on the grounds that such collection “encourages the phenomenon of ever-multiplying subjective identities.” (Why the executive branch might concern itself with the subjective identities of American citizens becomes clearer some 25 pages later, when the document affirms that the government should “maintain a biblically based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.”)

The portion of the book dedicated to the Census Bureau warns that the Biden administration’s data collection “could be skewed to bolster progressive political agendas,” yet “Mandate for Leadership” does not seem to grasp how its own proposals could prompt the same concerns in the opposite direction. It doesn’t take a conspiratorial mind to wonder about this; the document states its goal forthrightly: “Strong political leadership is needed to increase efficiency and align the Census Bureau’s mission with conservative principles.”

Even a leader who declared that he alone could fix things cannot accomplish all this alone. Joining the next conservative president would be that army of appointees marching to conquer the executive branch. One of the “pillars” of Project 2025 is the creation of a personnel database — a sort of “right-wing LinkedIn,” The Times has reported , seeking to attract some 20,000 potential administration officials. “Mandate for Leadership” maintains that “empowering political appointees across the administration is crucial to a president’s success,” and virtually every chapter calls for additional appointees to wrest power from longtime career staff members in their respective departments.

This is especially notable at both the State Department and the Department of Justice, which are considered susceptible to unsavory influences, in almost identical terms. “Large swaths of the State Department’s work force are left-wing and predisposed to disagree with a conservative president’s policy agenda and vision,” the book reads. Of the Department of Justice: “Large swaths of the department have been captured by an unaccountable bureaucratic managerial class and radical left ideologues who have embedded themselves throughout its offices.” (Lesson: Beware of swaths.)

It is, no doubt, the prerogative of all incoming presidents to appoint officials who support their agenda; in fact, since presidents are elected on their proposed agendas, it is right that they would do so. In “Mandate for Leadership,” longtime career civil servants are disparaged as “holdovers” with suspect loyalties, lacking the “moral legitimacy” that comes from being appointed by a president who is constitutionally bound to see that the laws are faithfully executed. The book calls for the reinstatement of Schedule F, a Trump-era executive order that would allow the president and political appointees to convert many career civil service positions into appointed roles, thus making those people easier to dismiss and replace with loyalists. In a memorable euphemism, the book refers to this effort as “identifying programmatic political work force needs.”

But there is a difference between fostering a work force that is accountable to the president and simply politicizing all aspects of the executive branch, including areas that require specific expertise. “Mandate for Leadership” leans toward the politicizing approach.

At the E.P.A., for example, the document calls for a new science adviser and at least six new appointees charged with reforming the agency’s scientific research; qualifications for those roles should stress managerial skills rather than “personal scientific output.” Throughout the book, descriptions of new research agendas are often paired with the explicit findings that such research should yield, whether on the mental and physical damage that abortion inflicts on women or the pernicious impact of taxes and regulations on minority-owned businesses. Later, tucked into a discussion of the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the Commerce Department — yes, the weeds are tall and scratchy here — the document urges a new administration to ensure that “any research conducted with taxpayer dollars serves the national interest in a concrete way in line with conservative principles.” It’s an effective sleight of hand: politicizing government-funded scientific research by tying the national interest to conservative priorities.

The administration of relief funds would also assume an ideological bent. “Mandate for Leadership” looks askance at Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, which makes investments to promote growth and innovation in struggling communities and helps distribute emergency funding. Ideally, the book says, a new conservative administration would abolish the agency and send its resources elsewhere. However, if congressional opposition makes that impossible, the Economic Development Administration should instead “better align funding with conservative political purposes.” There’s little subtlety: The book then argues that providing agency funds to “rural communities destroyed by the Biden administration’s attack on domestic energy production would be well within the scope of E.D.A.’s mission.” If you can’t beat them, at least make them work for you.

Despite its professed desire to reduce the size and ambition of government “back to something resembling the original constitutional intent,” in practice, the document’s contributors are willing to build significant bureaucracies. “Mandate for Leadership” calls for dismantling the Department of Homeland Security, for example, and instead creating a major stand-alone federal immigration department. It would piece together Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, as well as portions of the Health and Human Services and Justice Departments to build a Cabinet-level body employing more than 100,000 federal workers. This would be “the third-largest department measured by manpower,” the book boasts.

Proposed immigration policies include the “indefinite curtailment” of refugee admissions, completing a southwestern border wall and deploying “active-duty military personnel and National Guardsmen to assist in arrest operations along the border — something that has not yet been done.” It even imagines a new immigration-related revenue stream: charging asylum seekers for “premium processing” of their claims, an innovation that would offer “an opportunity for a significant influx of money.”

