In the main culture sections of Brazilian newspapers, the review is commonly referred to as a "critique", in a historical and symbolic allusion to traditional literary criticism, whose origins date back to the 17th century. A look at Literary Theory and its extensive studies makes us realise the significant difference between the two discursive compositions. While the former is confined to the literary field, the latter brings together important characteristics of its original field, journalism. Undergraduate courses and writing manuals do not help to deepen knowledge about the nature and purpose of the book review, as well as most journalistic genres that do not essentially deal with facts and events, reflecting on the way journalism students and professionals understand and work with the respective texts in the classroom and in their production routines. This book analyses the book review in contrast to literary criticism, with the aim of differentiating and delimiting them conceptually, so as to consider the book review published in newspapers and news magazines as a topical journalistic discursive composition, as being the newspaper's criticism.