Pick up your book at a time when you can read undisturbed and let yourself fall completely into this world. Once you've read the book, it can be helpful to write down 1-2 bullet points or write your blog post directly. Your memory is still fresh.

As you read, take pen and paper and a highlighter in your hand. This allows you to take notes while reading and highlight important passages or your favorite quotes. You can also make notes on a piece of paper that you would like to discuss in your book review.

Both methods have, in my opinion, their own advantages and disadvantages. I myself count myself among the immediate readers. I write down a few bullet points after reading, but note nothing during the reading. As a result, my reviews are often very emotional.

Writing a book review is more difficult than you might think. It's about factually reproducing your thoughts and feelings and expressing them so that even a person who has never heard of your book understands your train of thought.

That's why it makes sense to think in advance about how to organize your book reviews. This works best for you by holding some information about the book before. You can do this both in a continuous text as well as in tabular form.

Very important: A book review is not a blurb! Every publisher will be grateful if you do not just write a summary. Of course, at the beginning, you can briefly explain what your review copy is about. But a good book critic lives especially from their opinion and their content. The summary can also read your readers on Amazon. They visit your blog to know why you liked this book or not.

Therefore, I recommend you to split your book review into at least two parts:

In the summary you hold all important cornerstones of your reviewed book. You write about the bond, the authors, the content and maybe also how you became aware of this book. In any case, this first part should be shorter than the second part, because the second part is the relevant part for your book review.

Now it's getting exciting. In the second part of your book review you explain to your reader how and why you think about the book you are reading. That can be quite difficult, because many thoughts and feelings take place subconsciously.
Therefore, I advise you to consider the following aspects:

How did you like the content of the book? 
How well did you get along with the style of the book and the language?
Was the action conclusive for you?
Could you put yourself well in the characters?
Did you enjoy reading?

From these points then results in an overall impression, which you can substantiate now much easier. Thoroughly divide your various aspects, perhaps with different headings, so as not to confuse your reader. Now it's up to you to work out your opinion clearly. You can underline your opinion, for example, with quotations from the book.

At the end, the most important question is: Would you recommend this book to your readers in good conscience or not?



In order to answer this question, you have to structure everything that has been said before and put it briefly to the point and summarize it. The easiest way to show your opinion to readers is to introduce a rating scale. You can live it out creatively. For example, rate a book with 5 out of 5 bookworms, with 85.3% or just with a good! or bad. Personally, I think that your scale should not become too abstract. Score or star ratings have become established.

Nonsensitivity is therefore evaluated according to the following scheme:



I rate books on points from 1-10 and subtract these different ratings additionally by different colors. You are welcome to use my rating scheme as well, but in that case I would ask you to link to my blog.


However, as I have still found the scoring too weak to represent my opinion, at the end of my book reviews I summarize my opinion again and again in a few bullet points. I write down exactly what I liked in the end good or bad and try to bring these facts as concrete as possible to the point.



The rating shown here is from my review of The Most Wondrous Journey to the End of the World by Nicholas Gannon.

It can always be a good idea to introduce a user rating and ask your readers for their opinions. In this case, you have to live with the fact that your readers may have a different opinion than you. This can lead to great discussions. Your future readers will also be grateful if they have read more than just feedback on a book.

What do you look for in book reviews and what is particularly important to you? Do you usually buy books for recommendations or are you usually uninterested in reviews? Your opinion on this topic interests me burning. Leave me a comment.