The authors recognize the bipartisan dangers of excessive political appointments in the executive branch, but they worry about that mainly when their opponents are the ones benefiting. “The desire to infiltrate political appointees improperly into the high career civil service has been widespread in every administration, whether Democrat or Republican,” the document acknowledges. “Democratic administrations, however, are typically more successful because they require the cooperation of careerists, who generally lean heavily to the left.”

This book does not call for an effort to depoliticize the administrative state. It simply wishes to politicize it in favor of a new side. Everybody does it; now it’s our turn. Get over it.

This attitude proves especially consequential in the book’s treatment of the Justice Department, which has “lost its way,” becoming “a bloated bureaucracy with a critical core of personnel who are infatuated with the perpetuation of a radical liberal agenda.” To find its way back in a new conservative administration, “Mandate for Leadership” implies, the department must become subservient to the White House.

The document cites several reasons the Justice Department has “forfeited the trust” of many Americans, including its promotion of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation and the abdication of its duty to enforce immigration laws. Therefore, a “vast expansion” of political appointees across the department is required, beyond those traditionally appointed to the office of the attorney general and deputy attorney general.

All such appointees must work closely with the White House; in fact, the Justice Department and the White House counsel should act “as a team.” And while the book notes that contact between the White House and the Department of Justice traditionally occurs between the office of the White House counsel and the attorney general or deputy attorney general — a practice that aims to reduce the risk of political interference in law enforcement — “Mandate for Leadership” encourages a new administration to “re-examine this policy and determine whether it might be more efficient or more appropriate for communication to occur through additional channels.”

It is more efficient and appropriate if the goal is to permit greater White House pressure on the nation’s senior law enforcement officers. Even the F.B.I. director, the document argues, must be as politically accountable to the president as any other senior official. “To ensure prompt political accountability and to rein in perceived or actual abuses,” it asserts, “the next conservative administration should seek a legislative change to align the F.B.I. director’s position with those of the heads of all other major departments and agencies.” Trump has complained that the F.B.I. and Justice Department have been weaponized against him; these reforms would ensure their politicization.

After all, when the Justice Department and White House must work as a team, it is clear who serves as team captain. “While the supervision of litigation is a D.O.J. responsibility, the department falls under the direct supervision and control of the president,” the book states. Even though the department will invariably face “tough calls” in its litigation decisions, “those calls must always be consistent with the president’s policy agenda and the rule of law.”

What happens when the agenda and the law conflict? The answer is implicit throughout “Mandate for Leadership.” At the Department of Homeland Security, for example, the general counsel should hire more political appointees to supervise the office’s career lawyers, because “the legal function cannot be allowed to thwart the administration’s agenda by providing stilted or erroneous legal positions.” The law must submit to the president’s priorities. If not, the lawyers are doing it wrong.

Declaring inconvenient laws inapplicable is another option. For example, when the secretary of homeland security decides that “an actual or anticipated mass migration of aliens” headed to the United States “presents urgent circumstances,” the secretary may issue whatever rules and regulations are deemed necessary, for as long as necessary, “including through the expulsion of such aliens,” with a final proviso that “such rule and regulation making shall not be subject to the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act.” Read the act , and you’ll see that it governs the process by which agency rules are exposed to public comment and are subject to review by the courts. That lone sentence, tacked on at the end of a paragraph on Page 152 of “Mandate for Leadership,” is a bureaucratic invitation to legal impunity.

The book regards pursuit of the president’s agenda — variously described as the president’s “needs,” “goals” or “desires” — as always consistent with the law. “The modern conservative president’s task is to limit, control and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people,” it states. And the American people’s needs, goals and desires are conflated with those of the leader.

Ironically, in this worldview, the people’s needs and desires can become circumscribed. In the book’s foreword, Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, writes that the “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence should be understood as the “pursuit of blessedness,” that is, that “an individual must be free to live as his creator ordained — to flourish.” The Constitution, he explains, “grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought.” The book ties this argument to the philosophical and legal concept of “ordered liberty,” in which individual rights are weighed against social stability.

