Kirkus Reviews: My Go-To Review Source
One of my favorite places to find book reviews is at Kirkus Reviews. When I worked as a youth librarian, I could always rely on Kirkus Reviews to help me order top quailty books for the library’s collection. I was in charge of ordering for the young adult collection and boy was it fun! I always looked out for the starred reviews in Kirkus and they repeatedly would also come out later on the Texas Library Association’s (TLA) expertly curated reading lists. So that’s how I knew it was good place to find new releases to order.
The Kirkus Website
The website is user friendly and fairly simple to use. I start off by browsing by genre (see below). My usual genres are Fiction and Teens & Young Adults.
When you get the genre page, there are even more options to filter what you want to see. There’s an option to narrow down to subgenre, age, category, and rating. I sort the results by “Release Date (Coming Soon)”. If I’m being super selective, I’ll also limit my results to books that have received Kirkus Stars which are used to denote high quality books.
Another nice tool on the website is that you can create bookshelves to save books that you are interesed in. I anticipate using this more for blogging in the future.
The Reviews
There are a couple of things that are unique to Kirkus Reviews that I’ve always loved.
The one liners – Each review is boiled down to one line that will tell you what they thought about the book. I always look at these first before I even read the review to save time.
The additional book info – The suggested age range and categories is great information to help you make your desicion.
I hope this post helps you find a new review source to help you find potential reads! What other review sources do you use? I’d love to hear about them!