Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

What makes a good book review? With the growth of reader reviews like those on Amazon or Goodreads alongside dedicated book review sites (like BookBrowse), there are more book reviewers and would-be book reviewers than ever. Maybe you’re one of them, contributing your opinions on your own blog, on a consensus site, or to a publication. Maybe you want to support the reading community, enjoy reviewing books in exchange for receiving them gratis, or have aspirations to review professionally. Or maybe, as an invested reader of books and book reviews, you just like thinking about aspects of criticism and analysis. No matter your level of interest in reviews or the reasons behind it, you may find it enriching to consider good examples of book reviews written by others. With this in mind, we’ve put together some excerpts from our own reviewers’ work that demonstrate what certain worthwhile elements of a review can look like. We hope you find them helpful.

First and foremost, of course, is the opening. A great review grabs the reader’s attention while providing enough information regarding the book’s plot or story to make the piece accessible to someone with no previous knowledge of the content. Rebecca Foster’s review of Delia Owens’ novel Where the Crawdads Sing is a case in point:

Where the Crawdads Sing was a hit even before being chosen for Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club — and it’s easy to see why so many have taken this debut novel into their hearts. It’s a gripping mystery but also a tender coming-of-age story about one woman’s desperately lonely upbringing and her rocky route to finding love and a vocation. Not only that, but its North Carolina marsh setting is described in lyrical language that evinces Delia Owens’s background in nature writing.

Effective reviews often give a sense of the reading experience by mentioning a book’s structure and/or pacing. Rachel Hullett’s take on Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell is an excellent example of how to accomplish this:

The first two-thirds of the novel are split into a dual timeline, bouncing back and forth between the week of Hamnet’s death (the present), and the blossoming romance between William and Agnes (the past). It’s a tender yet fraught courtship, and the pacing here is slow and deliberate. The final third speeds up and takes place after the death of their son. Both parts are equally as successful — the languid pace is sustained by O’Farrell’s lyrical prose, and the more frantic pace is made tense and urgent by it.

Reviewers might also choose to focus on themes the author highlights, which can provide rich opportunities for analysis. Regarding Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, reviewer Lisa Butts writes:

One of the most significant themes in the book, skillfully considered from multiple angles, is assimilation and respectability politics. In this context, respectability politics refers to the argument by Black leaders, thinkers and others with influence that engaging in irreproachable moral conduct will earn Black people respect and success. Likewise, white assimilationists believe (overtly or subconsciously) that Black people should make every effort to conform to the behavioral standards of white society. Again, neither of these attitudes takes into account the history of racism and how it is woven into the very fabric of American culture and institutions.

The author’s writing style and character development often feature in informative reviews, such as this one of Colm Tóibín’s Long Island [subscribers only] by Kim Kovacs:

Part of what makes Tóibín such a remarkable author is his ability to make his readers care about unremarkable people and situations. There’s a richness to his characters, a depth that few other novelists are able to achieve. He captures the interior world of each with amazing realism…The author evokes deep empathy for each character he describes, even those that might appear for just a page or two. 

Many reviewers examine a book’s language and aspects of craft. In reviewing Franny Choi’s poetry collection The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, Lisa Ahima addresses issues of grammatical tense, word choice, and their effect:

In “Comfort Poem,” the speaker of the piece is sitting at home curled up with a cat, using the present tense through the first two stanzas. In the third stanza, the poem moves into the past tense as the speaker comforts someone through a life-altering surgery. Throughout the next section, Choi uses variations on the phrase “comfort woman” to detail explicit moments of sexual violence in the past. That section is very visceral and seems like it is occurring in the speaker’s present because of it. Here, I feel a level of uncomfortable intimacy with the speaker; I am transported to generational memories, ruminations of lived experiences, and conversations about devastation she has borne witness to.

While not required, adding details of one’s personal experience to a review can be impactful. Valerie Morales’ writing on All That She Carried by Tiya Miles is an elegant and affecting example:

I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture the second day it opened, and Ashley’s Sack was surrounded by a crowd. In front of me I heard a lot of sobs. The imagery of the lines in the embroidery was poignant. Rose telling Ashley goodbye and then handing her the bag, saying it was filled with Rose’s love for her, as if love was coffee beans. Nearby, an auction block reinforced the point of Ashley as property. It was a piercing exhibit of love and loss…Miles’ retelling is similarly haunting.