The notion that liberty entails the discipline to do the right thing, as opposed to the choice to do whatever things we want, has a long lineage in American political thought, dating back to the Puritans and the “city on a hill.” But in “Mandate for Leadership,” the answer to what we ought to do depends on the cultural and religious proclivities of the authors. “This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family — marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners and the like,” Roberts writes. It is also found in work, charity and, above all, in “religious devotion and spirituality.” Later, in a chapter on the Department of Labor, the book suggests that because “God ordained the Sabbath as a day of rest,” American workers should be paid extra for working on that day. “A shared day off makes it possible for families and communities to enjoy time off together, rather than as atomized individuals,” it says.

“Mandate for Leadership” often strains to reconcile what we ought to do with what the authors want us to do. In the same chapter on the Department of Labor, for example, the book calls on Congress to require that for all new federal contracts, at least 70 percent of contractors’ employees must be U.S. citizens (with the bar rising to at least 95 percent over time). Such a law is necessary, the book explains, “so that employers can again have the freedom to make hiring Americans a priority.”

If you want to make federal contractors hire more American workers, then, by all means, propose such a law. But couching it as a way to provide greater “freedom” to employers so they can do what the government is compelling them to do debases the notion of freedom. And it makes the book’s interpretation of “ordered liberty” seem more focused on giving orders than protecting liberty.

“Mandate for Leadership” is about not just a president exerting control over the executive branch but also the executive expanding its power over the other branches of government. In the book, the legislature and judiciary suffer from many small cuts and a few big ones.

Congress’s powers of oversight, for instance, would diminish in various ways. Rather than endure the process of congressional confirmation for people taking on key positions in the executive branch, the new administration should just place those officials in acting roles, which would allow them to begin pursuing the president’s agenda “while still honoring the confirmation requirement.” (That is, if bypassing the requirement is a form of honor.) Lawmakers would no longer review U.S. foreign arms sales, the book states, except when “unanimous congressional support is guaranteed,” a requirement that renders those reviews pointless. The Department of Homeland Security should have the power to select and limit its congressional oversight committees. And the White House can tell the State Department when to remain “radio silent” in the face of congressional inquiries.

In a section titled “Affirming the Separation of Powers,” the book contends that the executive branch — that is, the president and his team at the Justice Department — is just as empowered as any other branch of government to “assess constitutionality.” A new conservative administration must “embrace the Constitution and understand the obligation of the executive branch to use its independent resources and authorities to restrain the excesses of both the legislative and judicial branches.” The president must make sure that the leaders of the Justice Department share this view of the separation of powers.

It is the role of the judiciary, not of the president and a pliable attorney general, to decide whether laws and policies are constitutional. Believing otherwise does not “affirm” checks and balances; it undercuts them. “Mandate for Leadership” turns the separation of powers among the three branches into a game of rock, paper, scissors — except rock beats everything. It is consistent, though, with the leadership of a president who likes to talk of the nation’s top jurists as “my judges” and who referred to a former speaker of the House of Representatives as “my Kevin.”

It’s far from clear , of course, that Trump would turn to “Mandate for Leadership” as a default governing plan for a second term. Various organizations are proposing their own versions of a new conservative policy project, and it’s hard to say which, if any, might prevail. Trump’s campaign has made clear that no outside group speaks for him or represents his agenda. Keeping up with Trump’s views is the eternal challenge for anyone attempting to turn the former president’s impulses — those needs and desires — into a consistent ideology and policy program. (“Mandate for Leadership,” for example, suggests that NATO allies worried about Russia should count on Washington mainly for its nuclear deterrent and should field any conventional forces themselves, whereas this month Trump suggested that he would “encourage” Russia to attack NATO allies if they didn’t “pay their bills.”) The difficulty with Trumpism is Trump himself, who renders any coherent ism impossible.

“Mandate for Leadership” is a game effort, nonetheless. Its ability to obscure drastic change with drab prose is impressive. Its notions of an executive less encumbered by laws or oversight is of a piece with Trump’s views on the immunity and impunity that the president should enjoy. The document’s willingness to empower the administrative state when doing so suits ideological or policy preferences is remarkable, especially given its rhetoric to the contrary. At one point, in a chapter on the Commerce Department, a former Trump administration official offers some italicized advice: “When authoritarian governments explain what they plan to do, believe them unless hard evidence demonstrates otherwise.” He is discussing Russia and China, though the warning could apply more broadly.

Fifty years ago, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. published “ The Imperial Presidency ,” a study of the growing war-making abilities of the presidency and the parallel erosion of Congress’s constitutionally mandated power to declare war. Written during the Watergate scandal, the book also explored the ways in which the Nixon administration had arrogated to itself powers in the domestic arena, the abuses of which later led to the president’s resignation.

