best book for literature review

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

Don't Miss a Post! Subscribe

• Book Summaries
• Books for Teachers
• Research Methodology Books
• Themed Book Lists
• Beyond Books

Selected Reads

A blog for bibliophiles covering everything related to books from reviews and summaries to quotes and open articles.

Books on How to Write a Literature Review

By Med Kharbach, PhD | Published: June 18, 2023 | Updated: February 18, 2024

Working on a literature review can feel like venturing into an intricate maze—there’s methodology, grey literature, style formatting guidelines, and so much more to master. That’s why I’ve curated a list of essential reads that serve as your personal map through this labyrinth. Whether you’re just dipping your toes into the concept or you’ve been crafting literature reviews for years, these books offer invaluable insights to make your work comprehensive a\nd impactful.

For those of you scratching your heads thinking, “ What even is a literature review ?”—don’t sweat it. Take a quick detour to my earlier post, “What is a Literature Review,” to get the 411. Trust me, once you’ve got the basics down, these books will help you elevate your game to the next level.

Here is our collection of some very good books on how to write a literature review

1.  Published , by Thomas Deetjen

“Published” is a comprehensive guide that organizes the research process into seven clear phases, offering step-by-step instruction for each. The book is designed to take you through your research journey from the beginning to the end. It provides the clarity, direction, and encouragement you need to drive your project from the inception to the ultimate goal – publication.

2. Doing a Literature Review , by Chris Hart

“Doing a Literature Review” is a guide that illuminates the “what,” “how,” and “why” of literature reviewing. The book covers the literature review process from start to finish, introduces new chapters explaining different types of reviews and evidence evaluation, and offers extended examples for the application of key techniques and procedures.

The book couples a critical, philosophical approach with a selection of practical examples, equipping readers with both the intellectual understanding and the technical skills needed to produce high-quality literature reviews.

3. Doing a Systematic Review: A Student’s Guide , by Angela Boland (Editor), Gemma Cherry (Editor), Rumona Dickson (Editor)

“Doing a Systematic Review: A Student’s Guide” is a friendly, accessible manual from an expert team of authors with extensive experience in conducting and supervising systematic reviews.

The guide provides clear answers to all review-related questions, including formulating an appropriate review question, managing the review, developing a search strategy, getting started with data extraction, assessing the quality of a study, analyzing and synthesizing data, and writing up the discussion and conclusion sections of a dissertation or thesis.

4. An Introduction to Systematic Reviews , by David Gough  (Editor), Sandy Oliver (Editor), James Thomas (Editor)

“An Introduction to Systematic Reviews” is a hands-on guide that focuses on using systematic review as a research method. The book provides clear, step-by-step advice on the logic and processes of systematic reviewing, emphasizing the importance of precision and accuracy.

The second edition introduces a new chapter on statistical synthesis and innovative approaches to research synthesis, including text mining, living reviews, and qualitative comparative analysis in mixed methods reviews.

The book is filled with examples from across the social sciences, making it an invaluable resource for students and researchers seeking to turn systematic reviews into policy recommendations.

5. Introduction to Meta-Analysis , by Michael Borenstein, Larry V. Hedges, Julian P. T. Higgins, Hannah R. Rothstein 

“Introduction to Meta-Analysis” is written by four of the world’s leading authorities on meta-analysis. The updated edition presents an outline of meta-analysis in the research process, demonstrates how to compute effect sizes and treatment effects, and explains the fixed-effect and random-effects models for synthesizing data.

The book also helps in assessing and interpreting variation in effect size across studies, avoiding common mistakes in meta-analysis, and discussing controversies in meta-analysis. The book includes access to a companion website that provides step-by-step instructions for performing analyses using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA), along with additional resources.

6. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review , by Andrew Booth, Anthea Sutton, Mark Clowes, Marrissa Martyn-St James

This book is a practical guide to conducting literature reviews, offering step-by-step processes that work with any data. “Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review” includes worksheets and decision aids to help plan and organize your literature review, worked examples and case studies for practical understanding, troubleshooting tips, and answers to frequently asked questions.

This edition also includes a new chapter on analyzing mixed methods research and provides online access to a literature review starter template, an exercise workbook, project diary template, and a source credibility checklist.

7. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper , by Arlene G. Fink

Arlene G. Fink’s “Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper” provides an in-depth, accessible guide on how to synthesize research literature. It is an ideal resource for students, researchers, marketers, planners, and policymakers who are involved in designing and managing public and private agencies, conducting research studies, and preparing strategic plans and grant proposals.

The Fifth Edition of the book features new research, examples, and references from the social, behavioral, and health sciences, expanded coverage of qualitative research, updated and revised meta-analysis procedures, a new glossary of key terms, double the number of exercises, and additional examples of how to write reviews.

8. Systematic Reviews in Educational Research: Methodology, Perspectives and Application , by Olaf Zawacki-Richter et al 

This open access edited volume brings together international researchers in the field of education to describe and discuss the systematic review method as it applies to research in education. Alongside fundamental methodical considerations, reflections and practical examples are provided, offering an introduction and comprehensive overview of systematic reviews in educational research.

9. Searching the Grey Literature: A Handbook for Searching Reports, Working Papers, and Other Unpublished Research , by Sarah Bonato

“Searching the Grey Literature is an invaluable guide for researchers interested in expanding their knowledge about grey literature. Whether you’re faced with your first grey literature search request or you’re an experienced searcher finding that your patrons are unfamiliar with this vast body of literature, this book can help.

Providing effective strategies for crafting successful searches and teaching about the importance of grey literature, it is an important resource for librarians and other information professionals.

10. Publication Manual (OFFICIAL) 7th Edition of the American Psychological Association , by American Psychological Association

“The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition is the official source for APA Style. With millions of copies sold worldwide in multiple languages, it is the style manual of choice for writers, researchers, editors, students, and educators in the social and behavioral sciences, natural sciences, nursing, communications, education, business, engineering, and other fields.

Known for its authoritative, easy-to-use reference and citation system, the Publication Manual also offers guidance on choosing the headings, tables, figures, language, and tone that will result in powerful, concise, and elegant scholarly communication. It guides users through the scholarly writing process—from the ethics of authorship to reporting research through publication.”

11. The Literature Review: Six Steps to Success , by Lawrence A. Machi, Brenda T. McEvoy

“From daunting to doable in six steps, this book presents the process of literature review in a clear and straightforward manner. The authors walk students through every step of the process, including selecting a topic, searching the literature, developing arguments, surveying the literature, critiquing the literature, and writing the literature review.”

Final thoughts

As we round out this exploration of must-reads for crafting literature reviews, I can’t help but reflect on the transformative power of a well-executed review. It’s not just an academic exercise; it’s a meaningful contribution to your field, a way of synthesizing knowledge and creating a foundation for future research. Besides providing you with the “how-to”, these books delve into the nuances and complexities that make your review truly resonate.

I’ve personally found immense value in these resources, both in my days asa a doctoral student and in my current research work. The methodologies, guidelines, and tips covered are like an insider’s guide to academic writing. Whether you’re a newbie or a seasoned pro, having a collection of solid guidebooks can make the difference between a literature review that’s just okay and one that sets the gold standard.

Related Posts

Meet Med Kharbach, PhD

Dr. Med Kharbach is an influential voice in the global educational landscape, with an extensive background in educational studies and a decade-long experience as a K-12 teacher. Holding a Ph.D. from Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Canada, he brings a unique perspective to the educational world by integrating his profound academic knowledge with his hands-on teaching experience. Dr. Kharbach's academic pursuits encompass curriculum studies, discourse analysis, language learning/teaching, language and identity, emerging literacies, educational technology, and research methodologies. His work has been presented at numerous national and international conferences and published in various esteemed academic journals.

Join our mailing list

Subscribe to our email list for bite-sized book summaries, curated recommendations, and exclusive content.

Subscribe  for exclusive resources .

You have successfully joined our subscriber list.

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• CAREER FEATURE
• 04 December 2020
• Correction 09 December 2020

How to write a superb literature review

Andy Tay is a freelance writer based in Singapore.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Literature reviews are important resources for scientists. They provide historical context for a field while offering opinions on its future trajectory. Creating them can provide inspiration for one’s own research, as well as some practice in writing. But few scientists are trained in how to write a review — or in what constitutes an excellent one. Even picking the appropriate software to use can be an involved decision (see ‘Tools and techniques’). So Nature asked editors and working scientists with well-cited reviews for their tips.

Access options

Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals

Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription

24,99 € / 30 days

cancel any time

Subscribe to this journal

Receive 51 print issues and online access

185,98 € per year

only 3,65 € per issue

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03422-x

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Updates & Corrections

Correction 09 December 2020 : An earlier version of the tables in this article included some incorrect details about the programs Zotero, Endnote and Manubot. These have now been corrected.

Hsing, I.-M., Xu, Y. & Zhao, W. Electroanalysis 19 , 755–768 (2007).

Article   Google Scholar  

Ledesma, H. A. et al. Nature Nanotechnol. 14 , 645–657 (2019).

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Brahlek, M., Koirala, N., Bansal, N. & Oh, S. Solid State Commun. 215–216 , 54–62 (2015).

Choi, Y. & Lee, S. Y. Nature Rev. Chem . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-020-00221-w (2020).

Download references

Related Articles

• Research management

How I fled bombed Aleppo to continue my career in science

Career Feature 08 MAY 24

Illuminating ‘the ugly side of science’: fresh incentives for reporting negative results

Hunger on campus: why US PhD students are fighting over food

Career Feature 03 MAY 24

Japan can embrace open science — but flexible approaches are key

Correspondence 07 MAY 24

US funders to tighten oversight of controversial ‘gain of function’ research

News 07 MAY 24

France’s research mega-campus faces leadership crisis

News 03 MAY 24

Mount Etna’s spectacular smoke rings and more — April’s best science images

Plagiarism in peer-review reports could be the ‘tip of the iceberg’

Nature Index 01 MAY 24

Southeast University Future Technology Institute Recruitment Notice

Professor openings in mechanical engineering, control science and engineering, and integrating emerging interdisciplinary majors

Nanjing, Jiangsu (CN)

Southeast University

Staff Scientist

A Staff Scientist position is available in the laboratory of Drs. Elliot and Glassberg to study translational aspects of lung injury, repair and fibro

Maywood, Illinois

Loyola University Chicago - Department of Medicine

W3-Professorship (with tenure) in Inorganic Chemistry

The Institute of Inorganic Chemistry in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Bonn invites applications for a W3-Pro...

53113, Zentrum (DE)

Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität

Principal Investigator Positions at the Chinese Institutes for Medical Research, Beijing

Studies of mechanisms of human diseases, drug discovery, biomedical engineering, public health and relevant interdisciplinary fields.

Beijing, China

The Chinese Institutes for Medical Research (CIMR), Beijing

Research Associate - Neural Development Disorders

Houston, Texas (US)

Baylor College of Medicine (BCM)

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

• Find My Rep

You are here

The Literature Review A Step-by-Step Guide for Students

• Diana Ridley - Sheffield University, UK
• Description

New to this edition are:

• Examples drawn from a wide range of disciplines
• A new chapter on conducting systematic reviews
• Increased guidance on evaluating the quality of online sources and online literature
• Enhanced guidance in dealing with copyright and permissions issues.

This book also comes with a companion website containing a wide range of examples of successful literature reviews from various academic disciplines. SAGE Study Skills are essential study guides for students of all levels. From how to write great essays and succeeding at university, to writing your undergraduate dissertation and doing postgraduate research, SAGE Study Skills help you get the best from your time at university. Visit the SAGE Study Skills hub  for tips, quizzes and videos on study success!

Supplements

Visit the SAGE Study Skills hub  for tips, resources and videos on study success!

'The Literature Review is a clearly written and easily accessible self-guided introduction packed with detailed examples. It's especially useful for budding researchers unfamiliar with crafting literature reviews that support strong theory development and empirical testing. I recommend it to every first-year doctoral student' - Michael R. Hyman Distinguished Achievement Professor, New Mexico State University

Excellent book, providing very good guidance on how to conduct a literature review.

Provides specific guidance on doing a literature review which is relevant to UG and PG students.

This text will support our trainees with their M-level study. A very useful text.

My students have found this book so helpful. The step-by-step approach offers clarity and helps build students' confidence in conducting a literature review.

Thank you very much for this insepction copy. This book is current and comprehensive. It includes useful consideration of referencing software. It has a particulalry easy to follow format with lots of text boxes and excercises. It is particularly useful for those new to literature searching.

This is an excellent book, clearly written and suitable for undergraduate students.

It outlines the purpose of literature review and gives good information about note taking and how be critical.

This book should help my students with the part of the research process to often struggle with.

Excellent guide. A must read for postgraduate learners.

This book provides detailed insights into carrying out the reserach for a literature review. Also it provides excellent step-by-step guidance in the writing process.

Helpful for students at all levels. The framework is useful for students trying to grasp a complicated procedure. The systematic literature review chapter is a nice addition. A great resource for students.

Preview this book

Sample materials & chapters, for instructors, select a purchasing option, order from:.

• VitalSource
• Amazon Kindle
• Google Play

Related Products

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Writing a Literature Review

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
• A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
• Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
• Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

• Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

• Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
• Qualitative versus quantitative research
• Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

• It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
• Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin

Trinity Search

Trinity menu.