Insightful reviews often place a work within a context greater than the book itself. One way to do this is by drawing parallels to other titles, which may give readers helpful reference points. In a review of The New Earth by Jess Row, Chloe Pfeiffer compares and contrasts the book with Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive, painting a vivid and resonant picture of both texts:

It reminded me a little of Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive, another Trump-era story of the border crisis and historical genocide, refracted through the story of a bourgeois nuclear family. But Lost Children Archive seemed to me to be a little harder and sadder than The New Earth, and hazy images of the family’s road trip have stuck with me for years. The New Earth may be slightly too straightforward, or lacking in subtlety, to stick in this way, not because the world it depicts isn’t complex but because everyone, with one standout exception, is basically honest about what they’ve done and what they want; they talk to each other like they have nothing to lose. The result is that things can only go up from here, and so nothing will break your heart.

Thorough book reviews are frequently not completely positive, even if the reviewer feels the book is worth recommending. Rebecca Foster’s criticism of The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles is a good model of how negatives can be included in a way that is specific and enlightening:

A danger with an episodic narrative like this one is that random events and encounters pile up but don’t do much to further the plot. At nearly 200 pages in, I realized little of consequence had happened yet, and there were later points, too, where the book seemed endless (I felt the same about A Gentleman in Moscow). Despite the condensed timeframe here, it’s a meandering story that can try one’s patience.

The conclusion is a critical piece of a review, because it shows the final thoughts about a book the reviewer chooses to leave with readers. For Henry Henry [subscribers only], Rachel Hullett pens a thoughtful wrap-up that briefly summarizes what makes the novel worthwhile and includes the audience for which she recommends it:

In Henry Henry, Bratton deepens the Henriad’s motifs of legacy, succession, and responsibility by exploring them through a lens of queerness and trauma. Henry Henry is a bold, dark, and witty feat from debut author Allen Bratton, who seems to be off to a promising literary career, as he expertly explores myriad complicated themes without sacrificing the weight of any. Though the ways in which Bratton transposes the Henriad’s narrative to its 2014 pre-Brexit setting are certain to excite readers with a penchant for Shakespeare’s histories, his reimagining doesn’t alienate those who don’t share that same literary background. Henry Henry stands on its own as an undeniable masterwork of queer literary fiction, perfect for fans of Brandon Taylor and Garth Greenwell.

Happy reading and reviewing! For a deep dive into how we write book reviews, checkout our guide for book reviewing.

Let’s call it the Rebel Girls effect. The enormous appetite for Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo’s first collection of illustrated tales about mighty, real-life women, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, sparked a publishing revolution in 2016, shaking up how biography is presented to children. Out went the dusty textbook tone in favour of a bright and fresh style. Almost a decade on, kids’ bookshelves heave with lively, true tales – from the bestselling Little People, Big Dreams series to the excellent picture book version of David Olusoga’s Black and British.

Yet, thrillingly, the innovations keep coming. Dear Vincent (Thames & Hudson), by art historian Michael Bird and illustrator Ella Beech, draws on correspondence between Vincent van Gogh and his loving brother Theo to offer, Bird says, a “glimpse into a happy and creative time in the artist’s life” when he moved to southern France – told via snippets of letters and the very relatable closeness of the two brothers.

You could argue that the themes of Van Gogh’s paintings – flowers, night skies – are already perfectly accessible to kids, well documented and in need of no more introduction, but this book is an absolute gem, with a great understanding of its audience. When Van Gogh is packing to leave Paris and considering how to fit all his art supplies in his bag, he exclaims: “I know… I can leave out my toothbrush and socks!” Later, painting the local postman’s portrait, he tells him to sit very still and not “jiggle your legs or wiggle your beard”. Beech’s exquisite artwork is characterful and warm, conjuring up the well-known visual elements of Van Gogh’s life, from his gingery beard to his blue bedroom, and of course those majestic sunflowers, while never falling into pastiche.

