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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:

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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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Book Reviews

A book review addresses the subject matter of a literary work, and assesses effectiveness and value. Book reviews keep publishers and the public aware of what is being thought and written in a wide range of subjects. When a new book is issued, copies are sent to reviewers; subsequent reviews appear in literary magazines, academic journals, newspapers, and other periodicals. People everywhere depend on book reviews to direct them in their reading; many readers buy what commentators give particular attention. Competent reviewers are the best counselors for readers attempting to keep up with intellectual and aesthetic developments in the literary arts.

Scope: What a Book Review Is and Is Not

Book reviews vary widely. A review does not simply summarize book material, and should not be substituted for the original book. The purpose of a book review is to make known what a literary work purports to do and be, as a publication for both general and specialized readers. Essential components to be taken into account include concerns of subject matter and style. A review is a critical essay, a report and an analysis. Whether favorable or unfavorable in its assessment, it should seem authoritative. The reviewer's competence must be convincing and satisfying. As with any form of writing, the writer of a book review is convincing through thorough study and understanding of the material, and opinions supported by sound reasoning; the reviewer achieves reader satisfaction upon by giving justice to the subject, the book being reviewed, and connecting it with vital human concerns. A review may be limited in its scope due to length requirements, whether those are set by an instructor or an editor. How thoroughly and with respect to what aspects a book is reviewed also depends on instructor or editor preferences, or simply the attitudes and qualifications of the reviewer.

Essential Objectives

A book review should address three issues:

• Contents, or what is said in the book.
• Style, or how it is said.
• Assessment, or analysis of how true and significant the book is.

The most essential preparation for review writing is of course a complete, thoughtful reading of the book. After reading, the reviewer should have a sound, integrated idea of the book contents, and begin to develop attitudes toward style, purpose, and value. As the reviewer forms ideas for the review, certain influences and motives should be considered:

• The interests, general or special, of the readers: Are they looking to the review for an elementary, informational report? A more advanced, technical, scholarly address?
• The reviewer's own particular interests and purposes: Does the reviewer want to remain primarily a fact-finding reporter? Or are there more specialized ideas and principles of art and ideology the reviewer wants to advance?
• Contemporary social, economic, political, and aesthetic issues: Do one or more of these affect the aim or emphasis of the book review? How does the incorporation and interpretation of these issues in the book review further discussion of the book's contents and style?
• Required treatment and length requirements: What requirements for the review, emphasis and length, have been set by the instructor or editor?

Material for the Review

As the reviewer decides the scope and content of the review, there are various critical considerations to keep in mind. In addition to content and style, information about the publication and category of the book, and the author and author purpose, may be helpful with analysis. Not all material needs to be included in the final review, but the reviewer should be aware of any relevant issues.

Bibliographical Data

Bibliographical data includes the publisher, place and date of publication, and book price. This information is important for readers who want to buy the book. It may also raise questions: Is the book newly issued? Or is it being reissued? If reissued, is it only a new printing or has it been revised? If revised, what is the nature of the revision? Answers to these questions often can be found in a preface to the book by the author. Consult the front matter of the book, the title and copyright pages, for basic publication information. Often, price, publisher, and page count are listed separately at the beginning or end of a book review; this is the case with the example reviews accompanying this guide.

Classification

There are various categories, or genres, to which a book is assigned: fiction, poetry, travel and adventure, mystery, children's literature, biography, history, and contemporary thought, among others. A reviewer analyzes a book's conformity to a genre with attention to the author's approaches, methods, materials and coverage, and the outcomes of the book as to information, judgments, or interest value. For example, in her review of John D'Agata's Halls of Fame , Wendy Rawlings discusses how D'Agata experiments with the form of the essay: "If you're accustomed to reading essays organized around a clearly articulated theme and guided by a single narrative voice that signposts its intentions along the way, D'Agata's methods may frustrate. His essays are disjunctive agglomerations of excerpts from texts of all sorts (literary and otherwise), lists, transcripts from tape-recorded conversations, and, often, long passages of direct quotes from people he meets . . . Reading D'Agata's essays, I felt the strain of someone experimenting with the democratization of a form that, in America, has perhaps been colonized, or at least overpopulated by the ironic and the smug." Rawlings further compares and contrasts D'Agata's methods to those of David Foster Wallace, another contemporary writer of essays. When analyzing a writer's approach to form, some questions to consider are: How does the book differ from previous works in the same field? Has the author written previous books, in this genre or others? How has the author changed or developed? To what extent does the book being reviewed offer anything new its genre? How might it influence later works in the same genre?

Author and Author Purpose

Depending on the genre of the book, the background and purpose of the author may be relevant to the analysis of the book. Refer to the book jacket and biographical notes on the author. Further research may be helpful; read interviews, essays, and, if available, previously written biographies. In John Calderazzo's review of Ken Lamberton's Wilderness and Razor Wire , biographical data about Lamberton proves relevant: "Lamberton had an uncommon resume for someone doing serious jail time: no grinding poverty, no drugs or violence. He grew up in Arizona as an avid collector of wild things, a self-taught naturalist . . . He earned a bachelor's degree in biology, married Karen, a fellow lover of the wild, had kids, and decided to share his passions for science and nature in the public schools . . . He became infatuated with a student and, incredibly, ran off with her to Colorado. Soon someone from Mesa recognized them in Aspen and called the police." This background information provides the reason for Lamberton's incarceration as well as the basis for Calderazzo's discussion of the writer's "microscopically detailed prose" and "the single-mindedness of his gaze." The following is a list of possible biographical data about an author to reference in a review:

• Race, nationality, and origins-social, cultural, religious, economic, political, environmental.
• Training and affiliations-literary, scholastic, religious, political, etc.
• Schooling, travel, or other formative influences.
• Personal experiences-general or specific.
• Career and/or professional position.
• Other literary or scholastic works.
• Stimulus or occasion for writing.
• Special writing aids-illustrations, photographs, diagrams, etc.
• General attitude-objective/subjective, formal/informal, authoritative/speculative, etc.
• Purpose-as described in a preface or other formal statement, or in some key phrase.
• Audience-who the writer hopes will read the book.