• Faculties and Schools
• Trinity Courses
• Trinity Research

Doing a Systematic Review

• Step 1: Your Research Question, Frameworks and Creating a Protocol
• Step 2: Choosing Where to Search
• Step 3: Developing a Search Strategy
• Step 4: Running & Recording your Search
• Step 5: Managing your Search Results
• Step 6: Evaluating & Sifting the Results
• Step 7: Writing it up - Including PRISMA Diagrams

Books available at Trinity

• Asking the Library for Advanced Help

• << Previous: Step 7: Writing it up - Including PRISMA Diagrams
• Next: Asking the Library for Advanced Help >>
• Last Updated: Sep 25, 2023 12:02 PM
• URL: https://libguides.tcd.ie/systematic-reviews

AP® English Literature

The best ap® english literature review guide for 2024.

• The Albert Team
• Last Updated On: January 29, 2024

Scoring a 5 on the AP® English Literature and Composition exam is no easy task. In 2019, for example, only 6.2% of students earned a 5 on the test. While this statistic may be discouraging at first glance, it does indicate that a perfect score is possible for those willing to do extra preparation and practice. In 2022, nearly 17% of test-takers earned a 5 – a big improvement!

It may take some hard work, but it’s possible to ace this exam! We’re here to help.

In this comprehensive review, we’ll unpack the exam’s basic format, analyze the common structures and shapes of AP® Literature questions, provide useful tips and strategies for scoring a 5, and offer a variety of helpful additional resources and study tools.

Let’s get to it!

What We Review

How is the AP® English Literature and Composition Exam formatted? 

The AP® English Literature and Composition exam is divided into two sections: multiple-choice and free-response. 

The multiple-choice section is broken into five chunks equipped with 8-13 questions each, totaling 55 questions. You will be asked to analyze excerpts from diverse literary texts, including prose fiction, drama, or poetry. Moreover, there will always be at least 2 prose fiction passages and 2 poems in this section of the exam. The fifth text can be either. 

The multiple-choice section has a time limit of 1 hour, and it counts as 45% of your overall exam score. 

Section 2 of the exam, often informally called the “essay section,” contains 3 free-response prompts which demand literary analysis of a given poem, a passage of prose fiction, or an excerpt from a play. 

The first two prompts will provide a passage or a poem requiring analysis, while the third and final prompt will ask you to engage with a concept, issue, or element in a literary work that you are expected to have encountered during the school year. A list of appropriate works is provided for the third prompt. 

You have 2 hours to complete Section 2, which comprises 55% of your final exam score.

Return to the Table of Contents

How Long is the AP® English Literature and Composition Exam?

The AP® English Literature and Composition exam is 3 hours long. Students will have 1 hour to complete the multiple-choice section (55 questions) and 2 hours to complete the free-response section (3 questions). 

Since you must answer 55 questions in 60 minutes on the multiple-choice portion of the exam, you should pace yourself at about 1 minute per question and about 12 minutes per passage. 

Likewise, since the free response section is timed at 120 minutes, you should aim to complete each essay in 40 minutes or under.

Time yourself when you practice, and don’t get caught up trying to answer a question that you totally do not know the answer to. Don’t rush through the test, but don’t take too much time.

How Many Questions Does the AP® English Literature and Composition Exam Have? 

Section i: multiple-choice.

• 5 passages, 55 questions total: 8-13 questions per passage
• Passages include 2 Prose, 2 Poems, and 1 of either

Section II: Free-Response

• 1 literary analysis of a given poem
• 1 literary analysis of a given passage of prose fiction
• 1 literary argument

What Topics are Covered on the AP® English Literature and Composition Exam? 

Perhaps the best way to begin thinking about the topics covered on the exam is through a holistic approach. Overall, the test assesses the six big ideas covered within the AP® English Literature and Composition course itself: 

• Figurative Language
• Literary Argumentation

These components comprise the whole exam, and you will be tested specifically on material from these broad concepts. 

Now, let’s return to its formatting. Remember, the exam is divided into multiple choice and free response, each carrying its own set of demands and topics.

Section I: Multiple Choice

Since the AP® English Literature and Composition exam is a skills-based test, there’s no way to know what specific passages or topics might appear on the official exam. Rather, CollegeBoard uses a variety of excerpts from literary texts, including prose, poetry, and drama. 

The passages often range from the 16th to the 21st century, and the authors and literary works change yearly. So it is imperative that you sharpen your critical reading skills and hone your ability to engage with the forms, styles, and content of a diverse range of literature. 

However, we have some good news. We do know how the multiple choice section is organized and weighted. It is divided into three broad units: short fiction, poetry, and longer fiction or drama, with each unit carrying its own weighted percentage. The chart below outlines this weighting:

Moreover, the multiple choice portion of the exam can be further broken down into 7 assessed skills:

Remember, the multiple-choice section will include five sets of 8 to 13 questions per set, so be prepared to encounter many if not all of these skill sets per passage. But it is safe to say that you should review certain skill categories more thoroughly than others on account of how frequently they appear on the exam. 

Below we’ve compiled a descending list of priorities for you to consider. 

• Skill Category 4 : Explain the function of the narrator or speaker
• Skill Category 1 : Explain the function of character
• Skill Category 3 : Explain the function of plot and structure
• Skill Category 5 : Explain the function of word choice, imagery, and symbols
• Skill Category 7 : Develop textually substantiated arguments about interpretations of part or all of a text
• Skill Category 6 : Explain the function of comparison
• Skill Category 2 . Explain the function of setting

Section 4, “Explain the function of the narrator or speaker,” should be studied the most since it holds a substantial amount of weight in determining your score. Skill category 2, as you see above, accounts for a small percentage of the exam so we recommend you don’t spend hours upon hours brushing up on the function of the setting. Don’t blow it off, though!

Section II: Free Response

Like the multiple choice section, the free response portion is also skills-based. We cannot predict what specific passages or poems will make it onto the test, but we do know the type(s) of essays you will be required to write:

• 1 Poetry Analysis: After reading a poem of 100 to 300 words, you will respond to a prompt based on the poem with a well-developed essay. Your essay, of course, must offer a defensible interpretation, make adequate use of textual evidence, engage critically with cited evidence, and use appropriate grammar and punctuation when communicating its argument. These requirements are present throughout all three free-response essays. 
• 1 Prose Fiction Analysis: This part of the free response section will provide a passage of prose fiction (500 to 700 words) and, like the poetry analysis, ask you to respond to a prompt through writing a well-developed essay. Your argument must adhere to the rigor and clarity outlined above in the poetry analysis description.
• 1 Literary Argument Essay: Here, you will be given an open-ended topic and be asked to write an evidence-based argumentative essay in response to the topic. There will be a quote or small passage to read, a corresponding prompt, and an extensive list of literary works you may use when developing your argument. While you do not have to use a work from this list, you must select a work of literary merit. Avoid choosing fantasy novels or works designed more for pure entertainment. It needs to be a work of “deep” literature.

What Do the AP® English Literature and Composition Exam Questions Look Like?

Multiple choice examples:.

The Course and Exam Description (CED) for AP® Lit provides 10 practice questions that address prose fiction and 9 practice questions that address poetry.

Below, we’ll look at examples of each question type and cover the skills and essential knowledge they address. First, we will examine the multiple-choice questions involving prose fiction:

Skill: 5.B Explain the function of specific words and phrases in a text.

Essential Knowledge: FIG-1.M Descriptive words, such as adjectives and adverbs, qualify or modify the things they describe and affect readers’ interaction with the text.

Skill: 4.C Identify and describe details, diction, or syntax in a text that reveal a narrator’s or speaker’s perspective.

Essential Knowledge: NAR-1.R Information included and/or not included in a text conveys the perspective of characters, narrators, and/or speakers.

Skill: 3.C Explain the function of structure in a text.

Essential Knowledge: STR-1.F A text’s structure affects readers’ reactions and expectations by presenting the relationships among the ideas of the text via their relative positions and their placement within the text as a whole

Now that we’ve taken a look at samples of multiple-choice questions involving prose fiction, let’s turn our attention toward questions that address poetry. 

Skill 7.B: Develop a thesis statement that conveys a defensible claim about an interpretation of literature and that may establish a line of reasoning. 

Essential Knowledge: LAN-1.D A thesis statement expresses an interpretation of a literary text, and requires a defense, through use of textual evidence and a line of reasoning, both of which are explained in an essay through commentary.

Skill 4.C: Identify and describe details, diction, or syntax in a text that reveal a narrator’s or speaker’s perspective.

Essential Knowledge: NAR-1.X Multiple, and even contrasting, perspectives can occur within a single text and contribute to the complexity of the text.

Skill: 5.D Identify and explain the function of an image or imagery.

Essential Knowledge: FIG-1.O Descriptive words, such as adjectives and adverbs, contribute to sensory imagery.

As you see, these questions force you to engage with literature more critically and technically. CollegeBoard’s main objective is to shape you into a budding literary critic capable of producing college-level work, so they consistently ask questions that look like those above. 

To develop your skills to a level that would be acceptable by a university, then, the test-makers over at CollegeBoard often craft questions involving analysis of literary devices, character perspective, figurative language, and more. The individual skills assessed by these questions are designed to take your thinking to a much higher level.

Free Response Examples: 

The Course and Exam Description (CED) for AP® Lit also provides samples of free response questions. Let’s begin by taking a look at a sample of a poetry-based free response prompt.

Poetry Analysis

Skills: 4.C, 7.A, 7.B, 7.C, 7.D, 7.E

Note how the prompt is somewhat vague and open-ended. While it does ask you to hone in on a specific topic within the poem—aging—through discussion of the writer’s use of poetic elements and techniques, it also does not specify which of those elements and techniques should be discussed:

• Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how Emerson uses poetic elements and techniques to convey the speaker’s complex perspective on aging.

So, it is imperative that you come to this exam with a deep and clear understanding of literary devices and motifs such as parallelism, imagery, irony, etc.

If you struggle with literary and rhetorical terms, check out our guide on essential AP® Literature Rhetorical Terms !

In a bit, we’ll provide some additional resources to help you build your knowledge of these literary tools.

Prose Fiction Analysis

Skills: 1.A, 7.A, 7.B, 7.C, 7.D, 7.E

The prompt requires you to read the excerpt and construct a well-developed literary analysis in response. Like the poetry prompt, note how this prompt is somewhat vague and open-ended. Again, it points you in a direction but leaves it up to you on how you’re going to get there:

• Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how Kincaid uses literary elements and techniques  to portray the complexity of the narrator’s new situation.

Therefore, it is imperative that you come to the test prepared with knowledge of literary elements and techniques.

Literary Argument 

Skills: 1.E, 2.C, 7.A, 7.B, 7.C, 7.D, 7.E

Unlike the other two essays, this prompt contains neither a prose excerpt nor a poem. Rather, it provides a brief quote and then asks you to expand on its central concept and, in our case, the notion of home. 

It then provides a list of works that would suit your analysis. You are to select one work from the list or choose another work of literary merit and analyze it in the context of the prompt. Again, note how much of the analysis is up to you. The prompt points you in a direction and then leaves you on your own to select how you’re going to get there. 

Therefore, it is imperative that you have not only a solid understanding of literary terms and concepts but also a diverse and deep history of reading. We will direct you toward some additional resources that will strengthen your knowledge below but start by consulting our Ultimate AP® English Literature Reading List to get started!

And if you’re not an avid reader, do not fret! You can guarantee the AP® English Literature and Composition course itself will cover at least one of the books on the list. You will likely be familiar with at least 2-3 of the texts just from taking the course. And if all else fails, you may select your own work of literary merit to discuss!

Free Response Rubric Breakdowns

In previous years, the AP® Lit essays were scored using holistic rubrics on a scale of 0-9. However, after the 2019 exam, the evaluation changed to a new analytic rubric which runs on a scale of 0-6. 

Switching to an analytic rubric from a holistic one can be difficult, especially if you’ve already taken another AP® English class or prepared using the holistic version. But, unlike the holistic rubric, the analytic model tells you exactly what to include in your essay to earn maximum points. 

Consider the new analytic rubric a How-To Guide, designed to earn you a 6 on each essay. And, unlike the AP® Lang exam, all three AP® Lit essays are graded essentially through the same rubric.

Below, we’ll spend some time breaking down the elements of the new rubric. First, let’s take a look at the Thesis row.

Row A: Thesis (0-1 Points)

A well-developed thesis statement is crucial to making your overall argument effective and convincing. Unsurprisingly, the Thesis row on the rubric is essentially all or nothing; you either earn the point or you don’t.

Let’s break down the wording on the rubric to further understand the significance of the thesis point.

It’s important to note what the rubric warns against: 

• No thesis at all
• The thesis only restates the prompt
• The thesis merely summarizes 
• The thesis does not respond to the prompt 

Doing any of these will miss the mark, and a weak thesis often leads to a weak essay. Rather, the rubric emphasizes that you: 

• Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible interpretation of the poem, prose passage, or selected work.

Easier said than done, we know. But notice the key phrase, “defensible interpretation.” The basis of your argument, the rubric insists, is entirely up to you as long as you adequately defend and your point. This means you must be ready to dig into the text, cite textual evidence, and analyze your findings sophisticatedly and persuasively. Your thesis, then, must contain a claim. 

If thesis statements are particularly troubling to you, we recommend tuning into CollegeBoard’s official online workshop . It’s helpful, really. 

Below are two examples of thesis statements from the 2019 exam:

• This thesis statement thoroughly considers both the positive and negative consequences of idealism and explains how this portrayal illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole.
• This thesis statement fails to identify a character and confusingly identifies the government’s repressive efforts as presenting a “fabricated view of an Ideal world.” It ultimately makes no claim and overly generalizes.