It’s 20 years since the release of Oliver Jeffers’s now globally renowned debut picture book, How to Catch a Star, which introduced readers to his star-loving, moon-faced boy in a stripy top who, in later books, formed an unlikely friendship with a penguin. In Where to Hide a Star (HarperCollins, October) we find the boy, the penguin and the star he successfully brought home at the end of the original book playing hide-and-seek. But the game goes horribly wrong when the star goes missing.

Jeffers has not lost his lovely knack for weaving fantastical elements into depictions of everyday life, and by introducing a new character here – a young girl whose experience of wishing for a star exactly mirrors the boy’s – he deftly acknowledges that the universal appeal of his original book lay partly in the fact that kids everywhere gaze in wonder at the same night sky. The two children team up for an adventure that will not disappoint.

Last month also saw the release of Jeffers’s latest collaboration with Sam Winston, The Dictionary Story (Walker). Sad because she doesn’t tell a proper story like her fellow books, one day Dictionary decides to bring her words to life. Soon, Alligator is pursuing Donut through the pages, causing Queen to slip on Soap and chaos to reign. A boundary-pushing ode to the wonders of language, Jeffers’s illustrations rip and bounce through actual dictionary entries thanks to Winston’s clever typography and design. Close reading really pays off: the dictionary entries are full of wit and mischief.

Another author-illustrator bringing his A-game this autumn is David Litchfield, whose The Dinosaur Next Door (Magic Cat) brilliantly combines the joys of dinosaurs and cake. Pint-sized palaeontologist Liz is certain that her moustachioed neighbour and local star baker Mr Wilson is actually a brachiosaurus in disguise, so she consults a grownup expert on the matter, with unintended consequences. And while there may not be an ounce of biographical truth in this particular book, I promise you’ll be rooting for Mr Wilson all the same.

It’s summer in the city and one fuzzy dachshund is more than just a little hot under the collar. Having had enough of the sweltering temperatures, he parks his bottom in the middle of the road, refusing to move his paws another inch, resistant to the honking cars or his beloved owner’s coaxing. Until the owner cries “Taxi!”, and the pair head off on an impromptu trip to the coast.

Set in New York, Doug Salati’s glorious Hot Dog (Pushkin) deservedly won last year’s Caldecott medal, the most prestigious US children’s book award. In fiery oranges and reds, Salati’s crowded illustrations brilliantly depict the noisy, humid city streets before he switches to cooling blues, and his seaside drawings become more expansive as the dog finds freedom on the beach, running the full width of each double-page spread, the wind ruffling his coat. Salati uses language economically, each word carefully considered and all the more delicious for it (“unfolding sky, a salty breeze / a welcome whiff of someplace new”).

City living is also the inspiration behind Lanisha Butterfield’s Flower Block (Puffin). Butterfield, raised on a council estate in Oxford, calls her debut “a love letter to my working-class childhood”. That affection shines through this tale of young Jeremiah, who plants sunflower seeds one night in memory of his late father. When he awakens they have germinated into a magnificent wild garden that has taken over the entire apartment block, crashing through every ceiling and floor. But what will the neighbours think? Illustrator Hoang Giang’s colourful blooms creep beautifully over every page, but it’s also the emotion she observes between characters – Jeremiah’s mother kissing his head before she goes off to work on the night shift, his older brother holding his hand as they confront a scary neighbour – which helps make this such a tender celebration of family, nature and community.

Clouds are currently everywhere in picture books (mirroring much of the British summer) with Kes Gray, the prolific author behind Oi Frog!, launching the first in a new series with illustrator Chris Jevons with Torla and Smorla and the Lower Than Average Cloud (Happy Yak). Presented in a tall format with flaps that pull out, this light and fun tale explores size and friendship as Torla – “a taller-than-average giraffe” – is helped along on a walk by his small giraffe pal Smorla, when a tiny cloud hovering above him leaves him unable to see.

