by Kat Musselwhite

Created on: July 03, 2009

It's easy to forget how important and valuable book reviews are; but book reviews have the potential to either make or break a book whether that's for one person or an entire group of people. This is why it is becoming increasingly important for book reviews to be well-written, honest and cover all the ground of the book.

The first thing to do speaks for itself. You have to imagine that whoever is reading your book review has never even heard of the book, so listing the book title, author, ISBN, price, length is a great place to start. Keeping this is mind, it's also a good idea to start with a brief synopsis of what the book is about. But don't simply copy the blurb off the back of the book, because you have to remember that book blurbs are written by people with a lot of experience in marketing. They want you to read the book whether it's good or not, because if you don't buy it, they don't earn money. This is another reason why book reviews are so important; often reviewers are getting nothing out of their reviews other than satisfaction, they are more interested in helping you find a book that you WILL like.

Once you have all the basic information down, you need to start thinking about what you thought of the book; it is so important that you are honest with not only yourself, but your audience to. If there was something that you really did not like, then write it down. You won't be thanked for holding your thoughts back, you will be thanked for giving someone an honest opinion. This is of course another thing to remember, don't be afraid to be opinionated, your readers rely on it.

A good place to start when thinking about what you liked, is to write down your thoughts on the following; the main protagonist(s), the main antagonist(s), sidekicks, and the relationships between these three groups. Were they believable? The setting - did you feel like you were there? Plot, was it well-paced, or did it plod along or feel rushed? How about the storyline twists? Were there enough? Did they come too soon? Were there any unexpected plot twists? Did they work, or were they a little unbelievable? Were there a lot of descriptions (people, locations etc), how did you feel about them? Were they long and drawn out, or brilliant at conjuring the books "feel"? What about dialogue? Did it sound "fluid-like", or did it sound too "politically correct", a trap many writers fall into.

How involved in the plot did you feel? Did you sympathise with the characters?

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