Row B: Evidence and Commentary (0-4 Points)

Think of evidence and commentary as the meat of your essay. This is where you will really dig into your argument, cite the text, and make specific claims and arguments.

As mentioned, this portion of the rubric works on a scale of 0-4:

As you see, earning all four points requires direct and specific textual citation and thorough, deep analysis throughout your entire essay. Cite evidence that fits your main argument, do not simply cite for the sake of citation. Always avoid paraphrasing (except on the third free-response question where paraphrasing is acceptable). Do not simply cite text and then give a basic summary. Dig deep and analyze. 

If you struggle with analyzing evidence and developing commentary, check out one of our many practice models ! 

Row C Sophistication (0-1 Points)

Similar to the Thesis row, the Sophistication evaluation is also all or nothing — you either earn the point or you don’t. 

However, earning the sophistication point is not as cut and dry as earning the thesis point. You can’t really pinpoint or locate sophistication in the way you can a thesis statement. If it’s there, it’s everywhere; if not, it’s nowhere. 

So to unpack this complex idea, let’s return to the rubric. 

The rubric states that essays that earn the point “demonstrate sophistication of thought and/or develop a complex literary argument.” 

To be more precise, this means that your essay does these four things: 

• Identifies and explores complexities or tensions within the poem, prose passage, or selected work. 
• Situates your overall interpretation within a broader, more universal context. 
• Accounts for alternative interpretations of the poem, prose passage, or selected work. 
• Employs a style that is consistently vivid and persuasive.

Conversely, then, you will not earn the point if your essay:

• Contains sweeping generalizations
• Only hints at other positions or interpretations
• Uses overly complex sentences or language that doesn’t add anything to the argument

Above all, sophistication cannot be reduced to a checkbox. You can’t really add it here or there. It must pervade the entire essay for you to earn the point. It’s a difficult task, but it can be done with a little practice and perseverance. 

For additional tips on writing well-developed analyses, check out our guide on how to tackle prose passages !

What Can You Bring to the AP® English Literature and Composition Exam?

If you’re taking the  digital  exam, you must use a laptop computer (Mac, Windows, or school-managed Chromebook). Because the full-length digital AP® Exams require typewritten free responses, the exams can’t be taken on smartphones. For more details,  here is the full digital AP® exam specifications  from College Board.

If you’re traveling to a testing location to take an in-person exam, make sure to arrive early. If you’re testing digitally from home, be sure all of your digital login details are confirmed beforehand.

Given the sheer importance and seriousness surrounding AP® exams, the College Board has imposed very strict rules and regulations regarding what you can and cannot bring into your testing room (if you’re testing in-person at a school). Not adhering to these rules can lead to score invalidation and even room-wide exam cancellation, so it’s important to know what you can and cannot bring with you on testing day!

What You Should Bring to Your AP® English Literature Exam

If you’re taking the paper AP® English Literature exam in-person at school, you should bring:

• At least 2 sharpened No. 2 pencils for completing the multiple choice section
• At least 2 pens with black or blue ink only. These are used to complete certain areas of your exam booklet covers and to write your free-response questions. CollegeBoard is very clear that pens should be black or blue ink only, so do not show up with your favorite neon gel pen!
• You are allowed to wear a watch as long as it does not have internet access, does not beep or make any other noise, and does not have an alarm. It should be a standard analog or digital watch, nothing fancy!
• If you do not attend the school where you are taking an exam, you must bring a government issued or school issued photo ID.
• If you receive any testing accommodations , be sure that you bring your College Board SSD Accommodations Letter.

What You Should NOT Bring to Your AP® English Literature Exam

If you’re taking the paper AP® English Literature exam in-person at school, you should NOT bring:

• Electronic devices. Phones, smartwatches, tablets, and/or any other electronic devices are expressly prohibited both in the exam room and break areas. Seriously, do not bring these into the testing room. You could invalidate the entire room’s scores.
• Books, dictionaries, highlighters, or notes 
• Mechanical pencils, colored pencils, or pens that do not have black/blue ink. Sometimes the lead used in mechanical pencils cannot be read when run through the scantron reader, so it is best to just avoid them altogether. 
• Your own scratch paper
• Reference guides
• Watches that beep or have alarms
• Food or drink

This list is not exhaustive. Be sure to double-check with your teacher or testing site to make sure that you are not bringing any additional prohibited items.

How to Study for AP® English Literature and Composition: 7 Steps

Start with a diagnostic test to see where you stand. Ask your teacher if they can assign you one of our full-length practice tests as a starting point. Your multiple choice will be graded for you, and you can self-score your free response essays using the College Board’s scoring guidelines. If you would prefer to take a pencil and paper test, Princeton Review or Barron’s are two reputable places to start. Be sure to record your score.

Once you’ve completed and scored your diagnostic test, it’s time to analyze the results and create a study plan. 

• If you used Albert, you’ll notice that each question is labeled with the skill that it assesses. If any skills stand out as something you’re consistently getting wrong, those concepts should be a big part of your study plan. 
• If you used Princeton Review, Barron’s, or another paper test, do your best to sort your incorrect answers into the skill buckets from Albert’s AP® English Literature and Composition Standards Practice .

The tables below sort each set of skills into groups based on their Enduring Understandings and Big Ideas.

Big Idea: Character 

ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: Characters in literature allow readers to study and explore a range of values, beliefs, assumptions, biases, and cultural norms represented by those characters.

Big Idea: Setting

ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: Setting and the details associated with it not only depict a time and place, but also convey values associated with that setting.

Big Idea: Structure

ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: The arrangement of the parts and sections of a text, the relationship of the parts to each other, and the sequence in which the text reveals information are all structural choices made by a writer that contribute to the reader’s interpretation of a text.

Big Idea: Narration

ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: A narrator’s or speaker’s perspective controls the details and emphases that affect how readers experience and interpret a text.

Big Idea: Figurative Language

ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: Comparisons, representations, and associations shift meaning from the literal to the figurative and invite readers to interpret a text.

Big Idea: Literary Argumentation 

ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: Readers establish and communicate their interpretations of literature through arguments supported by textual evidence.

Once your list of practice questions is complete, check out our Ultimate List AP® English Literature Tips for some pointers.

Now that you’ve developed a study plan for the multiple choice section, it’s time to tackle the FRQs. You should have self-scored your essays using CollegeBoard’s scoring guidelines . If you notice that there is one particular prompt you struggled with, use Albert’s AP® Lit FRQ Approach Guide to help hone your skills!

Check out Albert’s AP® Lit FRQ prompts for more practice!

If you didn’t struggle with a particular prompt as much as you did a particular part of the rubric, try to figure out what went wrong. Does your thesis restate the prompt instead of proposing your own position? Did you generalize too much? Did you remember to provide evidence but forget to augment it with commentary and analysis? Maybe your word choice wasn’t varied enough to earn the sophistication point.

Whatever element you struggled with, have a look at our comprehensive page dedicated to AP® Lit for some expert advice!

Once you’ve developed an effective study plan using the links and practice above, and you’ve identified the skills which need more practice, it’s time to set your plan in motion. Check and mark your calendar. How many days, weeks, or months do you have until your exam? Pace your studying according to this time-frame. Pro-tip: If you only have a few weeks or days to go, prioritize the skills that you scored the lowest on. 

About halfway through your study schedule, plan to take a second practice test to check your progress. You can either have your teacher assign another full-length Albert practice test or use one of the additional practice tests included in whatever AP® English Literature and Composition review book you purchased. Use these results to inform the rest of your study schedule. Are there skills that you improved on or scored lower on this time? Adjust accordingly, and use our tips in the next section to guide you.

AP® English Literature and Composition Review: 15 Must Know Study Tips

5 AP® English Literature and Composition Study Tips for Home

1.  read as much as possible..

And read widely. Read everything from epic poetry and Victorian novels to New Yorker articles and album reviews to Buzzfeed-style listicles. Read a combination of high and lowbrow texts to make your knowledge more worldly and syncretic.

Make a schedule for personal reading time and stick to it. Reading widely, of course, has incalculable benefits that will not only help you score a 5 on the test but also strengthen your academic performance across the board. 

Reading will help you develop a more impressive vocabulary and a better understanding of varied sentence structure and syntax. The more you read, the better equipped you will be to score a 5 on this exam.

2. Become familiar with the Western Canon.

The Western canon, often referred to simply as “The Canon,” is the body of high-culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that is highly valued in the West, i.e., the poems, prose passages, and drama selections that you will mostly see on the AP® Lit exam. 

The canon contains the “classics,” so to speak, and it includes everything from Homer to Junot Diaz. Cultivating a basic understanding of these texts and their authors will not only familiarize you with the history and development of the English tradition but also strengthen your understanding of the so-called “conversation of literature,” the innumerable and complex ways that authors and their works speak to each other and interact. We recommend reading at least the first chapter of Harold Bloom’s book on the subject to get a basic understanding. 

We also insist that you familiarize yourself with the various problems that the perseverance of such a canon produces. During the 80s and 90s, a canon war of sorts took place among English departments, with progressives aiming to dismantle the canon on the grounds that it neglects many African-American, female, queer, and impoverished writers in favor of spotlighting “dead white males.” 

This friction between advocates and opponents of the canon is extremely important to the history and status quo of literary criticism, and understanding this battle will deeply enrich your understanding of literature and increase your chances of scoring a 5 on the exam.

3. Read Thomas Foster’s How To Read Literature Like a Professor .

This book is a lively and entertaining introduction to the tools frequently used in literary criticism, including symbolism, theme, context, irony, and more. It is an excellent way to begin thinking deeply about literature, and it offers clear examples of close-reading.

It also discusses a wide variety of works that will help familiarize you with the canon. It’s very accessible too. Buy it, read it, mark it up, and keep it by your side throughout class. It’s a great tool. 

4. Make flashcards.

You will need to have a strong understanding of different literary devices, authors, works, and rhetorical techniques, and you don’t want to waste time scrambling for definitions on the day of the exam. 

Make yourself some flashcards with the most common literary devices, authors, works, and rhetorical techniques, and carve out at least 30 minutes per day to review. If you’d prefer to use an online resource, make some flashcards over at Quizlet ! 

5. Form study groups!

The beauty of reading literature is that it often produces different and conflicting responses in people, so discussing literature with your friends is a good way to explore new and diverse perspectives. 

What you bring to a text, for instance, may be completely different from what your friend or peer brings. Discussion is a great way to comprehend and investigate difficult works. And it’s also pretty fun!

5 AP® English Literature and Composition Multiple Choice Study Tips

1. practice, practice..

Practice answering multiple choice questions as often as you can. AP® English Literature and Composition multiple choice questions will address either fiction, poetry, or drama, and they will ask you to identify and analyze various literary devices, techniques, and motifs. So study these very devices. If you find yourself totally stuck, consult our guide on how to tackle the multiple choice section . 

2. Sharpen your close-reading skills.

The true key to acing the multiple choice section of this exam is staying engaged with the passages provided to you and actively reading. That means staying alert through the passages, marking them up, and engaging with them directly, not passively skimming them.

Find a method of active reading that works best for you. Some like to mark up the passage extensively, while others prefer to just read the passage twice and take notes here and there. Select which method works for you and go with it. However, do not just choose the easy or lazy way out. You’ll regret it later when you receive your scores. 

3. Look over the questions before reading the passage.

This is often a semi-controversial piece of advice because it doesn’t work for all readers. But it can be helpful if you’re someone who gets easily distracted when reading old prose passages or difficult poetry! 

If you find your mind wandering when reading AP® Lit passages, glancing at the questions beforehand can give your brain a purpose to focus on and a point of entry into the passage. It’s always easiest to begin searching when you know what you’re looking for.

4. Use process of elimination.

Often, an AP® Lit multiple choice question will have one or two answer choices that can be crossed off pretty quickly. So try and narrow your choices down to two possible answers, and then choose the best one. 

If this strategy isn’t working on a particularly difficult question or it seems to hold you up longer than you’d like, it’s perfectly okay to circle it, skip it, and come back to it at the end. Do not get hung up on eliminating choices. Rather, use this strategy to make your reading more efficient and quicker. 

5. It doesn’t hurt to guess.

Obviously, while guessing on every single question isn’t a good strategy and will lead to a 1 on the exam, an educated guess on particularly difficult questions that you truly don’t know how to answer can help. You are scored only on the number of correct answers you give, not the number of questions you answer, so it makes sense to guess on questions that you seriously have no idea how to answer.  

5 AP® English Literature and Composition FRQ Study Tips

1. practice your writing skills by answering questions from collegeboard’s archive of past exam questions or explore our free response practice modules ..

Typically, the same skills are assessed from year to year, so practicing with released exams is a great way to brush up on your analysis skills, and our review practice allows you to pinpoint skills you may need help with.

2. Explore and use the rubric!

The best part about the updated AP® English Literature and Composition revised rubrics and scoring guidelines is that it’s very clear to discern which elements are needed to earn full credit for your essay. Granted, it can be tough to include each element—especially that tricky sophistication section—but the rubric’s outline offers a clear and concise portrait of the perfect essay .

Be sure to construct your thesis statement into a clear and definable interpretation. Provide specific evidence and compelling commentary that supports your thesis. If you check these boxes, then you will have a much greater chance of developing a clear and defensible interpretation. 