Subject Matter

The subject of a book is what the book is about, an idea or ideas explored in the book's contents. In a nonfiction book, the subject should be fairly explicit, in the author's own words. With fiction, however, a reviewer must interpret the subject through analysis of character, setting, plot, and symbolism. A discussion of the subject of a book might begin with its title: From where did the author derive the title? What is the title's meaning or suggestiveness? Is the title an adequate heading for the contents of the book? Or is it ambiguous or false in some way? Other questions regarding the exploration of a book's subject by its author include: What areas of the subject are covered? (In fiction, areas of subject may be considered character concerns, setting, and plot.) What areas of the subject are left uncovered? Is this intentional, or the result of oversight or failure, on the author's part? To what degree is the author thorough or negligent in addressing the subject? In his review of Wilderness and Razor Wire , John Calderazzo comments that writer Ken Lamberton avoids discussion of personal motivation: "Perhaps to spare his wife further humiliation and pain, Lamberton has decided not to belabor his motive for his one act of insanity. He talks vaguely of immaturity, but that's about it . . . [T]he single-mindedness of his gaze [has] implications he either doesn't recognize or won't fully discuss . . . Fixating on the near at hand may be a necessary metaphor and an undeniable fact of prison life, a way to cope with an existence that certainly scares the hell out of me. Maybe, though, Lamberton's fierce gaze derives from something he'll always carry within him: this edgy and impulsive but obviously grateful husband who knows he's not free to teach again for a living . . ."

The contents of a book revolve around the subject, and develop one or more central ideas. For nonfiction, a reviewer analyzes how well the contents of a book address the central idea, the strength or weakness of supporting ideas, and the relevancy of collateral ideas or implications. In fiction, themes develop through character, setting, and plot; a reviewer evaluates the relative success or lack thereof of these fictional elements. Think about these questions: What is the setting, or place and time, of the story? Does the setting reflect or contrast with characters and plot? Are characters fully or minimally developed? Does character development increase or deteriorate as the action proceeds? Is the plot sequenced chronologically, or otherwise? Does tension build or deflate as the story progresses? Note how David Milofsky discusses the effectiveness of the contents of Reynolds Price's Noble Norfleet : "Although there are spots of lyricism-and for the first third of the book, Price's narrative has the drive and tension of some of his better work-overall, Noble Norfleet sags beneath its unlikely premise and even more unlikely hero . . . It seems likely that Price was trying to say something here about the relationship between sexuality and madness, about the necessity not only of nursing others but of caring for oneself, of showing Noble as some kind of paradigm, hence his name. But, sadly, the novel succeeds in none of these aims." Remember that details about the plot and characters in a book are revealed by the reviewer only to support the purpose of the review. Certainly, a review should not give away a book's ending, nor should it be a simple summary of events and characters. The reviewer's job is not only to report highlights but also to respond to the ideas and techniques evident in the book.

Style refers to how an author relates content through writing. This is an important aspect of a book to review. While initially reading the book, and in any subsequent reads, a reviewer should mark passages of particular resonance and reflection of the author's style. These passages help the reviewer form ideas as to whether or not the style is effective in conveying content, and pleasing to the reader. One or more of these passages may be cited within the review itself in order to both exemplify the author's style and provide basis for the reviewer's response. The following is excerpted from Wendy Rawlings' discussion of John D'Agata's poetic, associative essay-writing style in Halls of Fame: "Juxtaposing so many voices and kinds of language . . . can allow the reader to create exciting associative links between texts and ideas, but it can also, when overused, begin to feel somewhat arbitrary. In the book's title essay, for instance, single sentences and sentence fragments form choppy narratives composed of statements that seem, at times, cruelly separated from each other by the portentous silence of white space. This narrative strategy prevails throughout most of the twenty-four sections of the essay, and as a result, the sentences take on a stilted self-importance, like a poem written by someone as yet unschooled in enjambment." A passage from the essay follows this description. When responding to a literary work, consider these aspects of style:

• Logical and reasoned (objective), or imagined and emotional (subjective).
• Dramatic and gripping, or pedestrian and level.
• Epic and far-reaching, or lyrical and infused with personal poetic emotion.
• Solemn and serious, or comic and entertaining.
• Spiritual or vulgar or both.
• Formal, or familiar, informal.
• Simple, or complex.
• Broad, or specific.
• Abstract, or concrete.
• Direct, or implicational.
• Figurative, or literal.
• Use of detail, sense appeal-the look, sound, smell, taste, feel.
• Balance, parallelism, and contrast of exposition, scene, and dialogue.
• Allusions, quotations, aphorisms, etc.
• To the subject.
• To the purpose of the author.
• To the reader.

Form and Technique

An author carefully chooses the form and various writing techniques to use to develop ideas. A book reviewer decides whether or not these choices are appropriate and effective. Do certain techniques aid or impede the author's purpose? What passages from the book best exemplify these techniques?

Form and Technique in Nonfiction

• Use of source material and authority.
• Use of definition; illustrations and examples; comparison and contrast; cause and effect.
• Use of generalization and subsequent conclusions.
• Tone; authority; approach to subject and audience.
• Degree of convincingness.
• Worth of proposal; practicality; need.
• Comparison with other possible policies.
• Costs or difficulties involved.
• Ultimate promise, solution, or plan
• Methods of deduction or induction.
• Synthesis; formation of separate elements into a coherent whole.
• Syllogism; major premise, minor premise, and conclusion.
• Dialectics; arrival at truth through conversation involving question and answer.
• Casuistry; determination of right and wrong by applying generalized ethics principles.
• Fallacy; begging the question, ignoring the question, etc.

