For some great reviews, be sure to check out Becky’s Book Reviews. She has a BA and MA in English literature and a MLS degree. Her specialization is children’s and young adult literature. She reads more than anyone I’ve ever met and she post wonderful reviews and interviews. Go, read, enjoy.
My secret hope is that she will one day start a manuscript critique service wherein she offers to read unpublished work and give a review for fifty bucks, or something. I’m talking cheap because I’m talking short and sweet. Maybe she’d have to make the private reviews a little longer and charge a hundred bucks, I don’t know. I’ve not researched the market.
But can you imagine? Instead of waiting until after the book was published to get bad reviews, you could get them before it was published and hopefully, fix the problems before anyone else saw the book. I know it sounds weird to be saying we should pay fifty or a hundred dollars for a bad review. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reviewed books and thought, “Man, I wish he’d sent this to me before it was published because it’s a good book, but it could have been a great book if he’s only fixed a couple of things.” There are a lot of freelance editors available. The thing that would make a review by Becky attractive would be that she’s a reader. She reads all the time. And because of that she’s got a good eye for seeing if characters are engaging or if plots have holes.
Anyway, I have no idea if she’ll ever offer reviews of unpubbed stuff. For right now, I’m loving her reviews. Go, read, enjoy.
Amazingly, we have another Becky blogger who could also do a great job of evaluating manuscripts. This one is a writer and editor. She edited, among others, AMG’s super-popular Dragons in Our Midst series. If you want great discussion on writing and reading fiction and how that all works out for a Christian go check her out at A Christian Worldview of Fiction.
Becky also is the lead person for the CSFF blog tour (Christian Sci-fi/fantasy). They’re wrapping up a blog tour today, so if you want to see how a great blog tour works, go over there. Start with the June 23 post and read forward.