3. Pay attention to the task verbs employed in your free response prompts .

Task verbs are verbs that essentially indicate what it is you should do in your free response. The three common task verbs include: 

• Analyze: Examine methodically and in detail the structure of the topic of the question for purposes of interpretation and explanation.
• Choose: Select a literary work from among provided choices.
• Read: Look at or view printed directions and provided passages.

4. Have a solid understanding of literary devices.

Most of the FRQ’s require you to not only specifically identify a passage’s array of literary and rhetorical devices but also analyze and unpack how those devices construct mood, meaning, tone, and more. Study up, read the aforementioned Foster book , and take a look at our list of 15 Essential Rhetorical Terms to Know For AP® English Literature . 

5. Fine-tune your thesis statement.

Your thesis statement is arguably the most important sentence in your essay. It informs the reader of your central argument and summarizes your interpretation, and it sets the tone for the rest of your essay. It is imperative that you master the tricky art of the thesis statement before taking your exam. 

Many university writing centers offer online education on thesis statements that can prove extremely beneficial. Consult UNC Chapel Hill’s thesis statement handout for extra help!

The AP® English Literature and Composition Exam: 5 Test Day Tips to Remember

Be sure you put at least something in your stomach before taking the exam, even if it might be in knots from nerves. You don’t need to eat a deluxe breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon, biscuits, etc. (unless that’s your routine), but you do need to eat at least something . Your brain and your body need the energy. If you’re hungry during the exam, it might be harder for you to focus, leading to a lower score or an incomplete exam.

2. Make sure you know the location of your testing site before taking the test.

You do not want to be scrambling and running around the school trying to find your testing room on the day of the exam. Know your room number and know how to get there. There’s truly nothing worse than running around your school trying to find a room when a hugely-important test is underway. 

If you’re getting a ride from a parent or friend, be sure they know the address beforehand. If you’re taking public transit, check the schedule. If you are taking your exam at your own school, don’t get too comfortable. Be sure you know the room number! This is something small but impactful that you can do to reduce your stress the morning of your exam.

3. Prepare everything you need the night before.

Waking up and scrambling to choose an outfit, find pencils, or make breakfast will just stress you out and put you in a negative headspace. Plan your outfit the night before to reduce stress and have an easy breakfast ready to go.

Being prepared saves time and cuts back unnecessary stress. 

And wear something comfortable. You don’t want to be adjusting your outfit throughout the test. It’ll just be distracting. 

4. Bring mints or gum with you.

The rules say that you can’t have food or drink in the testing room, but mints and/or gum are usually allowed unless it’s against your testing site’s own rules. If you find yourself getting distracted, pop a mint or a stick of gum in your mouth! This can help to keep you more awake and focused.

5. Remember to breathe and just relax.

Seriously, just breathe. If you’ve followed the rest of the tips in this post, listened to your teacher, read up on your literary devices, and done your homework, then you’re well-prepared for this exam. Trust yourself. Know that you have done all you can do to prepare and don’t cram the morning of the exam. Last-minute studying helps no one, and it often just leads to stress!

AP® English Literature and Composition Review Notes and Practice Test Resources

Ap® collegeboard’s official youtube channel.

This YouTube channel provides tons of tips, advice, and strategies for tackling the AP® English Literature and Composition exam. It offers online seminars and classes on a diverse range of Lit-related topics such as plot structure, unpacking symbolism, and crafting strong commentary. The best thing about it is that real-life teachers lead the classes, so they feel very personalized.

If you’re a more visual learner who thrives on video content, then this channel is perfect for you!

How-to Guide for Literary Analysis Essays

While we 100% do not condone using Sparknotes textual summaries to get your way through AP® English Literature, we do recommend taking a look at some of their guides and workshops and using them as supplementary resources. This how-to guide offers a 7-step method of approaching literary analysis that might help you get the ball rolling if you’re totally stuck.

This guide is perfect for anyone needing to brush up on their writing skills or anyone needing to find a solid step-by-step approach to writing the free response questions.

AP® English Literature Jeopardy Game

This online Jeopardy game is not only tons of fun but also super helpful in developing your memory and strengthening your understanding of basic literary elements and devices. It contains categories involving poetry terms, general Lit, syntax, style, and figurative language. It’s a great way to review basic terms for the exam, and you can play with up to ten people through its make-your-team feature.  

This is a perfect review for anyone looking to quickly review literary terms in a fun way.

Ms. Effie’s Lifesavers

If you’re a seasoned AP® English teacher, Ms. Effie (Sandra Effinger) probably needs no introduction! Ms. Effie’s Lifesavers website has helped many AP® Lang and AP® Lit teachers plan effective and thoroughly aligned lessons and assignments. Sandra was an AP® Reader for many years, so she knows her stuff. She has tons of free content on her page, as well as a Dropbox full of AP® English goodies for anyone who makes a donation via her PayPal. You’ll find resources for both AP® Language and AP® Literature here. 

Ms. Effie’s webpage is perfect for all students. Really, it has material that would benefit those looking for quick reviews, deeper analysis of free response questions, or help with multiple choice questions.

Summary: The Best AP® English Literature and Composition Review Guide

Remember, the structure of the AP® Lang exam is as follows:

Because AP® English Literature and Composition is a skills-based course, there’s no way to know what specific passages, poems, authors, or concepts might make it onto the official exam. But, we do know exactly which skills will be assessed with which passages, so it’s best to center your studying around brushing up on those skills!

Use the provided charts to help you understand which skills you should focus on, and use Albert’s AP® English Literature and Composition Course Guide to brush up on your understanding of each skill and its corresponding essential knowledge.

Start with a diagnostic test, either on Albert or with a pencil and paper test via Princeton Review or Barron’s . Once you’ve completed and scored your diagnostic, follow our 7 steps on how to create an AP® English Literature and Composition study plan. 

And remember: start reading now! The more you read, the more equipped you will be to ace this exam. Review the Western Canon, study your literary terms, and begin critically engaging with writers!

Practice answering multiple choice questions on Albert and free-response questions from The College Board’s archive of past exam questions. 

If you’ve followed the rest of the tips in this post, listened to your teacher, and done your homework, you’re well-prepared for this exam. Trust that you have done all you can do to prepare and don’t cram the morning of. Last-minute studying helps no one!

Interested in a school license?​

Popular posts.

AP® Score Calculators

Simulate how different MCQ and FRQ scores translate into AP® scores

AP® Review Guides

The ultimate review guides for AP® subjects to help you plan and structure your prep.

Core Subject Review Guides

Review the most important topics in Physics and Algebra 1 .

SAT® Score Calculator

See how scores on each section impacts your overall SAT® score

ACT® Score Calculator

See how scores on each section impacts your overall ACT® score

Grammar Review Hub

Comprehensive review of grammar skills

AP® Posters

Download updated posters summarizing the main topics and structure for each AP® exam.

The 100 best books of the 21st century

Dazzling debut novels, searing polemics, the history of humanity and trailblazing memoirs ... Read our pick of the best books since 2000

• Read an interview with the author of our No 1 book
• Read Ali Smith on Autumn
• Read David Mitchell on Cloud Atlas

I Feel Bad About My Neck

By nora ephron (2006).

Perhaps better known for her screenwriting ( Silkwood , When Harry Met Sally , Heartburn ), Ephron’s brand of smart theatrical humour is on best display in her essays. Confiding and self-deprecating, she has a way of always managing to sound like your best friend – even when writing about her apartment on New York’s Upper West Side. This wildly enjoyable collection includes her droll observations about ageing, vanity – and a scorching appraisal of Bill Clinton. Read the review

Broken Glass

By alain mabanckou (2005), translated by helen stevenson (2009).

The Congolese writer says he was “trying to break the French language” with Broken Glass – a black comedy told by a disgraced teacher without much in the way of full stops or paragraph breaks. As Mabanckou’s unreliable narrator munches his “bicycle chicken” and drinks his red wine, it becomes clear he has the history of Congo-Brazzaville and the whole of French literature in his sights. Read the review

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

By stieg larsson (2005), translated by steven t murray (2008).

Radical journalist Mikael Blomkvist forms an unlikely alliance with troubled young hacker Lisbeth Salander as they follow a trail of murder and malfeasance connected with one of Sweden’s most powerful families in the first novel of the bestselling Millennium trilogy. The high-level intrigue beguiled millions of readers, brought “Scandi noir” to prominence and inspired innumerable copycats. Read the review

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

By jk rowling (2000).

A generation grew up on Rowling’s all-conquering magical fantasies, but countless adults have also been enthralled by her immersive world. Book four, the first of the doorstoppers, marks the point where the series really takes off. The Triwizard Tournament provides pace and tension, and Rowling makes her boy wizard look death in the eye for the first time. Read the review

A Little Life

By hanya yanagihara (2015).

This operatically harrowing American gay melodrama became an unlikely bestseller, and one of the most divisive novels of the century so far. One man’s life is blighted by abuse and its aftermath, but also illuminated by love and friendship. Some readers wept all night, some condemned it as titillating and exploitative, but no one could deny its power. Read the review

Chronicles: Volume One

By bob dylan (2004).

Dylan’s reticence about his personal life is a central part of the singer-songwriter’s brand, so the gaps and omissions in this memoir come as no surprise. The result is both sharp and dreamy, sliding in and out of different phases of Dylan’s career but rooted in his earliest days as a Woody Guthrie wannabe in New York City. Fans are still waiting for volume two. Read the review

The Tipping Point

By malcolm gladwell (2000).

The New Yorker staff writer examines phenomena from shoe sales to crime rates through the lens of epidemiology, reaching his own tipping point, when he became a rock-star intellectual and unleashed a wave of quirky studies of contemporary society. Two decades on, Gladwell is often accused of oversimplification and cherry picking, but his idiosyncratic bestsellers have helped shape 21st-century culture. Read the review

by Nicola Barker (2007)

British fiction’s most anarchic author is as prolific as she is playful, but this freewheeling, visionary epic set around the Thames Gateway is her magnum opus. Barker brings her customary linguistic invention and wild humour to a tale about history’s hold on the present, as contemporary Ashford is haunted by the spirit of a medieval jester. Read the review

by Helen Dunmore (2001)

The Levin family battle against starvation in this novel set during the German siege of Leningrad. Anna digs tank traps and dodges patrols as she scavenges for wood, but the hand of history is hard to escape. Read the review

by M John Harrison (2002)

One of the most underrated prose writers demonstrates the literary firepower of science fiction at its best. Three narrative strands – spanning far-future space opera, contemporary unease and virtual-reality pastiche – are braided together for a breathtaking metaphysical voyage in pursuit of the mystery at the heart of reality. Read the review

by Jenny Erpenbeck (2008), translated by Susan Bernofsky (2010)

A grand house by a lake in the east of Germany is both the setting and main character of Erpenbeck’s third novel. The turbulent waves of 20th-century history crash over it as the house is sold by a Jewish family fleeing the Third Reich, requisitioned by the Russian army, reclaimed by exiles returning from Siberia, and sold again. Read the review

by Lorna Sage (2000)

A Whitbread prizewinning memoir, full of perfectly chosen phrases, that is one of the best accounts of family dysfunction ever written. Sage grew up with her grandparents, who hated each other: he was a drunken philandering vicar; his wife, having found his diaries, blackmailed him and lived in another part of the house. The author gets unwittingly pregnant at 16, yet the story has a happy ending. Read the review

Noughts & Crosses

By malorie blackman (2001).

Set in an alternative Britain, this groundbreaking piece of young adult fiction sees black people, called the Crosses, hold all the power and influence, while the noughts – white people – are marginalised and segregated. The former children’s laureate’s series is a crucial work for explaining racism to young readers.

Priestdaddy

By patricia lockwood (2017).

This may not be the only account of living in a religious household in the American midwest (in her youth, the author joined a group called God’s Gang, where they spoke in tongues), but it is surely the funniest. The author started out as the “poet laureate of Twitter”; her language is brilliant, and she has a completely original mind. Read the review

Adults in the Room

By yanis varoufakis (2017).

This memoir by the leather-jacketed economist of the six months he spent as Greece’s finance minister in 2015 at a time of economic and political crisis has been described as “one of the best political memoirs ever written”. He comes up against the IMF, the European institutions, Wall Street, billionaires and media owners and is told how the system works – as a result, his book is a telling description of modern power. Read the review

The God Delusion

By richard dawkins (2006).

A key text in the days when the “New Atheism” was much talked about, The God Delusion is a hard-hitting attack on religion, full of Dawkins’s confidence that faith produces fanatics and all arguments for God are ridiculous. What the evolutionary biologist lacks in philosophical sophistication, he makes up for in passion, and the book sold in huge numbers. Read the review

The Cost of Living

By deborah levy (2018).

“Chaos is supposed to be what we most fear but I have come to believe it might be what we most want ... ” The second part of Levy’s “living memoir”, in which she leaves her marriage, is a fascinating companion piece to her deep yet playful novels. Feminism, mythology and the daily grind come together for a book that combines emotion and intellect to dazzling effect. Read the review

Tell Me How It Ends

By valeria luiselli (2016), translated by luiselli with lizzie davis (2017).

