Reviewing Guidelines

• Write a review of 500 to 1000 words, give or take a few.
• Write an intro, stating what book you’re reviewing, if it’s part of a series, who the author is, and perhaps what genre it is.
• Don’t spoil too much. Give a description of the story, but no more than someone can find out from the backflap.
• Make sure your description isn’t too long. A review is mostly about your own thoughts and opinions. Don’t write more than two paragraphs of summary (about 20% of the review at most).
• Use subheadings at least every two paragraphs. We use these to organize our thoughts, mostly.
• End with a paragraph titled “Why should you read this book?” giving a short summary of your review and telling why readers should or shouldn’t read your book.
• You can totally be informal, but keep it polite.
• Other than this, feel free to be creative. Of course, if you feel like it’s justified, you can stretch these guides a bit.
• Remember if you received a review copy/ARC, you must add this final paragraph as a quoted text, in italics: [Your name] received a review copy of this book courtesy of [publisher/author]. This is thanks to U.S. law.

After writing your review, you will need to rate the book. You can find more information on ratings here.