Form and Technique in Fiction

• Dominant impression; vividness of final impression.
• Selection of details to support a single effect.
• Appeal to sight, sound, smell, taste, and feel; imagery.
• Directness; implication and suggestion.
• Point of view; first, second, third; limited or omniscient.
• Establishment of setting.
• Smoothness of transitions in time sequence.
• Use of flashback.
• How presented or introduced.
• Motivations; sources for feeling and/or drives to action.
• How described; direct or implied; revealed through description or dialogue.
• Purposes; heroic or villainous; tragic inner flaws; revealing traits.
• How credible and consistent.
• Opening situation and/or conflict.
• Obstacles and complications.
• Tension and suspense.
• Turning point, or climax.
• Resolution.
• Degree of inventiveness and/or plausibility.
• Final philosophy or view of life derived from characters and action.

Depending on the author's purpose, a book's realism, or truth to life, may need assessment. If a book of fiction is meant to be realistic fiction-is it? Is it logical, natural, plausible? To what extent does the author rely on coincidence or accident to propel the plot? Is there adequate evidence of character motivation? Or a lack of sufficient urges and drives? Is the story infused with a quality of normalcy, or abnormality? Remember, if a book of fiction is to be successful according to a reviewer, it is not necessarily realistic fiction; a book's realism, or lack thereof, need be addressed by a reviewer only as it compares to the author's intention for the story. See here how David Milofsky addresses the realism of William Trevor's novel The Story of Lucy Gault : "It seems unlikely, to say the least, that longtime residents of a place (going back several generations, we're told) would cut off contact so completely as the Gaults do, but, of course, if this isn't the case there would be no novel. Similarly, it's hard to believe that the lawyer wouldn't be able to contrive a way to contact the absent parents . . . It's a tribute to Trevor's genius that these objections are largely overridden and storytelling takes over."

Form and Technique in Poetry

• Received (given) forms; sonnet, quatrain, villanelle, sestina, haiku, etc.
• Free verse forms.
• Lyric; narrative; dramatic; prose; ballad (folk, literary, popular).
• Point of view; persona or apparently personal.
• Dramatic monologue.
• Tone; irony, satire, etc.
• Intensity, atmosphere, mood.
• Concrete or abstract.
• Denotation, connotation, implication.
• Vulgar, colloquial/informal, formal.
• Syntax, or sentence structure.
• Amount and type of sensory detail.
• Metaphor; simile; personification; allusion.
• Synesthesia; describing a sense impression using words that normally describe another.
• Hyperbole or understatement.
• Metonymy; substituting one word/phrase for another, closely associated word/phrase.
• Synecdoche; using a part to refer to the whole, or the whole to refer to a part.
• Alliteration; repetition of an initial sound in two or more words of a phrase.
• Assonance (repetition of vowels) and/or consonance (repetition of consonants).
• Onomatopoeia; using a word that is defined through both its sound and meaning.
• Euphony (smooth, pleasant sound) vs. cacophony (rough, harsh sound).
• Rhythm (pattern of beats in a stream of sound)-appeals t
• The line; end-stopped (self-enclosed) or enjambed.
• Feet; iambs, trochees, anapests, dactylics, etc.
• Meter; mono-, di-, tri-, tetra-, penta-, hexa-, etc.
• Repetition.
• Rhyme (corresponding terminal sounds)-appeals t
• True; words sound nearly identical and rhyme on one stressed syllable.
• Slant (near/off); words do not exactly rhyme, but almost rhyme.
• End rhyme (at end of line) and/or internal rhyme (similar sounds within one line).
• Masculine (lines end w/ stressed syllable); feminine (lines end w/ unstressed syllable).

View of Life

It is common for an author to express a view of life through ideas and themes developed in a book. A reviewer identifies and comments on the author's stance. Does the book hold to and/or further develop views apparent in past works? Or make a new statement? Below is a list of popular attitudes, or schools of thought:

• Idealism-emphasis on enduring spirituality as opposed to transient values of materialism.
• Romanticism-focus on emotion and imagination as freedom from the strictly logical.
• Classicism-intellectuality; dominance of the whole over its parts, and form over impulse.
• Realism-adherence to actualities, the logistics of everyday life; objectivity.
• Impressionism-intuition; sense responses to aesthetic objects.
• Naturalism-humans as part of nature; adaption to external environment.

In response to Wilderness and Razor Wire , John Calderazzo discusses the importance of nature in Ken Lamberton's life and writing: "[I]n the prison of his days (to paraphrase W. H. Auden), Lamberton is helped . . . by nature, by the winds and dust and sweet-smelling raindrops that blow down from the nearby mountains, which he sees framed in barbed wire. This is nature unbound, not just out there beyond the walls but slipping in through the bars, swirling around his cell, penetrating even his skin . . . [Swallows] migrate, then return to raise new young in their mud-packed homes, lending solace-and spice-to the impossibly slow turning of the seasons . . . The swallows and many other break-ins from the natural world are also resources of rehabilitation, which Lamberton says is absent from all other aspects of prison life." If comparisons are to be made between a book being reviewed and its predecessors, a reviewer should be familiar with the basic forms and techniques prevalent in works expressing similar viewpoints. Further research and reading are necessary for the reviewer to form intelligent analysis of views of life expressed through writing.

Value and Significance

Often a book review comments on the significance of a new work. This value may be measured in relation to other books in the same genre, works addressing the same subject matter, past and contemporary authors with a similar style, and/or previous works by the same author. In his review of William Trevor's The Story of Lucy Gault , David Milofsky compares the novel to Trevor's past works, and comments on its place in literature in general: "[Trevor]'s been called the Irish Chekhov, but that's not really adequate, since Chekhov never really wrote novels. The truth is that Trevor is sui generis, in a class by himself. While his stories (collected a few years ago in an omnibus volume) are brilliant, novels like The Old Boys and Felicia's Journey are lasting contributions to our literature. He's a literary treasure and never less than interesting reading . . . The Story of Lucy Gault may not be the most accomplished novel of Trevor's distinguished career, but that still places it far beyond most of the fiction that will be written in English this year. It's highly recommended reading." Value is also determined by the universality of application-how and to whom the work applies. Are the book's contents of universal interest? Or does the subject matter limit the book's appeal to a narrow field of individuals? Determining the value and significance of a book depends largely on the knowledge and subjectivity of the reviewer; familiarity with comparable books and authors is required to draw conclusions of this nature.

