How to Write a Book Critique – A Comprehensive Guide

When you are asked to write a book critique, the process can be exciting and interesting, however, if you don’t have a clear vision on how to go about the entire process you could get confused. During this time, you need to know the time he/she is allowed to have the work completed.

You also need to know whether there is a particular format to be followed. These are important factors that you need to know so that you can deliver your work as expected.

The first thing that you need is to know what a book critique is. Note that a critique is not a book report where you give a summary of the writing. The core of the assignment is the critique. In short, you need to write a review of a particular book by assessing and evaluating it judgmentally.

It is not easy to write good book critiques since there are several facets of writing you need to consider. When asked to write a book critique, you need to follow the following guidelines: First, your text should be double-spaced; it should not be printed on both sides of the paper. The font type allowed is normally Turabian or Chicago style. Note that you should not write using first-person pronouns but active voice, but you can do so when expressing your own views.

Note that it requires a lot of time to write a book critique so you should know the time required so that you can prepare yourself well beforehand. While there is no book critique template and most book critique samples you will get are not the same, there are numerous elements you need to consider when writing.

Let’s get started

What is a book critique?

A book critique is a piece of writing where a writer reviews or examines a book critically. There are numerous book critique examples online today, you can download one and get a clear picture of what it is.

How to Write a Book Critique- What to Do Before You Start Writing

Before you start writing a book critique, you should read the novel you are writing the critique about. Note that you cannot use a brief summary you picked from the internet because it will not provide you with information about the plot of the novel and also the analysis of the way the author treats their topic as well as the kind of language the author is using.

How to Write a Book Critique- Take Notes

Note that when you are writing a book critique, you should be sure that you are giving your readers considerable arguments so that your work appears valid. So, if you are not clear about the book, you can read other articles devoted to it so that you get a picture of the book from different angles.

The Format of a Book Critique

A book critique always follows a certain format: Introduction, Body and the Conclusion. Continue reading as we describe each section. You may also get a book critique example on the internet and see how the format looks like.

How to Critique a Book- The Introduction

The first section of a book critique is the Introduction where you need to introduce the book and its author in which you will write the title of the book, author’s name, the year the book was published and the thesis of the author. You will need to present the purpose of the book, provide a summary of the author’s ideas and share your impression to the book

How to Write a Book Critique – The Body

This section of a book critique is where you provide the most valued information. In this case, you need to:

Write a summary of the book. Note that you need to provide in-depth information about the plot of the novel. Ideally, you need to create a vivid picture of what the book entails so that readers can understand your own views about the book. But you don’t have to summarize the book from one chapter to another; only the major plot of the book.

Provide an evaluation: In this stage of your book critique, you provide a proof of your understanding on why the author wrote the book and also provide your own views on the way the author is competent.

How to Write a Book Critique- The Conclusion

The last stage of a book critique is the conclusion where you provide information on whether the book is valuable to the reader and give a comparison of the book with other books in the same field. You need to show how readers can benefit from reading the book and if there are changes you think the author could have implemented to make the book more interesting.

You need to make sure to provide readers with concrete information that will make them decide whether to read the book or not after they have read the conclusion. In this case, you need to make sure you don’t prevent readers from reading a book that is interesting simply because you haven’t provided why it is worth reading and why it is not worth reading.

We hope that the information we’ve provided in this post will help you to know what is a book critique, and it will also help you to find the process of writing a critique to be interesting and simple. Note that if you are still not sure how to write a book critique, you can search for book critique samples and see how the experts go about the entire critique process. Bear in mind that one book critique sample may not be the same as another so you only need to pay attention to the book critique template and come up with an approach to write a critique.