Two decades since he founded the Cloud Appreciation Society, Gavin Pretor-Pinney has teamed up with illustrator William Grill for a picture-book take on his bestselling The Cloudspotter’s Guide. Cloudspotting for Beginners (Particular) is delightfully written, each cloud given its own personality, from the “happy-go-lucky” cumulus to the “shy and retiring” cirrostratus and, rather than cramming each page with facts, the delicate colour pencil illustrations are given proper space to breathe (or, more appropriately, float). “Clouds are nature’s poetry”, according to the society’s manifesto, and this is a befittingly exquisite ode to the skies for nature-loving children from about age six – and indeed adults (there is a little complex scientific language).

For those tired of looking up, Beasts from the Deep (Nosy Crow) invites readers to plunge downwards, up to 11,000 metres beneath the surface of the sea, to be exact. With expert input from the University of Cambridge, writer Matt Ralphs and illustrator Kaley McKean’s well-structured book explores the monsters living in the five zones of the deep sea, from the fangtooth fish to the bloodybelly comb jelly. Ralphs’s exciting prose style, combined with great facts and images that really glow, makes for a view of the ocean that you’ll be glad you can’t see from a sun lounger this holiday.

You Like It Darker by Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton, £25)
This new collection of 12 stories opens with Two Talented Bastids, which questions how two ordinary guys from a small town in Maine managed to become famous almost overnight; one as a writer, the other an artist. They always denied any mystery but, after their deaths, the writer’s son discovers a notebook that seems to explain the secret of their success. In the collection’s afterword, King puzzles over similar questions: where do his stories come from? And why are so many of them concerned with dark matters? Horror stories, he writes, are “best appreciated by those who are compassionate”, and in his stories he has “tried especially hard to show the real world as it is”. Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream is about a man who feels compelled to find out if a murder he dreamed about is real. He discovers a body and tips off the police only to be suspected of the crime himself. Rattlesnakes looks at the later life of a character from King’s 1981 horror novel Cujo, as an old man visiting Florida, where he’s pursued by the ghosts of a long-ago tragedy. King is still the king.

Tomorrowing by Terry Bisson (Duke, £13.99)
The final book by the popular American SF writer, who died earlier this year, is a compilation of the monthly feature he wrote for Locus (the genre’s only trade journal) from April 2004 to July 2023. Inspired by “Today in History” columns in daily newspapers, Bisson imagined them written from the perspective of two centuries ahead. For almost 20 years he was dedicated to creating four micro-fictions every month. The result is a collection of pure, distilled science fiction at its best, perfect miniatures that combine social satire with prediction in stories surreal, disturbing, thought-provoking and hilarious.

Freakslaw by Jane Flett (Doubleday, £16.99)
This debut novel by an award-winning short story writer is set during a hot summer in the 1990s, when a travelling funfair called Freakslaw arrives in a gloomy Scottish town. A band of outcasts and deviants, some with magical powers, they swoop in and uncover the hidden truths of local people. Their targets include a boy repressing his desire for other boys, a girl obsessed with her studies, men who drown violent urges in drink and their meek, oppressed wives. Gloria the fortune teller has a plan for revenge if the town folk turn against them. Her 16-year-old daughter, a contortionist and self-taught witch, doesn’t care who gets hurt, so long as she has her own dangerous fun. A transgressive, inventive dark fantasy with believably complex characters.

The Mark by Fríđa Isberg, translated by Larissa Kyzer (Faber, £16.99)
In near-future Iceland, a test for empathy has been developed, its use promoted as a means of nipping crime in the bud. If people lacking the ability to feel touched by the pain of others are identified, they can be given therapy to make them into good citizens. Politicians are quick to seize on it and a referendum looms: should the test be made compulsory? This thought-provoking debut won multiple awards in Iceland.

Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay (Titan, £19.99)
The latest from the bestselling, award-winning author of A Head Full of Ghosts focuses on an experimental horror movie made by amateurs on a micro-budget in the summer of 1993 and never screened. Over the decades it becomes the stuff of dark legend. There are plans for a big-budget remake, with help from the only surviving member of the cast – “the Thin Kid” – who knows the whole terrible story. Slasher movies are seen by some as kitschy fun, but this is a seriously disturbing novel, delving into the sacrifices art demands, psychological trauma and how monsters are made. Sometimes painful reading, it’s also incredibly gripping, smart and scary.