A book's format, or physical make-up, reflects the ideas of both its author and its publisher. A book reviewer might mention characteristics of format, in relation to suitability and aesthetics. Is the book's size convenient? Is the binding durable? Is the print type legible? Do illustrations, diagrams, and maps, if any, aid the reader's understanding of the material? Is the index correct and complete? Are bibliographies and reference lists present? In response to artwork present in Ken Lamberton's Wilderness and Razor Wire , John Calderazzo comments on both the exactness of the drawings and the possible meaning of this detail-orientedness to Lamberton's life: "[J]ournal entries and small essays [are] complemented by drawings of tarantulas, conenose beetles, horned lizards, and other desert creatures in almost photo-realistic close-up. This is why I suggested that Lamberton may not find himself any closer to 'nature' when he's finally free. How can he get more intimate? . . . All of his drawings, in fact, are rendered in extreme close-up, like visual infatuations writ large. Nothing seems to exist in the distance, which makes me wonder if anything ever does for Lamberton, or ever will."

Planning and Writing

A book review should meet the requirements of any good composition. Clarity, correctness, readability, and interest are very important. A review should give its readers not only an understanding of the reviewer's intellectual response to a book but also an awareness of the basis for this response, through example and analysis. Specific passages from the book are used to exemplify the reviewer's points regarding elements of style, form, and technique. There is no strict pattern for writing book reviews. Guiding the book reviewer's writing process, however, are the three essential objectives of relating what is said in the book, how it is said, and how true and significant it is. As with the planning of a composition, make a list of possible material to use in the review-ideas, responses, information, examples. Study this material to decide what to include in the book review and what proves extraneous. Put the items to include in a suitable order-for instance, from greater to lesser importance. Once the material is organized, a controlling idea for the review emerges; this controlling idea may form the topic sentence of the review, and provides guidance for achieving coherence and focus throughout. Use the topic sentence, in varied forms, in the beginning and end of the review. Once the book reviewer has chosen the proper and adequate material, organized this material effectively, and decided on the main idea and focus to be developed, it is time to write the review.

Like writing the introduction of a composition, there several possible strategies to use for beginning a book review. One type of strategic beginning is prompt definition-assigning meaning to terms in the title of the book, for example, or giving the scope of the review as it relates to the subject and the reviewer's response to the book. Another effective approach is to highlight the origins and past history of the subject treated in the book; this technique may also be used to introduce ideas about genre, style, or view of life, depending on what the reviewer has chosen as the focus of the review. A statement of exclusion shows what will not be addressed in a review and focuses attention on what really will be discussed. At the beginning of his review of Reynold Price's Noble Norfleet , David Milofsky uses a comparison between Price's newest novel and his previous works: "It would be nice to report that Reynolds Price, the distinguished author of more than thirty books, including A Long and Happy Life and Surface of Earth , has added significantly to his oeuvre with his new novel, but such is not the case. Not by a long shot." A reviewer might also quickly catch reader attention by appealing to human interest-perhaps a personal reference or brief anecdote. The anecdote should connect to or exemplify the main focus of the book review. Note the anecdotal technique Wendy Rawlings uses in the introduction of her review of John D'Agata's Halls of Fame : "While on a recent trip to England, I witnessed a cultural exchange that struck me as emblematic of John D'Agata's book of essays, Halls of Fame . An American friend who has spent the past year tolerating a chilly flat in a London suburb for the sake of his British fiancée wanted me to guess the height of the World's Largest Pencil. 'I don't know-eight, nine feet tall?' I said. 'See? See? I knew it!' my friend shouted. He explained that when asked the same question, an English friend had guessed the height of the world's largest pencil to be 'perhaps a foot high, or two.' His modest expectations compared to my great ones (I could not but visualize the World's Largest Pencil as at least a foot taller than an NBA All-Star) represented to my friend something essential about the differences between British and American sensibilities."

Development

The primary focus of a book review is supplied in the beginning paragraph. After this main idea is established, it needs to be developed and justified. Using an organized list of material, the reviewer details the reasons behind the response to the book. References to past history, causes and effects, comparisons and contrasts, and specific passages from the book help illustrate and exemplify this main idea. Personal philosophy and moralization should be kept to a minimum, if included at all; the reader of a book review is interested in unbiased, thoughtful, reasonable, and well-developed ideas pertaining to the book in question. The bulk of a review consists of the development of the reviewer's main idea, the response to the book and the reasons for it. In each of the example reviews that accompany this guide, the reviewers develop their ideas through references to comparable past and contemporary works, analysis of aspects of form and technique, and inclusion of notable passages from the books being reviewed.

Conclusions

The conclusion reflects the focus of the rest of the review, and leaves the reader with a clearly articulated, well-justified final assessment. A restatement of the topic sentence is better than a cursory inspection of less important matters like book format and mechanical make-up. Main emphasis should remain primarily on the qualities and materials of the book being reviewed. At the end of Wendy Rawlings' review of John D'Agata's Halls of Fame , Rawlings summarizes previously stated ideas: "When D'Agata doesn't find the balance, the lyricism borrowed from poetry seems not quite, yet, to fit. I don't wish for D'Agata to join the legions of the smug and ironic, but at certain moments, I begin to wish for authorial presence that will assert itself less forcefully in terms of the arrangement of words on the page, which are often blasted into squadrons separated by asterisks, white space, or unhelpful section headings, and more forcefully on the level of the sentence, as D'Agata does in 'Notes toward the making of a whole human being . . . ,' a five-page essay composed of a single, breathtakingly constructed sentence." The conclusion statement cements the reviewer's recommendation, or lack thereof, of the book. Clearly, this is David Milofsky's aim in the conclusion of his review of Reynold Price's Noble Norfleet : "Even with a failure, it is interesting to read as accomplished a writer as Price, but his new novel cannot be recommended on any other grounds." The final sentence of a review should be both memorable and thought-provoking to the reader. As at the end of John Calderazzo's review of Ken Lamberton's Wilderness and Razor Wire , this final thought might be put in the form of a question: "[R]eading about Lamberton's flawed but exhilarating life makes me wonder about temptation and impetuousness. In light of losing everything, how many of us are still tempted to pursue, just once, some nearby object of desire? And will this constant risk be the prison of all of our days, our lives a landscape of wilderness and razor wire?"