As the hysteria over immigration to the US began to build in 2015, the Mexican novelist volunteered to work as an interpreter in New York’s federal immigration court. In this powerful series of essays she tells the poignant stories of the children she met, situating them in the wider context of the troubled relationship between the Americas. Read the review

by Neil Gaiman (2002)

From the Sandman comics to his fantasy epic American Gods to Twitter, Gaiman towers over the world of books. But this perfectly achieved children’s novella, in which a plucky young girl enters a parallel world where her “Other Mother” is a spooky copy of her real-life mum, with buttons for eyes, might be his finest hour: a properly scary modern myth which cuts right to the heart of childhood fears and desires. Read the review

by Jim Crace (2013)

Crace is fascinated by the moment when one era gives way to another. Here, it is the enclosure of the commons, a fulcrum of English history, that drives his story of dispossession and displacement. Set in a village without a name, the narrative dramatises what it’s like to see the world you know come to an end, in a severance of the connection between people and land that has deep relevance for our time of climate crisis and forced migration. Read the review

Stories of Your Life and Others

By ted chiang (2002).

Melancholic and transcendent, Chiang’s eight, high-concept sci-fi stories exploring the nature of language, maths, religion and physics racked up numerous awards and a wider audience when ‘Story of Your Life’ was adapted into the 2016 film Arrival . Read the review

The Spirit Level

By richard wilkinson and kate pickett (2009).

An eye-opening study, based on overwhelming evidence, which revealed that among rich countries, the “more equal societies almost always do better” for all. Growth matters less than inequality, the authors argued: whether the issue is life expectancy, infant mortality, crime rates, obesity, literacy or recycling, the Scandinavian countries, say, will always win out over, say, the UK. Read the review

The Fifth Season

By nk jemisin (2015).

Jemisin became the first African American author to win the best novel category at the Hugo awards for her first book in the Broken Earth trilogy. In her intricate and richly imagined far future universe, the world is ending, ripped apart by relentless earthquakes and volcanoes. Against this apocalyptic backdrop she explores urgent questions of power and enslavement through the eyes of three women. “As this genre finally acknowledges that the dreams of the marginalised matter and that all of us have a future,” she said in her acceptance speech, “so will go the world. (Soon, I hope.)”

Signs Preceding the End of the World

By yuri herrera (2009), translated by lisa dillman (2015).

Makina sets off from her village in Mexico with a package from a local gangster and a message for her brother, who has been gone for three years. The story of her crossing to the US examines the blurring of boundaries, the commingling of languages and the blending of identities that complicate the idea of an eventual return. Read the review

Thinking, Fast and Slow

By daniel kahneman (2011).

The Nobel laureate’s unexpected bestseller, on the minutiae of decision-making, divides the brain into two. System One makes judgments quickly, intuitively and automatically, as when a batsman decides whether to cut or pull. System Two is slow, calculated and deliberate, like long division. But psychologist Kahneman argues that, although System Two thinks it is in control, many of our decisions are really made by System One. Read the review

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

By olga tokarczuk (2009), translated by antonia lloyd-jones (2018).

In this existential eco-thriller, a William Blake-obsessed eccentric investigates the murders of men and animals in a remote Polish village. More accessible and focused than Flights , the novel that won Tokarczuk the Man International Booker prize, it is no less profound in its examination of how atavistic male impulses, emboldened by the new rightwing politics of Europe, are endangering people, communities and nature itself. Read the review

Days Without End

By sebastian barry (2016).

In this savagely beautiful novel set during the Indian wars and American civil war, a young Irish boy flees famine-struck Sligo for Missouri. There he finds lifelong companionship with another emigrant, and they join the army on its brutal journey west, laying waste to Indian settlements. Viscerally focused and intense, yet imbued with the grandeur of the landscape, the book explores love, gender and survival with a rare, luminous power. Read the review

Nothing to Envy

By barbara demick (2009).

Los Angeles Times journalist Barbara Demick interviewed around 100 North Korean defectors for this propulsive work of narrative non-fiction, but she focuses on just six, all from the north-eastern city of Chongjin – closed to foreigners and less media-ready than Pyongyang. North Korea is revealed to be rife with poverty, corruption and violence but populated by resilient people with a remarkable ability to see past the propaganda all around them. Read the review

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

By shoshana zuboff (2019).

An agenda-setting book that is devastating about the extent to which big tech sets out to manipulate us for profit. Not simply another expression of the “techlash”, Zuboff’s ambitious study identifies a new form of capitalism, one involving the monitoring and shaping of our behaviour, often without our knowledge, with profound implications for democracy. “Once we searched Google, but now Google searches us.” Read the review

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

By chris ware (2000).

At the time when Ware won the Guardian first book award, no graphic novel had previously won a generalist literary prize. Emotional and artistic complexity are perfectly poised in this account of a listless 36-year-old office dogsbody who is thrown into an existential crisis by an encounter with his estranged dad. Read the review

Notes on a Scandal

By zoë heller (2003).

Sheba, a middle-aged teacher at a London comprehensive, begins an affair with her 15-year-old student - but we hear about it from a fellow teacher, the needy Barbara, whose obsessive nature drives the narrative. With shades of Patricia Highsmith, this teasing investigation into sex, class and loneliness is a dark marvel. Read the review

The Infatuations

By javier marías (2011), translated by margaret jull costa (2013).

The Spanish master examines chance, love and death in the story of an apparently random killing that gradually reveals hidden depths. Marías constructs an elegant murder mystery from his trademark labyrinthine sentences, but this investigation is in pursuit of much meatier questions than whodunnit. Read the review

The Constant Gardener

By john le carré (2001).

The master of the cold war thriller turned his attention to the new world order in this chilling investigation into the corruption powering big pharma in Africa. Based on the case of a rogue antibiotics trial that killed and maimed children in Nigeria in the 1990s, it has all the dash and authority of his earlier novels while precisely and presciently anatomising the dangers of a rampant neo-imperialist capitalism. Read the review

The Silence of the Girls

By pat barker (2018).

If the western literary canon is founded on Homer, then it is founded on women’s silence. Barker’s extraordinary intervention, in which she replays the events of the Iliad from the point of view of the enslaved Trojan women, chimed with both the #MeToo movement and a wider drive to foreground suppressed voices. In a world still at war, it has chilling contemporary resonance. Read the review

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

By carlo rovelli (2014).

A theoretical physicist opens a window on to the great questions of the universe with this 96-page overview of modern physics. Rovelli’s keen insight and striking metaphors make this the best introduction to subjects including relativity, quantum mechanics, cosmology, elementary particles and entropy outside of a course in advanced physics. Read the review

by Gillian Flynn (2012)

The deliciously dark US crime thriller that launched a thousand imitators and took the concept of the unreliable narrator to new heights. A woman disappears: we think we know whodunit, but we’re wrong. Flynn’s stylishly written portrait of a toxic marriage set against a backdrop of social and economic insecurity combines psychological depth with sheer unputdownable flair. Read the review

by Stephen King (2000)

Written after a near-fatal accident, this combination of memoir and masterclass by fiction’s most successful modern storyteller showcases the blunt, casual brilliance of King at his best. As well as being genuinely useful, it’s a fascinating chronicle of literary persistence, and of a lifelong love affair with language and narrative. Read the review

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

By rebecca skloot (2010).

Henrietta Lacks was a black American who died in agony of cancer in a “coloured” hospital ward in 1951. Her cells, taken without her knowledge during a biopsy, went on to change medical history, being used around the world to develop countless drugs. Skloot skilfully tells the extraordinary scientific story, but in this book the voices of the Lacks children are crucial – they have struggled desperately even as billions have been made from their mother’s “HeLa” cells. Read the review

Mother’s Milk

By edward st aubyn (2006).

The fourth of the autobiographical Patrick Melrose novels finds the wealthy protagonist – whose flight from atrocious memories of child abuse into drug abuse was the focus of the first books – beginning to grope after redemption. Elegant wit and subtle psychology lift grim subject matter into seductive brilliance. Read the review

This House of Grief

By helen garner (2014).

A man drives his three sons into a deep pond and swims out, leaving them to drown. But was it an accident? This 2005 tragedy caught the attention of one of Australia’s greatest living writers. Garner puts herself centre stage in an account of Robert Farquharson’s trial that combines forensic detail and rich humanity. Read the review

by Alice Oswald (2002)

This book-length poem is a mesmerising tapestry of “the river’s mutterings”, based on three years of recording conversations with people who live and work on the River Dart in Devon. From swimmers to sewage workers, boatbuilders to bailiffs, salmon fishers to ferryman, the voices are varied and vividly brought to life. Read the review

The Beauty of the Husband

By anne carson (2002).

One of Canada’s most celebrated poets examines love and desire in a collection that describes itself as “a fictional essay in 39 tangos”. Carson charts the course of a doomed marriage in loose-limbed lines that follow the switchbacks of thought and feeling from first meeting through multiple infidelities to arrive at eventual divorce.

by Tony Judt (2005)

This grand survey of Europe since 1945 begins with the devastation left behind by the second world war and offers a panoramic narrative of the cold war from its beginnings to the collapse of the Soviet bloc – a part of which Judt witnessed firsthand in Czechoslovakia’s velvet revolution. A very complex story is told with page-turning urgency and what may now be read as nostalgic faith in “the European idea”. Read the review

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

By michael chabon (2000).

A love story to the golden age of comics in New York, Chabon’s Pulitzer-winner features two Jewish cousins, one smuggled out of occupied Prague, who create an anti-fascist comic book superhero called The Escapist. Their own adventures are as exciting and highly coloured as the ones they write and draw in this generous, open-hearted, deeply lovable rollercoaster of a book. Read the review

by Robert Macfarlane (2019)

A beautifully written and profound book, which takes the form of a series of (often hair-raising and claustrophobic) voyages underground – from the fjords of the Arctic to the Parisian catacombs. Trips below the surface inspire reflections on “deep” geological time and raise urgent questions about the human impact on planet Earth. Read the review

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

By michael pollan (2006).

An entertaining and highly influential book from the writer best known for his advice: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” The author follows four meals on their journey from field to plate – including one from McDonald’s and a locally sourced organic feast. Pollan is a skilled, amusing storyteller and The Omnivore’s Dilemma changed both food writing and the way we see food. Read the review

Women & Power

By mary beard (2017).

Based on Beard’s lectures on women’s voices and how they have been silenced, Women and Power was an enormous publishing success in the “ #MeToo ”’ year 2017. An exploration of misogyny, the origins of “gendered speech” in the classical era and the problems the male world has with strong women, this slim manifesto became an instant feminist classic. Read the review

True History of the Kelly Gang

By peter carey (2000).

Carey’s second Booker winner is an irresistible tour de force of literary ventriloquism: the supposed autobiography of 19th-century Australian outlaw and “wild colonial boy” Ned Kelly, inspired by a fragment of Kelly’s own prose and written as a glorious rush of semi-punctuated vernacular storytelling. Mythic and tender by turns, these are tall tales from a lost frontier. Read the review

Small Island

By andrea levy (2004).

Pitted against a backdrop of prejudice, this London-set novel is told by four protagonists – Hortense and Gilbert, Jamaican migrants, and a stereotypically English couple, Queenie and Bernard. These varied perspectives, illuminated by love and loyalty, combine to create a thoughtful mosaic depicting the complex beginnings of Britain’s multicultural society. Read the review

by Colm Tóibín (2009)

Tóibín’s sixth novel is set in the 1950s, when more than 400,000 people left Ireland, and considers the emotional and existential impact of emigration on one young woman. Eilis makes a life for herself in New York, but is drawn back by the possibilities of the life she has lost at home. A universal story of love, endurance and missed chances, made radiant through Tóibín’s measured prose and tender understatement. Read the review

Oryx and Crake

By margaret atwood (2003).

In the first book in her dystopian MaddAddam trilogy, the Booker winner speculates about the havoc science can wreak on the world. The big warning here – don’t trust corporations to run the planet – is blaring louder and louder as the century progresses. Read the review

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

By jeanette winterson (2011).

The title is the question Winterson’s adoptive mother asked as she threw her daughter out, aged 16, for having a girlfriend. The autobiographical story behind Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit , and the trials of Winterson’s later life, is urgent, wise and moving. Read the review

Night Watch

By terry pratchett (2002).

Pratchett’s mighty Discworld series is a high point in modern fiction: a parody of fantasy literature that deepened and darkened over the decades to create incisive satires of our own world. The 29th book, focusing on unlikely heroes, displays all his fierce intelligence, anger and wild humour, in a story that’s moral, humane – and hilarious. Read the review

by Marjane Satrapi (2000-2003), translated by Mattias Ripa (2003-2004)

Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel follows her coming-of-age in the lead up to and during the Iranian revolution. In this riotous memoir, Satrapi focuses on one young life to reveal a hidden history.

Human Chain

By seamus heaney (2010).

The Nobel laureate tends to the fragments of memory and loss with moving precision in his final poetry collection. A book of elegies and echoes, these poems are infused with a haunting sense of pathos, with a line often left hanging to suspend the reader in longing and regret. Read the review

Levels of Life

By julian barnes (2013).

The British novelist combines fiction and non-fiction to form a searing essay on grief and love for his late wife, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh. Barnes divides the book into three parts with disparate themes – 19th-century ballooning, photography and marriage. Their convergence is wonderfully achieved. Read the review

Hope in the Dark

By rebecca solnit (2004).

Writing against “the tremendous despair at the height of the Bush administration’s powers and the outset of the war in Iraq”, the US thinker finds optimism in political activism and its ability to change the world. The book ranges widely from the fall of the Berlin wall to the Zapatista uprising in Mexico, to the invention of Viagra. Read the review

Citizen: An American Lyric

By claudia rankine (2014).