In August 2021, Britain’s last ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Laurie Bristow, climbed on to a table holding a kitchen knife. He and a member of his security team had a small but important task. They unscrewed a portrait of the queen from the wall. Around them was “incessant gunfire”. Some of it came from heavy calibre weapons. A large TV screen nearby relayed the news on a loop. It was grim. The Taliban were at the gates of Kabul.

From time to time, Bristow recalls, there were great crashes from the roof as soldiers destroyed sensitive equipment. The UK was shutting its embassy and relocating to a military facility inside Kabul airport. Soon, soldiers and diplomats would depart. The US-led campaign in Afghanistan – a 20-year saga of wishful thinking and blunders – was ending in ignominy and farce. And, as Bristow describes in his compelling memoir Kabul: Final Call, with betrayal and human disaster.

The previous week, the Taliban had overrun a series of provincial capitals. Afghanistan’s foreign-backed republic was falling apart. That might have been predicted. In February 2020, Donald Trump announced the US was pulling its forces out. The Biden administration stuck to this decision and gave a deadline of September 2021 for the exit of Nato troops. Afghanistan’s government, many thought, might stagger on until Christmas.

Bristow arrived in Kabul in June 2021, as Afghanistan’s future looked precarious. He understood it might fall to him to shutter the embassy and evacuate staff, as well as Afghans who worked with British forces. What nobody had anticipated was the speed with which the situation unravelled. The Taliban – chased out in 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11 – controlled rural areas and key roads. In nine giddy days they reconquered the entire country.

What went wrong? As Bristow tells it, the west failed because of bad strategy and a loss of will. After the attacks on the twin towers, a military response from the US and its allies was inevitable. Its goal: to exterminate al-Qaeda. As a young reporter, I watched the Taliban’s northern army surrender outside Mazar-i-Sharif. The five-year-old emirate ended in “a wilderness of shimmering desert and telegraph poles”, I wrote in 2001. It was “vanishing into history”.

This prediction turned out to be wrong. After a period in Pakistan’s tribal regions, the Taliban returned. They waged a brutal and increasingly effective insurgency against international and Afghanistan government troops. The conflict cost billions. Meanwhile, George Bush’s administration invaded Iraq. A surge by the next US president, Barack Obama, didn’t bring results. By 2021, the public had lost interest in Afghanistan, seeing it as a for ever war with few benefits.

Washington and London’s mistake, in Bristow’s view, was to seek a military solution to what was a political problem. The international coalition also failed to address the “egregious” behaviour of its Afghan allies. Bristow portrays Afghanistan’s then president, Ashraf Ghani, as an aloof academic, surrounded by toadies. As the Taliban closed in, he gave speeches from his fortified Arg palace about digital governance. Afghanistan’s then defence minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, was more clear-eyed; the Taliban tried to murder him. Overall, Afghanistan’s ministers were a corrupt and predatory bunch, beset by factional squabbles.

Bristow is frank about his frustrations in dealing with Whitehall. Some Afghans qualified for resettlement in the UK. But who exactly should make the cut? And what about dependants? The ambassador said he urged the Home Office and Ministry of Defence to speed up the processing of applications, including from his embassy team. Instead of stepping up, officials accused him of “catastrophising”. “I ignored this,” he writes.

As the situation got worse, Bristow received media requests for interviews. He relayed these to special advisers working for then foreign secretary Dominic Raab. There was no reply. When Kabul fell, Raab was on holiday to Crete. Other senior mandarins were missing. Bristow doesn’t say much about the infamous campaign allegedly involving former prime minister Boris Johnson’s wife, Carrie, to rescue Afghan cats and dogs. But he notes that “the priority of some in London” was to spare senior figures from “embarrassment”.