Reviewing Specific Types of Books

The type of book being reviewed raises special considerations as to how to approach the review. Information specific to the categories of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry can be found under the "Form and Technique" heading of this guide. Below are further questions to consider, based on a book's category:

• Does the book give a full-length picture of the subject? Focus on only a portion of life?
• What phases of the subject's life receive greatest space? Is there justification for this?
• What is the point of view of the author?
• Are idiosyncrasies and weaknesses omitted? Treated adequately? Overplayed?
• Does the author endeavor to get at hidden motives?
• What important new facts about the subject's life are revealed in the book?
• Is the subject of the biography still living?
• What source materials were used in the preparation of the book?
• What training has the author had for this kind of work?
• What particular historical period does the book address?
• Is the accound given in broad outline, or in detail?
• Is the style that of reportorial writing, or is there an effort at interpretation?
• Is emphasis on traditional matter, like wars, kings, etc.? Or is it a social history?
• Are dates used extensively and/or intelligently?
• Is the book likely to be out of date soon? Or is it intended to stand the test of time?
• Are maps, illustrations, charts, etc., helpful to the reader?
• o Who is the author, and what right does he/she have to be writing on the subject? o What contributions to knowledge and understanding are made by the book?
• Is the author credible? What is the author's purpose for writing the book?
• Does the book contribute to knowledge of geography, government, folklore, etc.?
• Does the book have news value?
• How effective are plot, pace, style, and characterization? Strengths? Weaknesses?
• Is the ending worthwhile? Predictable?
• o Children's Literature
• o What is the age/interest group for which the book is intended?
• o What is the overall experience/feeling of reading the book?
• o Is the book illustrated? How? By whom?

Publication

There is a good market for the newcomer in book reviewing. Many editors, including those of big-name magazines, do not like to use the same reviewer too often, and this means unknown, unpublished reviewers have good opportunities to break into the field. Send query letters to editors to find out what their publication needs are. Try smaller, special-interest publications first (ethnic, feminist, religious, etc.); if the reviewer has knowledge or affiliation relevant to the publication, it may increase the chances of a positive response from the editor. Stay current with new books, and read other book reviews. Once an assignment for a review is given, produce timely, quality work, specific to requirements set by the editor. Build publication credits with a variety of periodicals; pursue possibilities of starting a regular column for a single newspaper or magazine. Book reviewing is not generally a highly profitable venture, but money can be made, depending on a reviewer's qualifications, reputation, and dedication to the field.

Cress, Janell. (2003). Book Reviews. Writing@CSU . Colorado State University. https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/guide.cfm?guideid=49

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The Retired Justice Who Doesn’t Understand the Supreme Court

Stephen Breyer means well. Why is his new book, “Reading the Constitution,” so exasperating?

By Jennifer Szalai

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READING THE CONSTITUTION: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism, by Stephen Breyer

Justice Stephen Breyer is worried about the Supreme Court — or at least I think he is, based on what I could glean from the faint notes of concern he tucks into his new book, “Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism.”

Breyer, who retired from the court in 2022, is known as a moderate liberal and a stalwart institutionalist. In his previous book, “The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics” (2021) , he insisted that critics had failed to recognize the justices’ unflagging commitment to upholding apolitical ideals. Nine months after it was published, the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc, by a vote of 6-3 , upended longstanding precedent on abortion rights. The majority opinion declared Roe v. Wade “ overruled ”; Breyer signed on to the minority’s blistering dissent.

Given that Breyer is no longer a sitting judge, one might have thought that this new book would afford him the opportunity to let loose, and in interviews he has suggested he is sounding an alarm. But his voice in the book barely rises above a whisper. Written in Breyer’s careful, tentative style, “Reading the Constitution” is well meaning, tedious and exasperating; it is also rather telling, showing how a thoughtful, conscientious jurist can get so wedded to propriety and high-mindedness that he comes across as earnestly naïve.

Breyer explains that he wrote the book to counter the rise of “textualism,” a form of judicial interpretation that fixates on the text of the Constitution and often shades into “originalism” — which restricts interpretation even further to how the text would have been understood at the time it was originally written. Instead of textualism, he prefers a “traditionalist” or “pragmatic” approach that takes not just text but also “purpose” into account. He argues that judges who try to strip away any extra-textual considerations, like evolving values and legislative history, “diminish the effectiveness and vibrancy of their interpretive palette.”

Most of the book is given over to parsing cases in granular detail, explaining exactly how looking beyond the text has historically yielded opinions that are “sound” — a word he calls one of the best compliments that you can give a judge. He front loads his examples with those he describes as “intellectually difficult.” Only after wading through “highly technical” cases having to do with things like patent infringement and retirement plans for railroad workers will a reader be prepared, he says, to take on anything as “value-laden” as reproductive rights.

This may have seemed to Breyer like a sound structure for his book, but it turns out to be a rhetorical sinkhole. Subjecting your readers to a forced march through complex arcana, telling them the “repetition” is for their own good, is more likely to exhaust them than prepare them. Despite my (admittedly freakish) tolerance for exegesis, I felt so worn down by the bland recitation of case history that I found myself nearly sapped of the will to go on.

Of course, it is Breyer’s patience for sifting through the most finicky details that made him such a scrupulous jurist. He is dedicated, precise and deliberate. He shows just how far he is willing to drill down into every element of a case in order to arrive at a decision. Life, he points out, is too full of ambiguity and change for “static” readings of statutes to make any sense; a jurisprudence that takes heed of “the Constitution’s democratic, humane values” is “both normatively desirable and practically useful.”

