Slowprose Book Review Format

To save some space on our book reviews, we are posting our book review format and basis for our star rating system here. We will link this to each review for reference.

Book Review Categories

Generally speaking, we don’t think of ourselves as “serious” reviewers, so our book review format may be a little different. Here is what to expect when you are reading Slowprose book reviews:

• Cover Review – doing the cliche of judging a book by its cover.
• Book Blurb – we share the book jacket or Goodreads blurb about the plot.
• Intrusive Thoughts – these are the general thoughts and feelings we have about the book while reading it.
• Book review – our overall review and star ranking of the book
• Book aesthetics – this is how gorgeous we thought the pages of the book were, or how easy/hard it was to read, or how good the narrator was if it is an audio book.
• Book recommendations – we talk about the author’s other books or other books that remind us of this book in some form or fashion. Basically, this is our catch-all to talk about anything else that we want to.

Book Cover Ranking System

All Slowprose book reviews start off just as you would in a bookstore or library—judging the cover! Our general practice is to start a book without knowing much about it. Even if the book has a lot of hype (which we love), we try not to learn much about the story before we start to read it. We like to have the story and premise reveal themselves as we go, so a lot of times we are buying or checking out a book solely because of the cover.

• 5 Stars – stopped us in our tracks and compelled us to pick it up.
• 4 Stars – immediately caught our eye, intriguing.
• 3 Stars – decent cover, kept us interested enough to look at the book but didn’t wow us.
• 2 Stars – confusing design or not our style, rarely will pick up.
• 1 Star – walked on by without a second glance.

Book Review Star Ranking System

I know everyone has a different system for ranking books, so here is the very scientific system Slowprose uses for their book reviews and star ranking:

• 5 stars – slammed the book shut when finished & immediately hugged it. OMG LOVED
• 4 stars – squeezed book once closed, looked lovingly at the cover while nodding. SO GOOD
• 3 stars – closed the cover, looked away pondering, giving a bit of a shrug & nod. NOT BAD
• 2 stars – sighed while walking the book back to the book pile. IMMEDIATELY FORGOTTEN
• 1 star – DNF

When it is somewhere between these reactions, the book will get a .5 rating

Slowprose, book division of Slowestuff