Kabul: Final Call is full of glorious details. Bristow was previously ambassador to Moscow. He swapped a 19th-century mansion overlooking the Kremlin for a Barratt Homes-like residence in Kabul. It had a shiny grand piano and a garden with a small lawn and mynah birds. Before flying out, Bristow picked up a flak jacket and helmet. During security alerts, he took cover in a sweaty armoured “wardrobe” and leafed through a back number of the Economist.

In the run-up to Kabul’s fall, there were numerous ominous signs. Rockets thudded into the green zone. The French ambassador sent home his chef. After relocating to the airport, Bristow found himself in a “real-life” version of Apocalypse Now, as desperate Afghans tried to board a plane. Thousands besieged the perimeter. The Baron hotel – used by the UK as an evacuation handling centre – became a chaotic refugee camp. He spoke to Downing Street from a laptop propped up on the bar.

In contrast to his masters in Westminster, Bristow comes across as decent, serious, analytical and quietly heroic: a brave public servant doing a tough job. He pays tribute to the young British soldiers sent to guard the airport’s gates. And to his staff, who had to inform Afghan families they did not qualify for evacuation. “You are told in return that you are condemning them to death,” he recalls. It was a harrowing experience, he writes, that haunted those involved.

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Some hoped the Taliban who seized Kabul in 2021 might be more moderate than their hardline predecessors. This, it turned out, was a delusion. The Afghans, by the Norwegian writer and journalist Åsne Seierstad, tells the story of what happened next, after the last flights carrying Bristow and his US counterparts took off. She traces the lives of three Afghans: a Taliban commander, a young female law student and a prominent women’s rights activist.

Despite earlier assurances, the Taliban closed down girls’ secondary schools, banned women from the workplace and ordered them to cover up. They were forbidden from travelling farther than 45 miles (72kms) without a male guardian.

Seierstad, the bestselling author of The Bookseller of Kabul, gives a heartbreaking account of the first day of school. Senior girls wearing regulation black dresses and white headscarves arrived, keen to learn. They had “expectant faces”. The same morning, the Taliban’s education ministry ordered female secondary schools to remain closed. In some provinces, Taliban fighters stormed classrooms, beating girls with rods and berating them. In 2022, women were banned from university.

It is Afghan women and girls who are paying a terrible price for our missteps. Since the Taliban took power poverty, hunger and infant mortality have soared. Bristow argues we need a “proper reckoning” of why the campaign in Afghanistan ended the way it did. A lack of resolve contributed to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, he thinks. The only “glimmer of light” he sees comes from courageous Afghans who defended their right to live freely and in peace.

Luke Harding’s Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival, shortlisted for the Orwell prize, is published by Guardian Faber (£10.99)

Kabul: Final Call: The Inside Story of the Withdrawal from Afghanistan August 2021 by Laurie Bristow is published by Whittles Publishing (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Twilight Territory, by Andrew X. Pham (Norton). Set during the Japanese occupation of Indochina and its bloody aftermath, this novel of war is nimbly embroidered with a marriage story. In 1942, a Japanese major who is posted to the fishing town of Phan Thiet falls for a Viet shopkeeper when he witnesses her excoriating a corrupt official. The shopkeeper, despite her wariness of being viewed as a sympathizer, accedes to a courtship with the major, recognizing their shared “language of loss and loneliness,” and the two eventually marry. Soon, the major’s involvement with the resistance imperils his family, but his wife remains resolute, having long understood fate to be a force as pitiless as war: “Destiny was imprinted deeply. She saw it the way a river sensed the distant sea.”

To the Letter, by Tomasz Różycki, translated from the Polish by Mira Rosenthal (Archipelago). In this philosophical collection that explores doubt—regarding language, God, and the prospect of repeating history—many poems address an unreachable “you” who could be a lover, a deity, or a ghost of someone long dead. Rosenthal’s translation draws out these poems’ shades of melancholy and whimsy, along with the slant and irregular rhymes that contribute to their uncanny humor. Różycki’s verse teems with sensuous, imaginatively rendered details: “that half-drunk cup of tea, the mirror / filled up with want, the strand of hair curling toward / the drain like the Silk Road through the Karakum / known as Tartary, the wall that defends the void.”