But in a book intended not only for legal professionals, combing through case details will only tell you so much. Breyer says he dislikes textualism because it is too limiting and too rigid; originalism, he explains, “does not take into account the ways in which our values as a society evolve over time as we learn from the mistakes of our past.” He writes as if offering a blizzard of detail to that effect will eventually clinch his argument. It also allows him to pretend that the crucial difference between the justices’ judicial approaches is primarily technical, a matter of “interpretive tools.”

“To place determinative weight on the way in which 18th-century speakers used particular words,” Breyer says, “is regressive.” He’s right — and perhaps that’s why the conservative justices like originalism so much. For anyone who believes that progress has gotten out of hand, “regressive” is arguably a point in originalism’s favor. “My examples show why a judge should often emphasize purposes,” he writes, as if he’s identifying something that has been overlooked or rejected. Isn’t it possible that his conservative colleagues also emphasize purposes, albeit very different ones?

Originalists deny that purposes matter to them, since purpose, as the originalist justice Antonin Scalia once put it, fails to provide an “objective basis for judging”; they like to say that they’re simply sticking closely to the text, and Breyer is palpably eager to take their stated intentions at face value, even when textualism can also function quite nicely as ideological cover . He keeps repeating the argument that “purpose-related tools” can make “our democracy more workable .” The word “workable” is used so many times in the book that it becomes a poignant refrain — that of an optimistic, pragmatic liberal jurist who wants to believe that if only he is clear enough, he can get his fellow justices to recognize that they are ultimately committed to the same thing.

Does Breyer, who is so attuned to the irreducible complexity of the world outside the Supreme Court, truly believe that the world inside is so simple? Given his decades of experience, I find it hard to imagine he does — but then he still seems flummoxed by the Supreme Court’s right-wing turn. At his most baffled, he starts firing off strings of rhetorical questions, asking plaintively how anyone could ever want “a world in which no governmental effort is made to cure environmental, medical or safety-related ills?”

In an interview with Adam Liptak of The Times last week, a beseeching Breyer sounded similarly perplexed. After all, he said, the decision to override Roe was bound to have cruel consequences: “Are they really going to allow women to die on the table because they won’t allow an abortion which would save her life? I mean, really, no one would do that. And they wouldn’t do that.”

There is a profound and generous kindness embedded in his remarks, a determination to think the best of people, but his incredulity makes you wonder what alternate universe Breyer is living in. When it comes to denying a woman the right to a life-saving abortion, not only are there “really” some people who “would do that”; there are six people in black robes who effectively did .

READING THE CONSTITUTION : Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism | By Stephen Breyer | Simon & Schuster | 335 pp. | $32

Jennifer Szalai is the nonfiction book critic for The Times. More about Jennifer Szalai

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Ironically, Renegade Nell would benefit from some rules

The Disney Plus series is fun but confounding

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Renegade Nell is a puzzle. Boasting the creative pedigree of screenwriter Sally Wainwright ( Gentleman Jack ) and the talents of a cast of British TV stalwarts, the story of a flame-haired, 18th-century English highwaywoman with the powers of a 20th-century superhero would seem to be a shoo-in for the renfaire bitches (it’s me, I’m renfaire bitches).

But — like holding up a noble’s carriage and finding a third of his luggage conspicuously empty — Renegade Nell contains a lot and not enough at the same time. And the feeling of a gap between two fun things where something fun should have been is consistent through the season’s eight episodes.

Which is to say, there’s a lot of fun stuff in Renegade Nell . Louisa Harland is especially enjoyable to watch as the titular Nell Jackson, delivering lines with a charismatic insouciance. We find Nell traveling home from the War of the Spanish Succession after the death of the dashing captain she ran away from home for in order to reunite with her estranged family, including sisters Roxy (Bo Bragason) and George (Florence Keen).

Alas, their village is currently plagued by the local magistrate’s wastrel of a son (Jake Dunn), and matters escalate quickly. Nell is framed for the magistrate’s murder, and she and her sisters go on the run, holding up coaches to get by and finding an ally in Rasselas (Enyi Okoronkwo), a young man whom the magistrate enslaved as a boy.

Oh, and the way Nell survives all this is by the power of a pixie-winged man of changeable size, Billy Blind (Nick Mohammed), who confers the strength of 10 men upon her whenever her life is threatened.

Renegade Nell ’s numerous fight scenes are brisk, fun, creatively staged, and winningly acted. The show also shows a real relish in its costuming, from primped-up nobles to disguised peasants. Thankfully for a story about literal highway robbery, the exteriors are refreshingly exterior — no empty Volume horizons here — and directors Ben Taylor, Amanda Brotchie, and MJ Delaney have great fun with it.

But almost every one of the show’s characters feels incomplete, as if an episode that established this emotional change, or followed up on that surprising revelation, was simply missing from the list. Character arcs that leap to their conclusions rather than walking are a common quality of the eight-episode television season, and Renegade Nell may be no different. And shortcuts like familiar character archetypes and classic story forms can be a strength in the kind of genre fiction where half the appeal is knowing that you’ve seen this hero’s journey before, and being excited to follow it again in a new set of clothes.

But Renegade Nell is curiously disinterested in its fantasy elements, a lack of exploration put in stark relief by the specificity of its historical grounding in the first decade of 1700, when Jacobite forces conspired — or at least attempted to conspire — to put Queen Anne’s Catholic half-brother James Francis Edward Stuart on the throne instead.

Now, criticizing a fantasy show for not explaining how the magic works has a tendency to make you sound like the most boring person alive , but I’m going to take that risk. Listen: Trailers for Renegade Nell made sure to include Nell’s supernatural abilities. There’s a little man with fairy wings who turns into a glowing ball and flies down her throat, conferring superhuman strength, agility, and the ability to turn bullets aside with her bare hands. “Why are you here?” she demands of the diminutive gentleman. “I can only assume that your life is very important,” he replies. It’s a tease — what is he? Who sent him? Are there, or have there been, others like him and Nell? How mysterious and intriguing.

