After I have read a book, I sometimes go right to reviews to see what has been said about the story.    There are some excellent reviewers out there, including the New York Times, the Guardian, and Kirkus Reviews.   I am not a fan of retelling the story and in my own reviews, I try to avoid doing that.    I am also not a fan of long and detailed analyses, finding fault, but missing the point of the impact of the story.   For example in analyses of Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, critics find fault in the ending of the story, and I agree that it is the weakest part of the book, but I try to balance small faults with the overall value of the book.     I sometimes use a baseball analogy.    The top batter in the league has a 400 batting average (40%).    Writers that bat over 90% should not be taken to task over a small element of the story.   That is not to say that a poorly written or ill-conceived key part can’t spoil a book, because it can.    Delia Owens’ book does not finish her story elegantly, but it is still a fine book.

A site that is consistently on track with reliable reviews is Kirkus Reviews.    The reviews are usually insightful, short, and on-the-mark.     A good example of a great review is one written in 2018 for the novel Washington Black by Esi Edugyan:

• Kirkus Review – Washington Black (link)

For this post, I decided to let Kirkus’ review stand as the best statement about the book, providing a link to the review rather than my own.   I wish I had written it.

My rating of Washington Black – 4.7 out of 5.0 stars4.7

An excerpt (with the outstanding reading by Dion Graham: