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I was always against the idea that a book review should include a book summary. Want a summary? You can find on every page that sells the book and on the book itself. In a review, it’s a waste of space.

Anyone who read a book can write a summary. Tell me what you felt from reading it, only something you can do.

In addition to being against summaries in reviews, I also avoid reading them (the summaries) more and more overall. I skim at most (to see is there are any trigger words I’d want to avoid), and that only with new authors. On one hand, I’m getting more and more sensitive to spoilers, and have found out that I have much more fun reading a book when I don’t know what to expect; on the other, more often than not, a summary of a book have made me expect something else entirely, so I also want to avoid the unnecessary disappointment.

What then can I use to determine whether I want to buy a book or not, especially when I buy/read more than 20 of them a month?

Cover? Is a big factor. I also use the ‘genres’ and other tags that get listed on the Goodreads. The lists that the book appears in. The ‘similar books’ lists. Random mentions by other people.