It’s a light spoiler, but perhaps you could consider it a helpful adjustment of expectation: Renegade Nell does not answer these questions. Nell just has a magic guy who showed up one day to give her superpowers.

Heroes with unexplained supernatural powers can make for great fun, and one should strive to appreciate a television show for what it is, not what you expected it to be. But Renegade Nell aspires to genuine depth. Wainwright’s script is a story of class conflict, of little people standing up to stick it to the toffs — a story of the ways in which society will cut the legs out from under powerful women by any means necessary — and a story about grievous misuses of both magical and mundane power. In this thematic context, questions about the apparently unique origin and nature of the magic that gives a heroine her class-upending power are directly relevant.

Metaphorically speaking, Renegade Nell is still an appealing carriage full of spoils — fun costumes, silly situations, a few standout performances. It’s a pity that it’s missing a wheel.

All episodes of Renegade Nell are now streaming on Disney Plus.

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Trump promotes Lee Greenwood's 'God Bless The USA Bible': What to know about the book and its long journey

• Former president Donald Trump encourages supporters to buy Lee Greenwood's "God Bless The USA Bible," a project inspired by Nashville country musician's hit song.
• Resurgent version of Greenwood's Bible project a modified version from original concept, a change that likely followed 2021 shake-up in publishers.

After years with few updates about Lee Greenwood’s controversial Bible, the project is again resurgent with a recent promotion by former President Donald Trump.

“All Americans need to have a Bible in their home and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” Trump said in a video posted to social media Tuesday, encouraging supporters to purchase the “God Bless The USA Bible.” “Religion is so important and so missing, but it’s going to come back.”

Greenwood — the Nashville area country musician whose hit song “God Bless the USA” inspired the Bible with a similar namesake — has long been allies with Trump and other prominent Republicans, many of whom are featured in promotional material for the “God Bless The USA Bible.” But that reputational clout in conservative circles hasn’t necessarily translated to business success in the past, largely due to a major change in the book’s publishing plan.

Here's what to know about the Bible project’s journey so far and why it’s significant it’s back in the conservative limelight.

An unordinary Bible, a fiery debate

The “God Bless The USA Bible” received heightened attention since the outset due to its overt political features.

The text includes the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Pledge of Allegiance, and the lyrics to the chorus to Greenwood’s “God Bless The USA.” Critics saw it as a symbol of Christian nationalism, a right-wing movement that believes the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation.

A petition emerged in 2021 calling Greenwood’s Bible “a toxic mix that will exacerbate the challenges to American evangelicalism.” From there, a broader conversation ensued about the standards by which publishers print Bibles.

Gatekeeping in Bible publishing

Greenwood’s early business partner on the project, a Hermitage-based marketing firm called Elite Source Pro, initially reached a manufacturing agreement with the Nashville-based HarperCollins Christian Publishing to print the “God Bless The USA Bible.”  

As part of that agreement, HarperCollins would publish the book but not sell or endorse it. But then HarperCollins reversed course , a major setback for Greenwood’s Bible.

The reversal by HarperCollins followed a decision by Zondervan — a publishing group under HarperCollins Christian Publishing and an official North American licensor for Bibles printed in the New International Version translation — to pass on the project. HarperCollins said the decision was unrelated to the petition or other public denunciations against Greenwood’s Bible.

The full backstory: Lee Greenwood's 'God Bless the USA Bible' finds new printer after HarperCollins Christian passes

A new translation and mystery publisher

The resurgent “God Bless The USA Bible” featured in Trump’s recent ad is an altered version of the original concept, a modification that likely followed the publishing shake-up.

Greenwood’s Bible is now printed in the King James Version, a different translation from the original pitch to HarperCollins.

Perhaps the biggest mystery is the new publisher. That manufacturer is producing a limited quantity of copies, leading to a delayed four-to-six weeks for a copy to ship.  

It’s also unclear which business partners are still involved in the project. Hugh Kirkman, who led Elite Service Pro, the firm that originally partnered with Greenwood for the project, responded to a request for comment by referring media inquiries to Greenwood’s publicist.

The publicist said Elite Source Pro is not a partner on the project and the Bible has always been printed in the King James Version.

"Several years ago, the Bible was going to be printed with the NIV translation, but something happened with the then licensor and the then potential publisher. As a result, this God Bless The USA Bible has always been printed with the King James Version translation," publicist Jeremy Westby said in a statement.

Westby did not have the name of the new licensee who is manufacturing the Bible.

Trump’s plug for the “God Bless The USA Bible” recycled language the former president is using to appeal to a conservative Christian base.

“Our founding fathers did a tremendous thing when they built America on Judeo-Christian values,” Trump said in his video on social media. “Now that foundation is under attack perhaps as never before.”

'Bring back our religion’: Trump vows to support Christians during Nashville speech

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at [email protected] or on social media @liamsadams.

What is the 'God Bless the USA Bible'? The $60 Bible Trump and Lee Greenwood are selling

Donald Trump is now in the business of selling Bibles, according to an announcement made Tuesday.

Trump announced the partnership with country music singer Lee Greenwood, best known for his song "God Bless the USA". The pair is selling a custom version of the Bible for $59.99, called the " God Bless the USA Bible," which was previously announced in 2021 by Greenwood but then fell to the wayside after hitting snafus with publishing.

"All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It's my favorite book," Trump said in a video posted on social media "It's a lot of peoples' favorite book."

"We have to bring Christianity back into our lives and into what will be again a great nation," Trump said. "Our Founding Fathers did a tremendous thing when they built America on Judeo-Christian values. Now that foundation is under attack, perhaps as never before."

The announcement comes as Trump is embroiled in several legal battles, leaving him reportedly strapped for cash. He recently posted a $91 million bond as he appeals a jury award in a defamation case and, on Monday a New York state appeals court ruling imposed an additional $175 million bond while he appeals a civil fraud verdict against him. He will owe another $354 million plus interest if he loses the appeal.

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

Trump has denied that he is facing financial issues and a disclaimer on the controversial Bible's website claims it "has nothing to do with any political campaign" and is "not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Ventures LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates."

