Quote:
Originally Posted by GeckoFriend
Any suggestions on how to learn to write a good review?
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I'd say keep on doing as you have been; keep looking at other reviews and see which are the ones you found that told you something useful and informative about the book that you wanted to know, or that made it sound like it was just your kind of thing/okay for others, but not to your personal taste/a book that would be best suited to prop up wobbly table legs should you receive a hardcopy as a gift.
See what elements those reviewers included which drew you in, and conversely, how much/what kind of content you felt was spoilery or oversharing or better saved for one's dedicated blog instead of a consumer site.
Also, look at the "most helpful" reviews on various sites (especially the "most helpful critical" ones) and see what other people seemed to find useful to them, and read reviews filtered by star category to see how the "good" 2/3/4-star reviews seem to be consensus-determined (at 1 and 5 stars, I think there's a lot of generic gushing/slamming and vote-skewing going on).
Generally, a lot of the good reviews will have a certain pattern of medium-length and not too vague, as well address elements in the book in a manner which describes any issues with them, but does not spoiler the outcome or particular plot twists. Praise or criticism given will tend to sound more specific to aspects of the story, rather than generic: "I liked the development of X's character; it was a nice take on the standard hero's journey tale, with enough of a twist to make it stand out, even if the cutesy pet monkey was really annoying and too-conveniently kept saving the day." vs "The characters were great! I loved how they all changed over the course of the story. Except for the monkey. The monkey was bad."
I should note that length isn't necessarily actually a factor in review quality. Some long reviews can be very good, as can some very short reviews. It's more a matter of signal-to-noise ratio.