Book Review Writing Prompts

I recently wrote a guide to structuring book reviews and it inspired me to write another similar post focused on prompts. It is all well and good if you have a solid structure for your review but what if you cant think of anything to write? This post will feature some writing prompts to help you get your words on the page.

Writing Style Prompts

Explain your opinion of the author’s writing style: Is their writing clear or confusing? Do they balance internal character development and external action to keep the story moving? Does the author’s word choice and sentence structure make you want to read more? How was the descriptive language? Did it immerse you or bore you? Did the language accurately represent the characters?

Character Prompts

Evaluate the fictional characters: Are their actions consistent with their personality? Are they representative of their descriptions? Did you like their characteristics? What did you like or dislike about their choices or decisions? Could you relate to or connect to any of the characters? Did you have a favourite or least favourite character in the book? How did you feel about the character relationships? Did any of the characters represent something important to you? Did your opinions change on any of the characters?

Story or Plot Prompts

Evaluate the story and plot: Did you enjoy the story progression? Was it fast-paced, too slow or just right? Did you ever get bored of the story? What elements of the story did you love? Did you find yourself feeling any strong emotive reactions to the story? Did it make you laugh, cry, smile, feel anger? Was the plot predictable? How did you react to plot twists? Was the story too long or short? How did it compare to the movie or game if it has one? Did it the story tackle any important social/political issues worth discussing?

Additional Review Prompts

Your overall thoughts and feelings: Did the book meet your expectations? Did it leave you feeling disappointed or craving more? Was it underrated or worth the hype? Do you think it was accurately described in the blurb? What influenced your rating and why? would you recommend this book to a friend? Who do you think would enjoy reading this book? Do you think it stands out within the genre? Did it change your opinion about something? Did it challenge the way you think? Could this book peak your interest into a new genre? What did you like/dislike about the cover?

I hope you found these writing prompts helpful for writing your book reviews. Let me know in the comments if you have any other ideas for prompts!