There will always be a time that we are going to be given a task to write a critical book review. It can either be from school, from our editor or a part of our work. For us to write a good review of a book, we have to fist know about the steps and guidelines that we need to follow. This way, we will not have a difficulty in performing the task.

Written below are the ways and steps on how we are going to write our very own critical book review:

Of course, in order to give a review of a book, we first have to choose what book we are going to review. In some cases, the teacher will give suggest a book for us, but in most cases, we are the ones that has to choose for the book. Once you have one, you are going to study about its title. Write a comment about the title which the author has chosen. Is it appropriate for the book content? Is it relevant in accordance to the story? Write your comments. It doesn’t matter if it be negative or positive comments. When you are reviewing a book, you answer will be based upon your understanding of it. There is no correct or incorrect answer for this.

Next thing you need to do is to mention the genre of the book that the author used. This is easy to know if you read the whole of the book. The genres can either be romance, thriller, fantasy, science fiction and so on. Like stated, this is very easy to determine as long as you have read its content.

After that, comment on how the opening message went out. Was it a catchy beginning? Write down if it made you read the content of the book with such excitement after reading the opening message. If not, then state it there also. Next is the dialogue. We have to site if the dialogues that were used is appropriate for the story. Was it good? Does the author have chosen the proper choices of words for his characters? Evaluate all of those.

After that, say something about the plot of the story of the book. Tell about the theme that the writer used. Site if there were figures of speech that were used, and what kinds are they. Another is he types of speech that has been used. Was the story written persuasively, demonstratively, informative, etc. make sure you tell all about those.

Last thing you will be commenting is about the mechanics of the book. Were there any grammatical errors, or misspelled words? Also see if there are punctuations errors and so on. Those are all the guidelines in writing a critical book review.

Do you love to read and consider yourself an okay writer? You might be interested in learning how to write book reviews

There is a lot of freelance work doing book reviews and you might be able to make some extra money doing so. Below are some pointers on a basic book review format.

• You need to do some research and read other book reviews. Especially in the genre that your interested in reading. Great places to get free book review examples are amazon.com, chapters.com.

• Look into publications that hire freelance writers. Read their reviews and specific guideline requirements. Some publications have very specific requirements e.g. only accept reviews that are 300 words or less.

• Pick a book in the genre that you want to review. It’s best to stay away from bestsellers since they are usually over reviewed. Try something from and new author or that is not as well known.

• Make sure you take notes while reading your book. You want to take notes about style, the characters and character development, and what you like or dislike about the book. One tip that I regularly use is sticky tabs, I put them inside my books to remember any key points (also I don’t like dog-ears or writing inside my books).

• Practice, practice, practice! Write a practice review. Remember to keep your review all about the book and the author. Don’t use first person, readers and major publications don’t know who you are and don’t care.

• You want to list all the facts first. Title, author, release date, pages, price the genre of book (paranormal romance, sci-fi) etc…

• You want to grab the reader’s attention maybe a good quote from the book. Also give all information, is this book part of a series? Is it the author’s 1st or 10th book?

• Give a summary of the book, keep it brief about 1-2 paragraphs. Explain what happens without giving away any spoilers. Make sure the reader has a good idea of what the book is about.

• Give your critique. Tell your readers what you thought about the book but not with you as the first person. A good example is: “The author has succeeded in creating a true action packed adventure that holds your attention until the very end.”

• Review your review, make sure you have no errors through your review and proofread your work, it’s best to have another person read over your work.

• Submit your review. Good Luck.

Writing a book review can be a great way to experience journalistic writing. Not only are book reviews often relatively short in comparison to larger articles or feature pieces, but they also have a well formulated standard or structure that you can follow in order to produce a well-written piece. In addition, writing book reviews can be a good way to ‘get in with’ a publication, and potentially go on and write other pieces for them. This is true regardless of whether it is a magazine, a newspaper or an online publication that you’re approaching with your book review.

So what exactly is a book review? Well, quite obviously it is a review of a book, and in this instance, a fictional book or a novel. So we next need to look at defining what a ‘review’ is. The University of North Carolina has a nice definition that we can use. It defines a review as, ‘a critical evaluation of a text, event, object, or phenomenon. Reviews can consider books, articles, entire genres or fields of literature, architecture, art, fashion, restaurants, policies, exhibitions, performances, and many other forms.’ So, now we know what a review is, and the fact that it needs to be aimed at a fictional piece of literature, let’s look at what information you should include in a review of a fictional book.

1. Length. The length of a book review is important. Too short and you won’t convey sufficient information about the novel. Too long and you’ll either bore the reader or you will give too much of the plot away. It is a fine balance between the two. You’ll also find that you are often restricted by the amount of space the newspaper, magazine or online publication will afford you for the review. Most will have a word limit of 1000 words; and often this is quite generous.

2. Read the book. Sounds obvious enough but lots of people try and get away with writing an informed book review without having finished or sometimes even started reading the novel itself. This is a dodgy mistake and it will become obvious that you haven’t read the book in detail, and thus the review is likely to be rejected by the publication you’re approaching.

3. Spend some time thinking critically about the book. You need to form an opinion on the fictional work of art – you need to be very sure of how you feel about the book and why – it is this opinion that you’ll be sharing with readers through your book review.

4. Next you need to formulate your opinion on the book into some form of well constructed review. Each review will differ, often depending on how you felt about the novel. It is important however to include the following elements in your review; introduction, a summary of the content or the main plot line, your analysis and evaluation of the book, and a conclusion where you can re-state your final thoughts on the book itself.