From the slow emergency response in the black suburbs destroyed by hurricane Katrina to a mother trying to move her daughter away from a black passenger on a plane, the poet’s award-winning prose work confronts the history of racism in the US and asks: regardless of their actual status, who truly gets to be a citizen? Read the review

by Michael Lewis (2010)

The author of The Big Short has made a career out of rendering the most opaque subject matter entertaining and comprehensible: Moneyball tells the story of how geeks outsmarted jocks to revolutionise baseball using maths. But you do not need to know or care about the sport, because – as with all Lewis’s best writing – it’s all about how the story is told. Read the review

by Ian McEwan (2001)

There are echoes of DH Lawrence and EM Forster in McEwan’s finely tuned dissection of memory and guilt. The fates of three young people are altered by a young girl’s lie at the close of a sweltering day on a country estate in 1935. Lifelong remorse, the horror of war and devastating twists are to follow in an elegant, deeply felt meditation on the power of love and art. Read the review

The Year of Magical Thinking

By joan didion (2005).

With cold, clear, precise prose, Didion gives an account of the year her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, collapsed from a fatal heart attack in their home. Her devastating examination of grief and widowhood changed the nature of writing about bereavement. Read the review

White Teeth

By zadie smith (2000).

Set around the unlikely bond between two wartime friends, Smith’s debut brilliantly captures Britain’s multicultural spirit, and offers a compelling insight into immigrant family life.

The Line of Beauty

By alan hollinghurst (2004).

Oxford graduate Nick Guest has the questionable good fortune of moving into the grand west London home of a rising Tory MP. Thatcher-era degeneracy is lavishly displayed as Nick falls in love with the son of a supermarket magnate, and the novel records how Aids began to poison gay life in London. In peerless prose, Hollinghurst captures something close to the spirit of an age. Read the review

The Green Road

By anne enright (2015).

A reunion dominates the Irish novelist’s family drama, but the individual stories of the five members of the Madigan clan – the matriarch, Rosaleen, and her children, Dan, Emmet, Constance and Hanna, who escape and are bound to return – are beautifully held in balance. When the Madigans do finally come together halfway through the book, Enright masterfully reminds us of the weight of history and family. Read the review

by Martin Amis (2000)

Known for the firecracker phrases and broad satires of his fiction, Amis presented a much warmer face in his memoir. His life is haunted by the disappearance of his cousin Lucy, who is revealed 20 years later to have been murdered by Fred West. But Amis also has much fun recollecting his “velvet-suited, snakeskin-booted” youth, and paints a moving portrait of his father’s comic gusto as old age reduces him to a kind of “anti-Kingsley”. Read the review

The Hare with Amber Eyes

By edmund de waal (2010).

In this exquisite family memoir, the ceramicist explains how he came to inherit a collection of 264 netsuke – small Japanese ornaments – from his great-uncle. The unlikely survival of the netsuke entails De Waal telling a story that moves from Paris to Austria under the Nazis to Japan, and he beautifully conjures a sense of place. The book doubles as a set of profound reflections on objects and what they mean to us. Read the review

Outline by Rachel

Cusk (2014).

This startling work of autofiction, which signalled a new direction for Cusk, follows an author teaching a creative writing course over one hot summer in Athens. She leads storytelling exercises. She meets other writers for dinner. She hears from other people about relationships, ambition, solitude, intimacy and “the disgust that exists indelibly between men and women”. The end result is sublime. Read the review

by Alison Bechdel (2006)

The American cartoonist’s darkly humorous memoir tells the story of how her closeted gay father killed himself a few months after she came out as a lesbian. This pioneering work, which later became a musical, helped shape the modern genre of “graphic memoir”, combining detailed and beautiful panels with remarkable emotional depth. Read the review

The Emperor of All Maladies

By siddhartha mukherjee (2010).

“Normal cells are identically normal; malignant cells become unhappily malignant in unique ways.” In adapting the opening lines of Anna Karenina , Mukherjee sets out the breathtaking ambition of his study of cancer: not only to share the knowledge of a practising oncologist but to take his readers on a literary and historical journey. Read the review

The Argonauts

By maggie nelson (2015).

An electrifying memoir that captured a moment in thinking about gender, and also changed the world of books. The story, told in fragments, is of Nelson’s pregnancy, which unfolds at the same time as her partner, the artist Harry Dodge, is beginning testosterone injections: “the summer of our changing bodies”. Strikingly honest, originally written, with a galaxy of intellectual reference points, it is essentially a love story; one that seems to make a new way of living possible. Read the review

The Underground Railroad

By colson whitehead (2016).

A thrilling, genre-bending tale of escape from slavery in the American deep south, this Pulitzer prize-winner combines extraordinary prose and uncomfortable truths. Two slaves flee their masters using the underground railroad, the network of abolitionists who helped slaves out of the south, wonderfully reimagined by Whitehead as a steampunk vision of a literal train. Read the review

A Death in the Family

By karl ove knausgaard (2009), translated by don bartlett (2012).

The first instalment of Knausgaard’s relentlessly self-examining six-volume series My Struggle revolves around the life and death of his alcoholic father. Whether or not you regard him as the Proust of memoir, his compulsive honesty created a new benchmark for autofiction. Read the review

by Carol Ann Duffy (2005)

A moving, book-length poem from the UK’s first female poet laureate, Rapture won the TS Eliot prize in 2005. From falling in love to betrayal and separation, Duffy reimagines romance with refreshing originality. Read the review

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

By alice munro (2001).

Canada’s observant and humane short story writer, who won the Nobel in 2013, is at her best in this collection. A housekeeper’s fate is changed by the pranks of her employer’s teenager daughter; an incorrigible flirt gracefully accepts his wife’s new romance in her care home. No character acts as at first expected in Munro’s stories, which are attuned to the tiniest shifts in perception. Read the review

Capital in the Twenty First Century

By thomas piketty (2013), translated by arthur goldhammer (2014).

The beautifully written product of 15 years of research, Capital made its author an intellectual star – the modern Marx – and opened readers’ eyes to how neoliberalism produces vastly increased inequalities. Full of data, theories and historical analysis, its message is clear, and prophetic: unless governments increase tax, the new and grotesque wealth levels of the rich will encourage political instability. Read the review

Normal People

By sally rooney (2018).

Rooney’s second novel, a love story between two clever and damaged young people coming of age in contemporary Ireland, confirmed her status as a literary superstar. Her focus is on the dislocation and uncertainty of millennial life, but her elegant prose has universal appeal. Read the review

A Visit from The Goon Squad

By jennifer egan (2011).

Inspired by both Proust and The Sopranos , Egan’s Pulitzer-winning comedy follows several characters in and around the US music industry, but is really a book about memory and kinship, time and narrative, continuity and disconnection. Read the review

The Noonday Demon

By andrew solomon (2001).

Emerging from Solomon’s own painful experience, this “anatomy” of depression examines its many faces – plus its science, sociology and treatment. The book’s combination of honesty, scholarly rigour and poetry made it a benchmark in literary memoir and understanding of mental health. Read the review

Tenth of December

By george saunders (2013).

This warm yet biting collection of short stories by the Booker-winning American author will restore your faith in humanity. No matter how weird the setting – a futuristic prison lab, a middle-class home where human lawn ornaments are employed as a status symbol – in these surreal satires of post-crash life Saunders reminds us of the meaning we find in small moments. Read the review

by Yuval Noah Harari (2011), translated by Harari with John Purcell and Haim Watzman (2014)

In his Olympian history of humanity, Harari documents the numerous revolutions Homo sapiens has undergone over the last 70,000 years: from new leaps in cognitive reasoning to agriculture, science and industry, the era of information and the possibilities of biotechnology. Harari’s scope may be too wide for some, but this engaging work topped the charts and made millions marvel. Read the review

Life After Life

By kate atkinson (2013).

Atkinson examines family, history and the power of fiction as she tells the story of a woman born in 1910 – and then tells it again, and again, and again. Ursula Todd’s multiple lives see her strangled at birth, drowned on a Cornish beach, trapped in an awful marriage and visiting Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden. But this dizzying fictional construction is grounded by such emotional intelligence that her heroine’s struggles always feel painfully, joyously real. Read the review

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night‑Time

By mark haddon (2003).

Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone becomes absorbed in the mystery of a dog’s demise, meticulously investigating through diagrams, timetables, maps and maths problems. Haddon’s fascinating portrayal of an unconventional mind was a crossover hit with both adults and children and was adapted into a very successful stage play. Read the review

The Shock Doctrine

By naomi klein (2007).

In this urgent examination of free-market fundamentalism, Klein argues – with accompanying reportage – that the social breakdowns witnessed during decades of neoliberal economic policies are not accidental, but in fact integral to the functioning of the free market, which relies on disaster and human suffering to function. Read the review

by Cormac McCarthy (2006)

A father and his young son, “each the other’s world entire”, trawl across the ruins of post-apocalyptic America in this terrifying but tender story told with biblical conviction. The slide into savagery as civilisation collapses is harrowing material, but McCarthy’s metaphysical efforts to imagine a cold dark universe where the light of humanity is winking out are what make the novel such a powerful ecological warning. Read the review

The Corrections

By jonathan franzen (2001).

The members of one ordinarily unhappy American family struggle to adjust to the shifting axes of their worlds over the final decades of the 20th century. Franzen’s move into realism reaped huge literary rewards: exploring both domestic and national conflict, this family saga is clever, funny and outrageously readable. Read the review

The Sixth Extinction

By elizabeth kolbert (2014).

The science journalist examines with clarity and memorable detail the current crisis of plant and animal loss caused by human civilisation (over the past half billion years, there have been five mass extinctions on Earth; we are causing another). Kolbert considers both ecosystems – the Great Barrier Reef, the Amazon rainforest – and the lives of some extinct and soon-to-be extinct creatures including the Sumatran rhino and “the most beautiful bird in the world”, the black-faced honeycreeper of Maui. Read the review

Fingersmith

By sarah waters (2002).

Moving from the underworld dens of Victorian London to the boudoirs of country house gothic, and hingeing on the seduction of an heiress, Waters’s third novel is a drippingly atmospheric thriller, a smart study of innocence and experience, and a sensuous lesbian love story – with a plot twist to make the reader gasp. Read the review

Nickel and Dimed

By barbara ehrenreich (2001).

In this modern classic of reportage, Ehrenreich chronicled her attempts to live on the minimum wage in three American states. Working first as a waitress, then a cleaner and a nursing home aide, she still struggled to survive, and the stories of her co-workers are shocking. The US economy as she experienced it is full of routine humiliation, with demands as high as the rewards are low. Two decades on, this still reads like urgent news. Read the review

The Plot Against America

By philip roth (2004).

What if aviator Charles Lindbergh, who once called Hitler “a great man”, had won the US presidency in a landslide victory and signed a treaty with Nazi Germany? Paranoid yet plausible, Roth’s alternative-world novel is only more relevant in the age of Trump. Read the review

My Brilliant Friend

By elena ferrante (2011), translated by ann goldstein (2012).

Powerfully intimate and unashamedly domestic, the first in Ferrante’s Neapolitan series established her as a literary sensation. This and the three novels that followed documented the ways misogyny and violence could determine lives, as well as the history of Italy in the late 20th century.

Half of a Yellow Sun

By chimamanda ngozi adichie (2006).

When Nigerian author Adichie was growing up, the Biafran war “hovered over everything”. Her sweeping, evocative novel, which won the Orange prize, charts the political and personal struggles of those caught up in the conflict and explores the brutal legacy of colonialism in Africa. Read the review

Cloud Atlas

David mitchell (2004).

The epic that made Mitchell’s name is a Russian doll of a book, nesting stories within stories and spanning centuries and genres with aplomb. From a 19th-century seafarer to a tale from beyond the end of civilisation, via 1970s nuclear intrigue and the testimony of a future clone, these dizzying narratives are delicately interlinked, highlighting the echoes and recurrences of the vast human symphony. Read the review

by Ali Smith (2016)

Smith began writing her Seasonal Quartet, a still-ongoing experiment in quickfire publishing, against the background of the EU referendum. The resulting “first Brexit novel” isn’t just a snapshot of a newly divided Britain, but a dazzling exploration into love and art, time and dreams, life and death, all done with her customary invention and wit. Read the review

Between the World and Me

By ta-nehisi coates (2015).

Coates’s impassioned meditation on what it means to be a black American today made him one of the country’s most important intellectuals and writers. Having grown up the son of a former Black Panther on the violent streets of Baltimore, he has a voice that is challenging but also poetic. Between the World and Me takes the form of a letter to his teenage son, and ranges from the daily reality of racial injustice and police violence to the history of slavery and the civil war: white people, he writes, will never remember “the scale of theft that enriched them”. Read the review

The Amber Spyglass

By philip pullman (2000).

Children’s fiction came of age when the final part of Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy became the first book for younger readers to win the Whitbread book of the year award. Pullman has brought imaginative fire and storytelling bravado to the weightiest of subjects: religion, free will, totalitarian structures and the human drive to learn, rebel and grow. Here Asriel’s struggle against the Authority reaches its climax, Lyra and Will journey to the Land of the Dead, and Mary investigates the mysterious elementary particles that lend their name to his current trilogy: The Book of Dust. The Hollywood-fuelled commercial success achieved by JK Rowling may have eluded Pullman so far, but his sophisticated reworking of Paradise Lost helped adult readers throw off any embarrassment at enjoying fiction written for children – and publishing has never looked back. Read the review

by WG Sebald (2001), translated by Anthea Bell (2001)

Sebald died in a car crash in 2001, but his genre-defying mix of fact and fiction, keen sense of the moral weight of history and interleaving of inner and outer journeys have had a huge influence on the contemporary literary landscape. His final work, the typically allusive life story of one man, charts the Jewish disapora and lost 20th century with heartbreaking power. Read the review

Never Let Me Go

By kazuo ishiguro (2005).

