I agree with this argument. There is a key difference between a high school book review and a critical book review. It is not our job here to share so much about what happens in the story, but how the story was told. You are critiquing the book from a technical standpoint. Some people like to focus on the flow of the story, how realistic it was, how true to genre the story was, etc. Others point out flaws in grammar, mechanics, formatting, etc.moderntimes wrote:Your stating that characters and locales are well described is a positive move. This is just my own opinion here, but I think that you spent too much time summarizing the plot and not enough time discussing the book's style, dialogue, underlying themes (alienation perhaps, with the undertones of racism added?) and so on. Telling too much about the plot has sort of given us the spoiler, especially since you mention an "early" King novel -- not much guesswork needed after this. Maybe decrease the plot summary by 1/2 and then expand on how realistic and believable the dialogue was, or how authentically the author depicted the main characters, etc.
I also agree with everyone else that you did a great job presenting a neutral review that was pretty well written. I think if you added more detail on the writing style itself and included more information about the target audience, message to readers, etc., then you would have a very well written review on your next go round.