Writing Spoiler Free Reviews

Ever since I started the MetroReader blog with the intention to mainly write reviews about books I’ve read, I’ve often wondered how best to go about writing about books without giving out any spoilers. How does one encourage another person to read and get them sufficiently excited without touching about important plot points? How does one share the joys and sorrows they felt without sharing the exact reason for it? In my pursuit to write better reviews I’ve read a few articles on the net about this and picked up some pointers. This post is written with the intention of letting the readers of this blog know about how I cover my reviews and also to help those who want to write similar stuff.

Depending on your writing style (formal or conversational), you can choose to start off by giving information about the book like the name and background of the author, year of publication, edition etc. In my experience, I know that the readers of this blog aren’t particularly interested in it so I tend to leave out that information. You can also start by letting people know about what it was that attracted you to the book initially. I know it’s not right to judge a book by its cover but we all know we’re attracted to books with pretty covers. Some books I’ve read have had great cover art and sometimes I’ve even bought books I’ve read before because the cover looks so good. Some examples of books I’ve read with amazing cover art are: The Little Prince, Open (Andre Aggasi’s autobiography), Room on the Roof (60th Anniversary edition) and The Book Thief. It need not be just the cover but also someone who pointed you towards that book. Readers these days prefer reading stories rather than informational pieces. Give them a back story about how you were attracted to the book and you’ll very likely have them hooked.

That’s all I’d like to cover in this part because I don’t want this to be a really long post. More to come in the next post. Keep following!