“Mandate for Leadership” also purports to lament the decline of congressional prerogatives and constitutional order. But at times the veil slips. In the final chapter, a former Trump administration Justice Department official admits that “until there is a return to a constitutional structure that the founding fathers would have recognized and a massive shrinking of the administrative state, conservatives cannot unilaterally disarm and fail to use the power of government to further a conservative agenda.”

That is the self-issued mandate of “Mandate for Leadership.” It is a call to arms, with the administrative state as its weapon of choice. In the foreword, Roberts, the Heritage Foundation president, writes that the administrative state isn’t going anywhere until Congress seizes power back from the federal bureaucracy. “But in the meantime,” he adds, “there are many executive tools a courageous conservative president can use to handcuff the bureaucracy, push Congress to return to its constitutional responsibility, restore power over Washington to the American people, bring the administrative state to heel.”

The problem with wielding the administrative state as a tool, even against itself, is that it grows comfortable in your hands. Why loosen that grip? In Washington, “the meantime” can last a long time.

Illustration by The New York Times; Photograph by David Yeazell/USA Today Sports, via Reuters Con

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Carlos Lozada is an Opinion columnist and a co-host of the weekly “Matter of Opinion” podcast for The Times, based in Washington, D.C. He is the author, most recently, of “ The Washington Book : How to Read Politics and Politicians.”  @ CarlosNYT

When does 'Tortured Poets Department' come out? What we know about Taylor Swift's new album

Can you hear the clock ticking? We are now just days away from the release of Taylor Swift's new album, which goes live Friday night. Here's what we know.

Taylor Swift: TTPD meaning

TTPD stands for " The Tortured Poets Department ," the name of Taylor Swift's new album.

When does Taylor Swift's new album drop?

"The Tortured Poets Department" will be released at 11 p.m. CST this Thursday, April 18 . The album will be available on most streaming platforms, such as  Apple Music and Spotify .

Swift announced the release of her 11th studio album after winning her 13th Grammy.

"I want to say thank you to the fans," Swift said, holding her Grammy, "by telling you a secret that I've been keeping from you for the past two years, which is that my brand-new album comes out April 19."

More on TTPD: Taylor Swift's new album, 'Error 321' and historic Grammy win: Everything you need to know

The artwork for the new album is a black-and-white photo of Swift lying on a bed. According to Swift's website, her 11th record will include  16 tracks  plus four bonus tracks.

In the  tweet she sent out shortly after her acceptance speech , a photo shows a folder open to a page with Swift's handwriting:

"And so I enter into evidence / My tarnished coat of arms / My muses, acquired like bruises / My talismans and charms / The tick, tick, tick of love bombs / My veins of pitch black ink / All's fair in love and poetry... Sincerely, The Chairman of The Tortured Poets Department."

'The Tortured Poets Department ' track list

There are four sides to the album, according to a post on Swift's Instagram account. Based on the names of the songs, fans may be in for a break-up album about her ex-boyfriend and actor Joe Alwyn, whom Swift dated for six years.

• "Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)"
• "The Tortured Poets Department"
• "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys"
• "So Long, London"
• "But Daddy I Love Him"
• "Fresh Out the Slammer"
• "Florida!!!" (feat. Florence + The Machine)
• "Guilty as Sin?"
• "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?"
• "I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)"
• "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart"
• "The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived"
• "The Alchemy"
• "Clara Bow"

Bonus Tracks:

• "The Manuscript"
• "The Bolter"
• "The Albatross"
• "The Black Dog"

People are also reading: Taylor Swift joins Oprah, Rihanna on Forbes billionaires list. See who else made the list

Where can I buy Taylor Swift's new album?

Once the album drops, you can purchase it  on her website . There will be several versions of the album available, including a CD, cassette, vinyl and digital album. 

These retailers will sell the album starting on Friday, April 19:

• Barnes and Noble
• Local record stores  (Record Store Day is the next day)

Where can I preorder 'The Tortured Poets Department'?

The album is now  available for preorder on Swift's website .

Along with the standard and special editions of the album, there will be a special collector’s edition deluxe CD that includes a collectible 20-page booklet, which includes all song lyrics and never-before-seen photos, collectible photo cards, a bookmark and a magnet.

What has Taylor Swift said about 'The Tortured Poets Department'?

In the weeks following the album announcement, Swift has given fans small teasers about its contents and the process of making it. Just days after announcing the album, she revealed during her first 2024 Eras Tour show in Japan on Feb. 7 the project had been in the making since October 2022.

