A Review Format of Our Own

When Jenny and I first started this blog, we both agreed we wanted to have a unique but informative structure when it came to our book reviews. One thing we both admire and appreciate in other book blogs is a consistent review format - we know exactly what we're going to get when we visit those blogs. We had a really brief conversation about our own review structure, and then kind of hit the ground running when we launched our blog back in November and didn't ever establish anything uniquely ours. Now that we've had a little more time to think about it, I think we've finally come up with a review format that fits us and also plays off our blog name in a fun way!

So here is what you can expect from book reviews on The Pathological Readers from now on. We'll begin with The Vitals, which will include:       

• Book Cover
• Title
• Author
• Release Date
• Page Count
• Genre
• Target Audience
• Series
• Source and Format

After that we'll provide a Summary From Goodreads. Occasionally when the Goodreads summary won't suffice, we'll write our own, but for the most part the summaries will be from Goodreads.

Next, we'll include a Chart rating our overall thoughts (on a scale of 1 to 5) on five different aspects of the novel. This will allow you to digest our book review in one fell swoop if you don't have time to read the entire thing. Here's a sample chart for a book we've already reviewed, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight:

 Next, we'll jot down our Notes, which will be the meat of the book review. This is where we will share and discuss all of our thoughts on the book in detail. As part of the notes, we'll include a Chief Complaint, which will spell out what didn't work for us or what we didn't like about that particular book. This definitely does not mean we're forcing ourselves to think negatively about every book. If we don't have anything bad to say about a book, we'll be sure to make that clear in this section. :)

At the end of the review, we'll give our Overall Diagnosis, which will utilize our new rating system. Even though Jenny and I both loathe stars, we've tied our ratings to a 5 star scale just so people can have that comparison. Don't worry, we're giving ourselves the freedom to give half stars or even quarter stars if we feel like it. This is our blog after all! So at the end of our review you can quickly see that the book caused us to Suffer From a Case Of...

After the Overall Diagnosis, if there was a quote or two that stood out to us, we'll include it under Notable Quotes and also share reviews from other blogs so our readers can Get a Second Opinion.

So there you have it, folks! The new review format for The Pathological Readers. We hope you like it! If this was confusing or difficult to visualize at all, you can see everything come together tomorrow as Jenny shares the first review in the new format. Be sure to check back and let us know what you think!