Book Blogger Hop is a weekly feature hosted by Billy at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. Each week, a new book related question is posted and everyone can share their answers. This week’s question is:
What’s your typical process for writing a book review, from reading the book to publishing the review on your blog?
This is something that I’ve always struggled with on the blog, so it was nice to sit down and try to put it into words. So here it goes.
If I’m several reviews behind, I will start a list of books that I finished, just so I don’t miss anything. If it’s a re-read, I will also check and see whether or not I’ve reviewed it in the past. After reading the book (obviously the first step lol), I will try to decide what kind of review I want to write. If the book is part of a series, I will sometimes do one review for the series as a whole. This works well if I am behind on reviews since I can catch up quicker. There are some books though where I feel the need to review each book separately. It honestly just depends on vibes. For the post itself, I have a template of sorts that I use so that all of my review posts look the same. Each review will have the details of the book itself, but I also include tidbits about my personal experience with the book, such as reading dates and what format I read (hardcover, paperback, ebook, etc.).
For the review portion of the post, I try to avoid spoilers if possible (sometimes difficult for sequels or separate books in a series). If spoilers cannot be avoided, I will post a spoiler warning before the review part of the post so that you can read at your own risk. I try very hard to not just summarize the book I’ve read, but spend more time giving my impressions on certain aspects. Did I connect with the main character? Were there any side characters that I particularly enjoyed (or loved to hate)? In the case of fantasy or other speculative fiction, what did I like about the story world? The magic system? Any interesting or fantastical creatures?
The last thing I will do is put down the rating that I gave the book on GoodReads, from one to five stars. I am extremely generous with my ratings – I think it’s because I have attempted to write a book before and it is EXTREMELY HARD. The fact that someone was able to go through that process, get the thing edited, published, and into my hands is an accomplishment that alone deserves praise. I also just generally like most things. Even books that I have major issues with rarely get rated lower than three stars, mostly because even if something in the story doesn’t work, I try to see what the author was trying to do, give them the benefit of the doubt, and focus more on the things I did like. I guess I’m just really forgiving in this regard. The book has to be pretty terrible to get two stars or less and, luckily, I haven’t read many of those.
So that’s it! Nothing too crazy, although I had a lot more to say about this than I thought I did – this turned out to be a much longer post than I expected!
Be sure to check out the other answers of this week’s Book Blogger Hop and let me know how you like to write your reviews!
Categories: Book Blogger Hop
Life With No Plot 
Interesting. I have a template of sorts too and I am also generous with my ratings because of the work that has gone into a book. To be fair though I rarely pick a book that I don’t like (thank goodness!).
Have a great weekend!
Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog
My post:
I always envy those that can write long reviews and are good at it. My reviews are so short lol.
I have not been writing long reviews of late though when I do, I do tend to go on and on:) Nowadays, it is either super-short – one word/one phrase type of reviews for picture books and a few sentences for most others. I need to go back to a few long ones again…
My post is here