“I’ve been working on it for about two years,” she said. “I kept working on it throughout the U.S. tour, and when it was perfect — in my opinion when it’s good enough for you — I finished it and I am so, so excited that soon you’ll get to hear it.”

In Melbourne, Australia, she said, "Tortured Poets is an album — I think more than any of my albums that I’ve ever made — I needed to make it. It was really a lifeline for me."

How many songs does Taylor Swift have?

Taylor Swift currently has 243 songs, including covers and vault tracks, according to Rolling Stone . As if that number wasn't already impressive, it will rise to 263 after Friday.

How many albums does Taylor Swift have?

After the release of "TTPD," Taylor Swift will have 15 albums. This includes 11 studio albums and four rerecordings of albums (labeled as "Taylor's Version").

• " Taylor Swift " (2006)
• " Fearless " (2008)
• " Speak Now " (2010)
• " Red " (2012)
• " 1989 " (2014)
• " Reputation " (2017)
• " Lover " (2019)
• " Folklore " (2020)
• " Evermore " (2020)
• " Fearless (Taylor's Version) " (2021)
• " Red (Taylor's Version)" (2021)
• " Midnights " (2022)
• " Speak Now (Taylor's Version) " (2023)
• " 1989 (Taylor's Version) " (2023)
• " The Tortured Poets Department " (2024)

The Sympathizer Episode 1 Recap & Ending: What Does the Song Mean?

By Vansh Mehra

Here’s the ending of The Sympathizer Episode 1 explained featuring a recap of the episode with spoilers. What does the song at the end mean? Here’s everything you need to know.

What happened at the end of The Sympathizer Episode 1?

The Sympathizer Episode 1 ends with The Captain in prison, remembering his time while escaping Saigon.

The episode saw The Captain almost playing a double agent in Vietnam in 1975. While he was loyal to his Communist beliefs, he was also seen getting affected by his friendships with The General, Bon, and Claude. Working for his friend Man, he delivered the list of all the police staff members closer to The General who were going to escape Saigon.

While he wanted the Northern army to arrest The General, Man revealed that they were to escape. Furthermore, The Captain wasn’t granted his wish to stay in Vietnam and celebrate. He got new orders to escape with The General, keep an eye on his schemes, and report back.

So, he got The General to add his friend Bon’s family to the list of people who would board the plane to the United States. But on the day of escape, they were caught in bombings. This led to the deaths of Bon’s wife and newborn child. After that, Bon and The Captain must decide whether they should leave the bodies of their close ones behind.

The scene then cuts to the present day, with The Captain in prison, remembering this horrifying moment. Then the episode ends with a familiar song playing near his prison cell. Now, Episode 2 will show how The Captain and Bon manage to escape, as the trailers for the series have already shown them and The General in the U.S.

What does the song in The Sympathizer Episode 1 mean?

The song, Runaway by Del Shannon, playing at the end of Episode 1 could imply The Captain running away from his responsibilities.

The song Runaway had a huge presence throughout as the episode was also titled “Runaway.” First, it was heard when Claude (Robert Downey Jr.) and The Captain were temporarily bidding farewell to each other in Saigon before the escape sequence. Then, The Captain heard it play near his prison cell in the present day.

It could imply that in the upcoming episodes, he might not entirely fulfill his responsibilities after running away to the U.S. from Vietnam.

For more entertainment updates, learn whether Julia Garner is related to Jennifer Garner . Also, read the description of the new Deadpool & Wolverine footage .

Vansh is an SEO Contributing Writer for ComingSoon. His passion for cinema and the superhero genre is what turned him into a movie/series analyst. In his spare time, Vansh can be found screaming at his screen while watching cricket matches or binging all sorts of streaming content to brush up on his entertainment knowledge.

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What the U.K.’s explosive Cass Review means for gender medicine in the U.S.

The report is a gauntlet thrown down to the biden administration and organizations supporting controversial treatments for children.

By Valerie Hudson

A 388-page bomb just dropped in the U.K., and reverberations will be felt around the world. The long-awaited final Cass Review — commissioned by the National Health Service on gender-related medical treatment — has just been published. Dr. Hilary Cass, the author of this independent review, is one of Britain’s preeminent pediatricians and formerly the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

The Cass Review is painstaking in its detail and comprehensive in its scope. Its findings have already caused the U.K.’s Council for Psychotherapy to cease its advocacy for an uncritically affirming stance for those with gender dysphoria. In anticipation of the final report, last month the U.K. banned the NHS from providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or surgery to minors. A law prohibiting private clinics from offering these practices is also in the works.

