"Also suggested" books are usually books in the same series as a book I've thoroughly reviewed. Rather than rating each book in the series, I read the others quickly, so I'm not recommending books I haven't read. Unless it's noted in the mini-review of the "also suggested" book, the book would be rated similarly to the main review. Note that "also suggested" books appear in the searches with "not rated" in the ratings category.

"Also suggested" books are an evolving category. Initially I wrote only the briefest of reviews. These also suggested books are included on the same page as the book reviewed in detail. These books are not included in the database for searching, though I'm gradually going back and writing longer reviews of these books and adding them to the database.

Next in this evolution came longer reviews--still on the same page as the main book in the series, but I began including these also suggested books in the database, so they're searchable. (As I can, I'm moving these longer reviews to their own pages--as described below.)

Because the longer reviews are cumbersome on a page with another review, I now put just a line or two from the also suggested review on the page with the original book in the series. Readers who are interested can click on the link to read the rest of the review. These reviews are also in the database, so they're also searchable.

I do write teen reviews for also suggested books, and they appear in the Search Teen Reviews.

I don't recommend a book if it contains pre-marital sex or other sexual content. However, I have also not recommended a book because of extreme violence and lots of nudity, and I've not recommended a book with lots of supernatural evil and one with with drug addiction, among other concerns. Often a book has more than one element that makes it not recommended.
I haven't yet not recommended a book solely because of offensive language; often the offensive language goes along with other problems that cause a book not to be recommended.If offensive language were the only issue, I would probably list the book as questionable or for mature teens. However, I did stop reading a book recently because I found the language so offensive. It was about a teen who was a neo-Nazi and then changed, so it sounded like a book with a good message, but I felt so assaulted by the language that I couldn't keep reading. I need to find the book again and see what I can glean from it, so I can write about it on the website.
I don't write teen reviews for not recommended books, and the books don't appear in the Search Teen Reviews.

Since I want my site to be one that parents consider safe for teens and tweens to visit, the teen reviews for books for mature readers and for questionable books do not appear on the teen search results. The teen reviews for these books can only be accessed from the parent reviews for these books. (The link to the teen review is at the bottom of the parent review.)

If you want your teen to read a review of a book that’s rated for mature teens or rated as questionable, you will need to print the teen review or bring it up on the screen, so your teen can see it. If you try to send your teen a link, they won’t be able to open the page without a username or password. If you feel your teen is mature enough to make wise choices about books, you may share your username and password with your teen, so they can have access to all the reviews on the site. (Please note, however, that if you share your username and password with your teen, they will also have access to reviews of books that are not recommended.)

The reading level of a book (RL) is an attempt to indicate how difficult the book is to read. Reading levels are provided in the parent reviews. RLs are listed by grade level. A book with an RL of 5.0 would be a book at the reading level of an "average" fifth-grade reader in the US.

I don't include RLs in the teen reviews because a high or low RL may turn teens or tweens off to a book they would actually enjoy.

The RL does not indicate interest level, what age group is likely to enjoy the book because the interest level of a book is difficult to judge and varies from person to person. Rather than indicating interest level, I indicate page length, give the age of the hero in the description, and mention if I think the book is only for mature or older teens.

The reading levels of the books on this site are derived from analyzing selected passages according to five different systems. The RLs are given as a grade-level score—6.0 can be read by an average sixth grader in the US. A book with an RL of 8.2, range 7.2-9.5 has an average RL score of 8.2, an eighth-grade level, with a range of scores from seventh to ninth grade.

Systems for calculating RLs differ in how they analyze readability—usually by some combination of sentence length and word length. Because of these differences, RLs for the same book can differ from each other by as much as 4.7 grade levels. Also, the systems do not take into account context or the reader's level of interest.

Some of the books in the calendar have surprising reading levels: a ballet novel in free verse has a low reading level, probably because of short sentences and because words like "tendue" and "jette" aren't considered long even though many readers won't know them.

Gandhi's biography has a high RL, 8.4, even though it's a picture book; Watership Down, an adult-level book, has a 7.7 score even though I consider it more difficult to read than that score indicates.

Reading levels provide at best a ball-park figure and should be used only in conjunction with information about a teen's interests and other reading.

A reading level (RL) is included for almost every book in the calendar; however, RLs cannot be determined for books that are unconventionally punctuated, like poetry, or in a format such as a list.

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