What exactly is this self-proclaimed patriotic version of the Bible and what does it have to do with a country song from the 1980s? Here's what we know.

Trump bibles: Donald Trump is selling $60 Bibles as he seeks funds for for campaign, legal bills

What is the 'God Bless the USA Bible'?

The "God Bless the USA Bible" is a version of the Christian Bible "inspired by Lee Greenwood's patriotic anthem 'God Bless the USA,'" according to the official God Bless The USA Bible website.

Touting itself as the "only Bible endorsed by President Trump" and Greenwood himself, it incorporates copies of American political documents and Greenwood's song lyrics into the copy.

A "spotlight" section on the website shows other conservative personalities posing with a copy of the bible, including Tomi Lahren, Donal Trump Jr., Rita Cosby, Travis Tritt and Gov. Mike Huckabee.

According to the website, "high order volume" means customers will have to wait four to six weeks for delivery.

What is in the 'God Bless the USA Bible'?

The "God Bless the USA Bible" is the King James Version translation interspersed with copies of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and handwritten lyrics to the chorus of “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood.

According to the Bible's website, it comes in a large print, two-column format.

Christian nationalism on the rise: As Trump support merges with Christian nationalism, experts warn of extremist risks

Who is Lee Greenwood?

Melvin Lee Greenwood is an American  country music  singer-songwriter. He has released more than 20 major-label albums but is best known for his 1984 patriotic song "God Bless the USA."

Greenwood identifies as a conservative Republican and Christian and his song has often been used at Republican political rallies and conventions. It has been used in the campaigns of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and more recently, Donald Trump.

President Bush nominated Greenwood to serve on the National Council of Arts, which he did from 2008 to 2022. In 2018, Greenwood was awarded the MMP Music Award and was inducted into the MMP Hall of Fame by Commander Joseph W. Clark.

'God Bless the USA Bible' controversies, response

Constitutional and legal scholars, as well as people in the Christian church, have rebuffed the existence of a Bible that mixes religion and legal doctrine. When the concept was first announced, it received notable backlash.

In 2021, HarperCollins Christian Publishing  refused to manufacture the book after a preliminary agreement, leading Greenwood and Hugh Kirkpatrick, who led the company Elite Service Pro behind the custom Bible, to look elsewhere for publishing.

HarperCollins Christian Publishing, which includes Zondervan and Thomas Nelson publishing groups, is the North American licensor for the New International Version translation of the Bible, which ultimately was not used in the "God Bless the USA" version. Instead, it uses the King James Version translation.

It is now unclear who the publisher and licensor of the new version is. Greenwood's publicist previously told the Nashville Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY network, that Elite Source Pro is no longer a partner on the project. He was unable to name the new licensee who is manufacturing the Bible.

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Book of Donald: Trump hawks special ‘God Bless the USA’ Bibles for $60

Former president sells Trump-endorsed Bible in concert with Lee Greenwood, country singer whose music is played at his rallies

Patriotic, prayerful and rightwing Americans are being offered the chance to purchase – for a mere $59.99 – a Bible endorsed by Donald Trump , in the latest example of the former US president touting wares to the American public.

In a post to his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, the current presumptive Republican nominee and 88-times charged criminal defendant said : “Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless the USA Bible.”

In an accompanying video message, Trump said : “I’m proud to be partnering with my very good friend Lee Greenwood – who doesn’t love his song God Bless the USA? – in connection with promoting the God Bless the USA Bible.”

Greenwood, a country singer whose signature tune is played at Trump rallies, is offering the Bibles for sale through a website, GodBlessTheUSABible.com.

The site features a picture of Trump smiling broadly and holding a Bible in front of his red-and-white-striped club tie. The cover of the Bible is embossed with the words “Holy Bible” and “God Bless the USA” and a design based on the US flag.

Greenwood’s website says the Bible is the only one endorsed by Trump, counsels buyers on what to do if their Bible has “sticky pages”, and answers the important question on many peoples’ minds: “Is any of the money from this Bible going to the Donald J Trump campaign for president?”

“No,” the site says. “GodBlessTheUSABible.com is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign. GodBlessTheUSABible.com is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J Trump, the Trump Organization, CIC Ventures LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates.

“GodBlessTheUSABible.com uses Donald J Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”

CIC Ventures was established in 2021 by a former Trump aide and a Trump-linked lawyer in Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump has lived since leaving power. Its principal address is that of Trump International Golf Club. The company has also been involved in Trump-themed money making schemes including digital training cards and gold sneakers.

Given Trump’s status as a thrice-married legally adjudicated rapist and billionaire New York property magnate nonetheless dependent on evangelical Christian support , his true relationship with and knowledge of the Bible has long been a subject of speculation.

In June 2020, towards the end of his presidency, he memorably marched out of the White House, across a square violently cleared of protesters for racial justice, and posed outside the historic St John’s church while holding a Bible in the air.

A reporter asked: “Is that your Bible?”

Trump said: “It’s a Bible.”

after newsletter promotion

In his video on Tuesday, Trump said: “Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country and I truly believe that we need to bring them back and we have to bring them back fast. I think it’s one of the biggest problems we have. That’s why our country is going haywire. We’ve lost religion in our country. All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many.”

In response, Gregory Minchak, of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, commented : “There’s not a cross nor a picture of Jesus on the page, but plenty of photos of Trump. Who do you think this $60 Bible is for? It sure isn’t for Jesus.”

Sarafina Chitika, a senior Biden campaign spokesperson, issued a stinging statement.

“The last time the American people saw Donald Trump hold up a Bible,” she said, “it was for a photo op after he teargassed American citizens demonstrating against white supremacy.

“He can’t be bothered to leave Mar-a-Lago to meet with actual voters, but found the time to hawk bootleg sneakers, sell cheap perfume and promote his ‘new’ product to line his own pockets.

“It’s classic Donald Trump – a fraud who has spent his life scamming people and his presidency screwing over the middle class and cutting taxes for his rich friends.”

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