| Write a review
A guide by T. L. Cooper, author of All She Ever Wanted, Author and Book Reviewer  See all products
You’ve read a great novel and you want to tell the world about it. You’ve just accomplished the first two steps in writing a review. Did you have any idea it was that easy to get started?
I write reviews that I post on my website as well as on halfvalue.com and I provide links for the books I’ve reviewed. A few of the fiction titles I’ve reviewed include 'Billy' by Albert French, 'Reaching Back' by Nea Anna Simone, and 'Sushi for Beginners' by Marian Keyes. The more reviews you write the better your reviews will become. I have many books I intend to review, and I’m sure many more will present themselves the more I read. Reviewing an author you like, especially a new author, is a terrific way to help that author sell books which keeps the author writing books you can enjoy, so give it a try!
As a pre-teen I read four books that I wanted everyone I knew to read: 'The Outsiders', 'Rumble Fish', 'That Was Then, This Is Now', and 'Tex' all by S. E. Hinton, so I told everyone who came near me about them often more than once. I think some of my family read them just to shut me up.
Over the years I made it a habit to tell others about books that affected me. Little did I realize I was given oral book reviews to friends, family, and sometimes even strangers. Of course when we tell people about good books we never think of that as reviewing the book. However, we recommend they read (or sometimes avoid) a certain book and tell them why, so why wouldn’t we call that a review?
An unusual thing happened to me when I read 'Coming Home' by Rosamunde Pilcher in 1995. At first I had a totally different reaction than I usually have when I love a book. I didn’t want to finish it. I read like a page a day for the last eight to ten pages of the book just to make it last longer. Then I didn’t want to tell anyone about it. I wanted to keep the book all to myself to savor it. I didn’t want to talk about it because I didn’t want anyone else’s interpretation of or reaction to the book to interfere with the image in my head. Eventually though I again started telling everyone I knew they should read it along with Rosamunde Pilcher’s other books including 'The Shell Seekers (Shell Seekers)' and 'September' and later 'Winter Solstice'. The odd thing is I still haven’t written reviews for any of those books.
A few years later after I’d published a book and created a website to promote it, I began to let go of the idea that book reviewers had some kind of special credentials and intellectualism I didn’t possess. I began to read others’ reviews and it dawned on me that the most important credential for writing a book review was a love of books. Wow! I’d loved books all my life, so I decided to give it a try. While it’s good to read others reviews to help you make purchase decisions and to learn about writing reviews, be careful not to read reviews about the book you’re reviewing too close to writing your review to avoid have other people’s opinions influence your review.
So now that I’d decided to try writing reviews, I sat down and wrote two reviews: one for 'And Those Left Behind' by Sean Ramage and one for 'Codebreaker' by Katherine Myers. I propped each book up in front of me so I could refer back to it for information or clarification of something that happened as well as for inspiration and I started to write. At first I tried to sound very scholarly resulting in a small hill of crumpled paper wads beside my chair. Then I simply spoke from the heart and the words flowed onto the paper because my real goal was to share these two lesser known but very deserving books with the rest of the world. As those words flowed from my brain through my arms and down through my fingers onto the paper, I realized I’d been reviewing books all my life. As I posted the reviews first on my website, then on halfvalue.com, my fear of not being qualified to review other authors evaporated. My reviews were now out there for the world to see.
A book review can be as simple as an opinion like “Great read!” or as complex as the reviewer chooses to make it. Personally, I prefer a review that not only provides an opinion but a summary of the book or the issues the book addresses as well as how and why the reader reacted to the book. A reaction can range from tears and laughter to physical discomfort like feeling a runner’s leg cramp, a pregnant character’s morning sickness, or the physical ache that resides in the body when a loved one dies. Think about describing the book to your best friend and then to a stranger. Somewhere between the two descriptions is the perfect book review. |
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