What does the Cass Review say?

Overall, it finds the evidence for the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as treatment for gender dysphoria to be quite weak.

With regard to puberty blockers, the review “found no evidence that puberty blockers improve body image or dysphoria, and very limited evidence for positive mental health outcomes, which without a control group could be due to placebo effect or concomitant psychological support.”

Additionally, the use of puberty blockers was not only associated with significant loss in bone density, but the review found evidence that “brain maturation may be temporarily or permanently disrupted by the use of puberty blockers, which could have a significant impact on the young person’s ability to make complex risk-laden decisions, as well as having possible longer-term neuropsychological consequences.”

The effects of puberty blockers may not, then, be reversible. In fact, the review notes, “given that the vast majority of young people started on puberty blockers proceed from puberty blockers to masculinising/ feminising hormones, there is no evidence that puberty blockers buy time to think, and some concern that they may change the trajectory of psychosexual and gender identity development.”

With regard to the use of cross-sex hormones, similar conclusions are reached: “There is a lack of high-quality research assessing the outcomes of hormone interventions in adolescents with gender dysphoria/incongruence, and few studies that undertake long-term follow up. No conclusions can be drawn about the effect on gender dysphoria, body satisfaction, psychosocial health, cognitive development, or fertility. Uncertainty remains about the outcomes for height/growth, cardiometabolic and bone health.”

Noting the lack of evidence as to benefits and harms, the author concludes that it is unethical to prescribe these medications to anyone under the age of 18, and possibly unethical to prescribe them to anyone younger than their mid-20s, when full executive reasoning has been achieved.

Proponents of gender-altering medical treatment have argued that treatment lowers the risk of suicide among gender dysphoric young people but Cass does not find this to be the case. The report says: “[I]t is well established that children and young people with gender dysphoria are at increased risk of suicide, but suicide risk appears to be comparable to other young people with a similar range of mental health and psychosocial challenges. Some clinicians feel under pressure to support a medical pathway based on widespread reporting that gender-affirming treatment reduces suicide risk. This conclusion was not supported by the systematic review. In summary, the evidence does not adequately support the claim that gender-affirming treatment reduces suicide risk.”

Given no real evidence of any improvement with use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in gender dysphoric children, and given the clear gaps in the research literature, the review concludes that there can be no informed consent on the part of either parents or patients to this treatment. Without the possibility of informed consent, it is patently unethical for doctors to prescribe such treatments.

The Cass Review also weighs in on the issue of social transition, which has been a source of conflict between schools and parents in the U.K.

While U.K. schools are prepared to socially transition a child — and to do so without informing parents — the Cass Review asserts that social transition is consequential, especially for younger children. The review notes, “sex of rearing seems to have some influence on eventual gender outcome, and it is possible that social transition in childhood may change the trajectory of gender identity development for children with early gender incongruence. For this reason, a more cautious approach needs to be taken for children than for adolescents.” For this reason, the U.K. government has recently issued guidance to stop schools from socially transitioning children.

The concept of “conversion therapy” also needs to be rethought, according to the Cass Review. Given the significantly higher rate of mental health comorbidities of gender dysphoric children compared to controls, it is important that mental health professionals be allowed to investigate whether a child’s gender dysphoria may be relieved through psychological interventions. Proposed bans on “conversion therapy” might stifle such needed therapy.

Furthermore, the review insists that detransitioning support also be provided by the NHS since, according to Cass, the number of detransitioners appears to be increasing.

All in all, the Cass Review is an important achievement. It will be the foundation for an almost 180-degree turn in how the National Health Service treats gender dysphoric children. It is also a massive repudiation of the care guidelines put forward by WPATH, the World Professional Association of Transgender Healthcare. The guidelines have been unjustifiably influential given their “lack [of] developmental rigour,” as the review politely puts it.

But the report represents more, at least to Americans. It is a gauntlet thrown down to U.S. professional organizations, such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association, all of which have uncritically adopted the clearly unethical WPATH approach. It is also a gauntlet thrown down to the Biden administration, which has followed suit.

With the publication of the Cass Review, American institutions must rethink their approach to the treatment of gender dysphoric children. That approach is now clearly seen to be wrong, and can no longer be ethically justified.

I’m planning on mailing a copy of the review to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, care of Dr. Rachel Levine.

Valerie M. Hudson is a university distinguished professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University and a Deseret News contributor. Her views are her own.