From his 1989 Booker winner The Remains of the Day to 2015’s The Buried Giant , Nobel laureate Ishiguro writes profound, puzzling allegories about history, nationalism and the individual’s place in a world that is always beyond our understanding. His sixth novel, a love triangle set among human clones in an alternative 1990s England, brings exquisite understatement to its exploration of mortality, loss and what it means to be human. Read the review

Secondhand Time

By svetlana alexievich (2013), translated by bela shayevich (2016).

The Belarusian Nobel laureate recorded thousands of hours of testimony from ordinary people to create this oral history of the Soviet Union and its end. Writers, waiters, doctors, soldiers, former Kremlin apparatchiks, gulag survivors: all are given space to tell their stories, share their anger and betrayal, and voice their worries about the transition to capitalism. An unforgettable book, which is both an act of catharsis and a profound demonstration of empathy.

by Marilynne Robinson (2004)

Robinson’s meditative, deeply philosophical novel is told through letters written by elderly preacher John Ames in the 1950s to his young son who, when he finally reaches an adulthood his father won’t see, will at least have this posthumous one-sided conversation: “While you read this, I am imperishable, somehow more alive than I have ever been.” This is a book about legacy, a record of a pocket of America that will never return, a reminder of the heartbreaking, ephemeral beauty that can be found in everyday life. As Ames concludes, to his son and himself: “There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.” Read the review

by Hilary Mantel (2009)

Mantel had been publishing for a quarter century before the project that made her a phenomenon, set to be concluded with the third part of the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light , next March. To read her story of the rise of Thomas Cromwell at the Tudor court, detailing the making of a new England and the self-creation of a new kind of man, is to step into the stream of her irresistibly authoritative present tense and find oneself looking out from behind her hero’s eyes. The surface details are sensuously, vividly immediate, the language as fresh as new paint; but her exploration of power, fate and fortune is also deeply considered and constantly in dialogue with our own era, as we are shaped and created by the past. In this book we have, as she intended, “a sense of history listening and talking to itself”. Read the review

• Best culture of the 21st century
• Hilary Mantel
• Marilynne Robinson
• Fiction in translation
• Ta-Nehisi Coates

Most viewed

Join Discovery, the new community for book lovers

Trust book recommendations from real people, not robots 🤓

Blog – Posted on Friday, Mar 29

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:

Should you become a book reviewer?

Find out the answer. Takes 30 seconds!

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.

How much of a book nerd are you, really?

Find out here, once and for all. Takes 30 seconds!

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!

Continue reading

More posts from across the blog.

100 Classic Children's Books To Spark Young Imaginations

Reading is an adventure enjoyed by generation after generation. We share our timeless list of 100 classic children’s books guaranteed to carry young readers away to whole new worlds of wonder.

The 115 Best Books of All Time

Let’s take a trip through time and discover the world’s literary trends, from epic poems to dystopian novels, by looking at 115 of the best books of all time!

The 25 Best Romance Authors (And Their Most Swoonworthy Reads)

Romance is one of the most popular genres in literature today, both for readers and writers of romance novels. And it’s no wonder why: romance is exciting, sexy, ...

Heard about Reedsy Discovery?

Trust real people, not robots, to give you book recommendations.

Or sign up with an

Or sign up with your social account

• Submit your book
• Reviewer directory

Want to be a book reviewer?

Review new books and start building your portfolio.

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

• 20 Best Books To Read in May

MAY 7, 2024

by Kaliane Bradley

This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness. Full review >

by Mauro Javier Cárdenas

A dark, original work. Full review >

by Daniel Chandler

A resounding endorsement of Rawls’ philosophy and a complex recipe for something better than what we have now. Full review >

by Wendy Chen

A poignant, impressive debut. Full review >

by Myriam Lacroix

As kaleidoscopic as the queer experience, this is an introduction to a writer of great imagination. Full review >

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

by Illia Ponomarenko

A revelatory portrait of the horror and absurdity of the conflict spiked with much-needed threads of humanity and hope. Full review >

by Julian Randall

A brilliant essay collection tracing the lives of an Afro-Latino queer poet and his ancestors. Full review >

by Sathnam Sanghera

A worthy, thought-provoking follow-up. Full review >

by Zoë Schlanger

A delightful work of popular science. You may never look at your houseplants or garden in quite the same way again. Full review >

by Nina St. Pierre

An exhilarating, heart-rending familial portrait. Full review >

by Colm Tóibín

A moving portrait of rueful middle age and the failure to connect. Full review >

MAY 14, 2024

by Ghostface Killah

An engaging, revealing look at the wild world of the Wu-Tang Clan and beyond. Full review >

by Hari Kunzru

A dark, smart, provocative tale of the perils of art making. Full review >

by Claire Messud

Brilliant and heart-wrenching; Messud is one of contemporary literature’s best. Full review >

MAY 21, 2024

by Daniel Handler

A fully captivating memoir rich with insights on reading, writing, and life itself. Full review >

by Stephen King

The disturbing stories in King’s latest collection will seep into your psyche and haunt you. Full review >

by Kevin Kwan

Still more brilliant escapism among Kwan’s 1 percenters. Too much is never enough. Full review >

by Alan Taylor

A richly detailed, compulsively readable history of perhaps the most dramatic period in the history of North America. Full review >

MAY 28, 2024

by Emma Copley Eisenberg

Emotionally rich and quietly thought-provoking, this is simply a stunning fiction debut. Full review >

by Kevin Fedarko

Vivid armchair travel through a haunting and forbidding landscape. Full review >

More Book Lists

Recent News & Features

• Seen & Heard

• In the News

• Book to Screen

• Perspectives

• 20 Books That Should Be Bestsellers
• 20 Most Addictive Books of 2024 (So Far)
• 30 Books To Celebrate AANPHI Heritage Month
• Episode 371: Best May Books with Aimee Nezhukumatathil
• Episode 370: Alexandra Tanner
• Episode 369: Guest Host David Levithan
• Episode 368: Darcie Little Badger

The Magazine: Kirkus Reviews

Featuring 325 reviews of fiction, nonfiction, children’s, and YA books; also in this issue: interviews with Colm Tóibín, Amy Tan, George Takei, and Bianca Xunise; and more

The Kirkus Star

One of the most coveted designations in the book industry, the Kirkus Star marks books of exceptional merit.

The Kirkus Prize

The Kirkus Prize is among the richest literary awards in America, awarding $50,000 in three categories annually.

Great Books & News Curated For You

Be the first to read books news and see reviews, news and features in Kirkus Reviews . Get awesome content delivered to your inbox every week.

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

• Entertainment

Here Are the 14 New Books You Should Read in May

These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.

F rom Brittney Griner ’s eagerly anticipated memoir to a long-awaited sequel to Colm Tóibín’s beloved novel Brooklyn , the best books coming in May offer a range of choices for every reader. Those looking for a good laugh should check out the latest high-society comedy from Crazy Rich Asians author Kevin Kwan or filmmaker Miranda July’s first novel in 10 years, which offers a profoundly humorous take on menopause and mortality. R.O. Kwon ’s sensual followup to her 2018 best-seller The Incendiaries is sure to keep readers on their toes, while scholar Deborah Paredez’s tribute to America’s finest divas offers an important lesson in pop-culture etymology.    

Here, the 14 new books to read this month.

Coming Home , Brittney Griner (May 7)

On Feb. 17, 2022, WNBA player Brittney Griner was detained in Russia , where she played professionally in the offseason, for possessing cannabis oil, a substance that is illegal in the country. (At the time, Griner’s Russian lawyers stated that she had been prescribed medical cannabis for pain management by her doctors in the U.S.) The celebrated athlete was sentenced to nine years in prison for drug smuggling and served in a Russian penal colony until the U.S. government was able to broker a prisoner swap in December 2022, trading her for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout . Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, which she co-authored with Michelle Burford, details all of this and more, offering a raw look at the harrowing experience that has turned her into an outspoken advocate for Americans who have been wrongfully detained abroad .

Buy Now : Coming Home on Bookshop | Amazon

Shanghailanders , Juli Min (May 7)

Juli Min’s ambitious debut novel, Shanghailanders, is a thrilling, futuristic family drama that captures the joys, disappointments, and inside jokes of one Shanghai family in reverse chronological order. Starting in 2040 and working its way back to 2014, the book unspools the shared and separate lives of the wealthy Yangs: Chinese real estate investor Leo, his elegant Japanese French wife Eko, their precocious eldest daughters Yumi and Yoko, and the baby of the family, aspiring actress Kiko. By giving readers the gift of hindsight, Min shows how one enigmatic family falls apart and comes back together over several decades.

Buy Now : Shanghailanders on Bookshop | Amazon

Long Island , Colm Tóibín (May 7)

Best-selling Irish author Colm Tóibín returns with Long Island, a well-observed sequel to his much loved 2009 novel Brooklyn , set 20 years after Eilis, the inscrutable heroine of the aforementioned book, emigrated from Ireland. Picking up in the spring of 1976, Eilis, now in her 40s, is still married to Italian American plumber Tony Fiorello and living in the titular suburbs outside of New York City with their two teenage children and her in-laws. All is well, if a little boring, until she is confronted by an irate Irishman who claims Tony has gotten his wife pregnant and he plans to leave the baby on Eilis’ doorstep once it’s born. Tóibín’s 11th novel offers an absorbing look at a middle-aged woman at a crossroads in not only her marriage, but also in a life she worries has gone unfulfilled.

Buy Now : Long Island on Bookshop | Amazon

The Skunks , Fiona Warnick (May 7)

In Fiona Warnick’s quirky debut, The Skunks, Isabel returns to her hometown after college graduation to take on a few odd jobs and figure out what she wants to do with her life. To take her mind off of her post-adolescent fears and anxieties, she starts thinking about the book’s titular creatures. Specifically, the three baby skunks that unexpectedly show up in the yard of the place she is house sitting. Their presence forces her to ponder life’s existential questions—and question her own romantic desires. The Skunks is a hilarious look at post-grad life and the loneliness, uncertainty, and occasional joy that comes with it.

Buy Now : The Skunks on Bookshop | Amazon

All Fours , Miranda July (May 14)

Filmmaker, artist, and best-selling author Miranda July’s first novel in a decade is an intimate, fearless, and sexy coming-of-middle-age story about a woman hellbent on reinventing herself. All Fours begins with the unnamed narrator, a 45-year-old semi-famous artist, learning that someone has been peering into her window with a telephoto lens. She decides to leave her husband and child behind to drive from Los Angeles to New York for a writing retreat. Unfortunately, she only makes it as far as Monrovia, Calif., less than an hour from home. It’s there she finds herself tackling fluctuating hormones, an increased libido, and a rather impractical motel room renovation in this wonderfully weird adventure.

Buy Now : All Fours on Bookshop | Amazon

Blue Ruin , Hari Kunzru (May 14)

Hari Kunzru ’s seventh novel, Blue Ruin, is a provocative portrait of a once-promising artist as a disillusioned man of a certain age. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Jay, a 40-something undocumented performance artist, is living out of his car and delivering groceries to wealthy residents in upstate New York. On one of his runs, he finds himself face-to-face with Alice, a woman he dated nearly two decades earlier. Alice invites him to ride out the crisis in the luxurious home where she is quarantining with her painter husband, the art school rival for whom she ghosted Jay. The unexpected run-in leads to a possible big career break for Jay, who worries the deal may just cost him his soul.

Buy Now : Blue Ruin on Bookshop | Amazon

This Strange Eventful History , Claire Messud (May 14)

This Strange Eventful History is a sprawling yet intimate saga that draws inspiration from author Claire Messud’s own family history. (She has called this novel, her seventh, the “most significant work” of her life.) Spanning several decades, from 1940 to 2010, Messud follows the Cassar family, a fictional French Algerian clan first displaced by World War II, and again, nearly 20 years later, by Algeria’s war of independence . With great empathy, Messud shows the effects war, colonialism, and later sovereignty had on three generations of the Cassars, most notably, the family’s youngest member, aspiring writer Chloe, a stand-in for Messud, who believes the truth will finally set her relatives free.

Buy Now : This Strange Eventful History on Bookshop | Amazon

Very Bad Company , Emma Rosenblum (May 14)

With her latest novel, Very Bad Company , best-selling author and journalist Emma Rosenblum takes a page from Rian Johnson ’s Knives Out playbook. Despite her lack of experience, former TV producer Caitlin Levy is hired as the new head of events at Aurora, a trendy ad-tech startup led by an eccentric CEO. To welcome her to the team, Caitlin is invited to take part in Aurora’s annual corporate retreat in Miami. This year, the company is preparing for an impending billion-dollar merger. But when one of Aurora’s high-level executives turns up dead, everyone on sight is forced to ignore the crisis so as to not sink the deal. What ensues is a darkly funny mystery about toxic corporate culture.

Buy Now : Very Bad Company on Bookshop | Amazon

In Tongues , Thomas Grattan (May 21)

In Thomas Grattan’s rollicking sophomore release, In Tongues, the charming if naive Gordon moves from Minnesota to New York City where he gets a job walking the dogs of Manhattan’s elite, including gallery owners Phillip and Nicola. Soon he is hobnobbing and bed-hopping with the high-powered couple, turning their lives upside down with little regard for the consequences of his actions. In this delightfully modern comedy of manners, Gordon wonders if he has the ability to change his ways as he begins to understand the damage his impulses have caused.

Buy Now : In Tongues on Bookshop | Amazon

Lies and Weddings , Kevin Kwan (May 21)

From Kevin Kwan , the author of Crazy Rich Asians, a high comedy sure to delight fans of Jane Austen . Rufus Leung Gresham, the protagonist of Lies and Weddings , is the future Earl of Greshambury (a clever nod to the fictional setting of Anthony Trollope’s 1858 novel Doctor Thorne ) and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel. He’s also been buried underneath a mountain of debt thanks to his family’s reckless spending. To dig himself out, Rufus’ always scheming mother suggests he find a wealthy woman to marry at his sister’s upcoming high-society wedding. What could possibly go wrong?

Buy Now : Lies and Weddings on Bookshop | Amazon

Exhibit , R. O. Kwon (May 21)

R. O. Kwon’s Exhibit is a hypnotic queer love story full of lust and longing. The sultry novel follows two women, talented photographer Jin and injured prima ballerina Lidija, and the ancient familial curse that stands to keep them apart. Exhibit is a haunting romance about desire, obsession, and ambition that is sure to get your heart rate up.

Buy Now : Exhibit on Bookshop | Amazon

American Diva , Deborah Paredez (May 21)

Fifteen years ago, poet and cultural critic Deborah Paredez tackled the posthumous legacy of Selena Quintanilla with Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory . Now, with American Diva, she has put together an insightful ode to the famous women— Aretha Franklin , Tina Turner , and Serena Williams , to name a few—who have come to embody the often misconstrued term. Combining cultural criticism and memoir, Paredez shows how the word “diva,” once used to describe a powerhouse opera singer, evolved to become a condemnation of confident and powerful women, many of whom are women of color. American Diva is Paredez’s attempt to reclaim the word.

Buy Now : American Diva on Bookshop | Amazon

Accordion Eulogies , Noé Álvarez (May 28)

Growing up, Noé Álvarez’s working class Mexican immigrant parents rarely spoke of his larger-than-life grandfather. All Álvarez ever knew of the relative who was more myth than man was that he played the accordion and possibly put a curse on his descendents with his questionable behavior. In his poignant new memoir, Accordion Eulogies, Álvarez traces the history of the humble titular instrument in hopes of better understanding his own family’s mysterious lineage. With empathy and humor, the author dares to find the root cause of his generational trauma with the hope of finally breaking the cycle.

Buy Now : Accordion Eulogies on Bookshop | Amazon

In These Streets , Josiah Bates (May 28)

With In These Streets, journalist and former TIME reporter Josiah Bates takes a closer look at the recent surge in gun violence throughout the United States, particularly in marginalized communities. Bates travels the country speaking with those on the frontlines of what many have deemed a public health crisis that has only gotten worse since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. He interviews victims, perpetrators, activists, law enforcement, and academics in hopes of gaining new insight into the epidemic.

Buy Now : In These Streets on Bookshop | Amazon

More Must-Reads From TIME

• What Student Photojournalists Saw at the Campus Protests
• How Far Trump Would Go
• Why Maternity Care Is Underpaid
• Saving Seconds Is Better Than Hours
• Welcome to the Golden Age of Ryan Gosling
• Scientists Are Finding Out Just How Toxic Your Stuff Is
• The 100 Most Influential People of 2024
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

• Craft and Criticism
• Fiction and Poetry
• News and Culture
• Lit Hub Radio
• Reading Lists

• Literary Criticism
• Craft and Advice
• In Conversation
• On Translation
• Short Story
• From the Novel
• Bookstores and Libraries
• Film and TV
• Art and Photography
• Freeman’s
• The Virtual Book Channel
• Behind the Mic
• Beyond the Page
• The Cosmic Library
• The Critic and Her Publics
• Emergence Magazine
• Fiction/Non/Fiction
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
• The History of Literature
• I’m a Writer But
• Lit Century
• Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
• Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
• Write-minded
• The Best of the Decade
• Best Reviewed Books
• BookMarks Daily Giveaway
• The Daily Thrill
• CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

You Are Being Lied to About Gaza Solidarity Camps by University Presidents, Mainstream Media, and Politicians

What steven w. thrasher saw on college campuses, what’s wrong with pen america, and why we need it to survive, for maris kreizman, dissent is not censorship, in praise of pulitzer prize-winner jayne anne phillips, jonathan corcoran on the teacher who taught him that writing begins far from the page, inside the occupation of columbia’s hamilton hall, 1968 version, from charles kaiser’s “1968 in america”, read the 1962 short story that inspired this year’s met gala theme, j.g. ballard’s “the garden of time”, the literary film & tv you need to stream in may, because somehow it’s still raining, from austen to larkin: why writers could be more prone to hypochondria, caroline crampton considers the intersection of creative pursuits and health anxiety, the problem with giant book preview lists, maris kreizman on one of the necessary evils of book coverage, crash again, crash better: a brief history of failed attempts at human flight, joe fassler ponders our innate desire to rise above it all, survival of the wealthiest: joseph e. stiglitz on the dangerous failures of neoliberalism, in which “the intellectual handmaidens of the capitalists” are taken to task, yan lianke wants you to stop describing him as china’s most censored author, on state censorship, artistic integrity, and the market forces behind local and global publishing, “pale fire” (tavi’s version): notes on taylor swift and the literature of obsessive fandom, leigh stein considers tavi gevinson’s new zine, “fan fiction”, how much is enough on the writerly balance between money and time, for novelist ryan chapman, “there are wants, and there are needs.”, writing as labor: doing more with less, together, david hill on the myth of the middle class writer, the money diaries: real writers, real budgets, what writers spend in a week of their lives, in service: writers on making ends meet in the service industry, “it’s easy to remain clueless about how the world works for most people.”, what christiane amanpour—and the rest of us—can learn from palestinian journalists in gaza, steven w. thrasher on the myth of the “independent journalist”, contemporary literary novels are haunted by the absence of money, naomi kanakia wonders why nobody talks about the thing we all need, premonition in the west bank: ben ehrenreich on life in the village of burin, “sometimes you hear an echo of a sound that has not yet been voiced, of a shot that has not yet been fired.”, 50 ways to end a poem, emily skaja has some recommendations for making a strong exit, a woman out of time: rebecca solnit on mary shelley’s dystopian sci-fi novel the last man, in praise of a truly innovative writer, 10 great new children’s books out in april, caroline carlsonrecommends maple lam, felicita sala, laurie morrison and more, vampires, selkies, familiars, and more april’s best sci-fi and fantasy books, career retrospectives and historical fantasies from cixin liu, ann leckie, leigh bardugo, and others, the literary film & tv you need to stream in april, april showers bring opportunities to binge watch, here’s your 2024 literary film & tv preview, 53 shows and movies to stream and see this year, lit hub’s most anticipated books of 2024, 230 books we’re looking forward to reading this year, 24 sci-fi and fantasy books to look forward to in 2024, exciting new series’ and standalones from kelly link, lev grossman, sofia samatar, james s.a. corey, and more, we need your help: support lit hub, become a member, you get editors’ personalized book recs, an ad-free reading experience, and the joan didion tote bag, 40 books to understand palestine, from ghassan kanafani's "men in the sun" to adania shibli's "minor detail", “ah, fuck em.”">alice mcdermott’s writing mantra: “ah, fuck em.”.

From Her One Story Literary Debutante Ball Address

Lolita is Nabokov: On the Parallel Histories of the Writer and His Most Famous Character

Monika Zgustova Explores Childhood Sexual Abuse and Its Aftermath, On and Off the Page

The Breasts Make the Woman... Or Do They? On Having (and Losing) a Pair

Sarah Thornton Explores Body Dysmorphia After a Double Mastectomy

Karen Tei Yamashita on Seeking Stories in the Soil

“Undo the shame of forgetting. Dig and sift through dark soil. Feel its texture.”

What Should You Read Next? Here Are the Best Reviewed Books of the Week

Featuring New Titles by Colm Tóibín, Sathnam Sanghera, Kaliane Bradley, and More

Invisible Women: On the Victorian Custom of Cutting Mothers Out of Portraits

Ellen O’Connell Whittet Considers the Photographic Evidence of Maternal Erasure

May 6 – May 10, 2024

• In praise of the student journalists covering university protests
• Adania Shibli on book bans and the destruction of Palestinian literature
• “Every love poem is a Palestine poem, and every Palestine poem is a love poem.” Mandy Shunnarah on Mahmoud Darwish and writing Palestinian poetry .

to the Lithub Daily

Support lit hub..

Lit hub Radio

News, Notes, Talk

Daily Fiction

The Emperor

From the emperor.

The Red Grove

From the red grove.

Shanghailanders

From shanghailanders.

Sitting at the Cool Table: Christina Cooke and Marissa Higgins on the (Supposed) Renaissance of Queer Lit

Jerrod Carmichael on Using Art to (Try to) Solve Life's Problems

Claire messud on blurring family history and fiction.

In Conversation with Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan on Fiction/Non/Fiction

A Different Kind of Dad Book: Lucas Mann on Fatherhood, Writing, and the Essay as an Act of Care

5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week

The Best Reviewed Books of the Week

5 Reviews You Need to Read This Week

Elle Marr on Mining Personal Experiences for Writing Inspiration

• RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Advertisement

Supported by

Three Lives Entwined by Tragedy — and a Love of Literature

In Monica Wood’s rich new novel, “How to Read a Book,” death, prison and poetry become the catalyst for new beginnings.

• Share full article

By Helen Simonson

Helen Simonson is the author of “Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand” and “The Summer Before the War.” Her latest novel, “The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club ,” is out now.

• Barnes and Noble
• Books-A-Million

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

HOW TO READ A BOOK, by Monica Wood

”How to Read a Book” might be the perfect pick to really light a fire under my book club, and yours. It’s a charming, openhearted novel, deceptively easy to read but layered with sharp observations, hard truths and rich ideas.

Set in Portland, Maine, the novel opens in a women’s prison book club full of caustic inmates whose spirited discussions reveal a thick vein of humor and a weary compassion. According to Violet, a young woman with a manslaughter conviction and a gift for wicked turns of phrase, the weekly meetings are the highlight of a prison life so dull that “every day: same, same, same. The boredom feels like lice and you itch all over.” She and her fellow members have insulted every book choice but, she admits, “sometimes a sparkling sentence can really rip you up.”

Violet’s voice is self-aware, with a haunting fragility beneath the tough talk. And just as we fall for her we also meet Frank, a bookstore handyman still stunned by the death of his wife in a drunk-driving accident — caused by Violet. So much for easy! Wadsworth Books, a warm and welcoming independent bookstore full of young people and foster cats, is also the favorite haunt of our third narrative voice: the book club’s leader, Harriet, a widowed English teacher who is struggling to find purpose. “Retired people were often thought to be lonely, but it wasn’t that. It was the feeling of uselessness, of being done with it all,” she reflects. Harriet cultivates her prison book club as if gardening, “exposing the women to the open air of literature, to the sunshine of fresh ideas.” When Violet is released from prison, Harriet bumps into her at the bookstore and must hustle her to safety as Frank suffers a full meltdown.

Even after these three lives are neatly entangled (and recounted in alternating chapters), the heart of the story remains Violet, who stumbles into a job as an assistant at a research lab dedicated to proving that African gray parrots don’t just talk but also think (at last, real talking animals!). As she makes her fresh start, with the help of Harriet and occasional acts of random kindness from strangers, Violet still has to face Frank and the tragedy she caused.

Harriet instructs us that “stories have a ‘meanwhile’ — an important thing that’s happening while the rest of the story moves along,” and so the many layers of “meanwhile” delicately accrue. The novel asks us to stop and consider: Which kinds of people deserve second chances? Are people their worst acts, or a lifetime of better days? Is it possible to stop judging fictional characters (or each other in this divided, angry world) long enough to see that we are all “fellow creatures”? Personally, I want to talk about the parrots whose powers of cognition did nothing to free them from their life sentences.

Another “meanwhile”: The story here also serves as a meditation on the power of books. While Edgar Lee Masters’s 1915 poetry collection “Spoon River Anthology” plays a prominent role, works from J.D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Butler Yeats to Zadie Smith and Maya Angelou underpin and suffuse every chapter.

“Harriet had always considered Angelou a tad pious,” Wood notes — a pot-calling-kettle moment that made me chortle, as “How to Read a Book” nudges the conscience as much as it pulls at the heartstrings. But it is also generously seasoned with unexpected twists and a wonderful wit. It’s never saccharine. In book clubs and in life, sometimes you just need a break from the sense of gritty hopelessness. This novel is a reminder that goodness, and books, can still win in this world.

HOW TO READ A BOOK | By Monica Wood | Mariner Books | 288 pp. | $28

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

The complicated, generous life  of Paul Auster, who died on April 30 , yielded a body of work of staggering scope and variety .

“Real Americans,” a new novel by Rachel Khong , follows three generations of Chinese Americans as they all fight for self-determination in their own way .

“The Chocolate War,” published 50 years ago, became one of the most challenged books in the United States. Its author, Robert Cormier, spent years fighting attempts to ban it .

Joan Didion’s distinctive prose and sharp eye were tuned to an outsider’s frequency, telling us about ourselves in essays that are almost reflexively skeptical. Here are her essential works .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .