Reviewing ACT® Test Prep Books: 2024 Guide

Diagnostic and practice tests are not good. They're very hard in a way the ACT® Test isn't. The book asks all sorts of questions that strike me as odd.

Unfortunately, I can't find much information about the staff at Peterson's who wrote the book. The content of the book seems like the sort of thing someone who's not experienced taking the ACT® Test might consider good advice. That's hard to quantify. But it's hard to see how their advice is conducive to raising a student's test score.

To be fair, the content in the book, which seems at a glance to comprise at least 90% of it, seems fairly good. In fact, they've taken a similar approach as I did in my website. My website is free. The book is also light on strategy.

I’m not sure who this book is for. The math questions and explanations are good. The difficulty level isn’t assigned to a certain bracket, like easy, medium, or hard. There are better resources for each case available. There are also more helpful ACT® Math guides on the market. If this sounds good for you, and you can find some case, then it looks pretty good.

If you’re looking for very targeted reading practice, this could be the book for you. Not every student can get a perfect reading score without reading more and expanding his or her vocabulary. If that’s your expectation, do not buy this book. I don’t think it’s going to help.

If you want step-by-step breakdowns of each question type, detailed explanations, and further insight, then by all means. Buy this book. There’s little strategy in this book. That’s probably its only downfall. It can be used quite well with the strategy on my website.

The ACT® English Test is very rules based. Almost the entire English Test is rote application of rules, though not just grammar rules. This book teaches you the rules. The book itself seems long but sufficient in length. The explanations are incredibly detailed, even for a company that already does a good job at this. If you need a book for the ACT® English, check out this one.

Also known as the Red Book, this book is the gold standard. If you want more practice tests, stop reading and good buy this book. If you’re still reading this for some reason, let me explain. This book is made by the ACT® company. The tests are 100% accurate to the material on real tests. The book also gives you 6 tests. The answer explanations are also very thoughtful. That can really help students understand how the ACT® thinks as a test.

I opened this with a fresh mind. The first few questions were fine. I wasn’t amazed at the accuracy but I still think they held some value for students who want more help. Towards the end of each test, there were some very weird questions that I’ve never seen before. I’ve seen virtually every single ACT® ever.

The English felt fine. There was nothing special about it, neither good nor bad.

The Reading was confusing. The number of lines changed from between 40 and 170 lines per passage. While each reading passage created by a company other than the ACT® can have a differing number of lines, this book contained passages with the same format but wildly inconsistent passage lengths. I’d have to count the words, but I would guess (I could be wrong) the passages were either shorter on average or longer on average than the ACT® Reading. Very inconsistent.

Very good. The questions seemed perfectly attuned to the ACT® Test. The breakdowns for each Science topic were thorough and thoughtful. Explanations felt like they were exactly the length they needed to be. Neither too long nor too short.

Same thing for the math. Great questions, breakdowns, and explanations.

The one confusing thing about this book is very minor. Math comes first in the title before Science. The real ACT® Math Test comes before the Science Test. For some reason, the actual book has the science section first, then the math. It can be confusing opening it up. That’s not a reason to pass on this book, though.

The English section is really good. The explanation before the drills, the drills themselves, the tests – everything is just right.

The reading is much the same. The passages selected for each test seem pretty spot on and appropriate for the ACT® Reading. My one qualm with this book is the way they teach the Reading Section isn’t how I would do it based on my years of experience working with high school students. That doesn’t mean it’s the wrong, and, more to the point, it’s definitely not a harmful way to teach it.

This book is really not bad. It’s good. The questions are pretty accurate. There are detailed explanations for each question. The difficulty for each question, passage, and test is very well done.

The only reservation for this recommendation is it should only be used if a student has already done the Red Book, which is inherently more accurate since it’s done by people who make the Test.

This book is odd. The content in the beginning isn’t wrong. It reads as poorly organized. The tone and explanations also didn’t seem helpful. Again, none of it was technically wrong. I just had a hard time imagining anyone reading the book finding it a good use of time.

It also claims to have 5 practice tests. I could only find one complete practice test. Maybe they were referring to the practice questions given during the explanations? That’s not usually how this sort of book is marketed though. I also couldn’t find any way to access 4 additional tests online.

The Princeton Review is usually pretty good for ACT® Test Prep books. This one felt like it had very limited value. It does cover each section. There’s not much advanced material in each section. The ACT® Test instead asks “DOK” or dept of knowledge questions with a level between 1-3. Each higher level corresponds to an increase in steps in the problem. That what makes a question “harder” for the ACT® Test.

The question this book seems to be “what’re the most advanced topics on each section?” There really aren’t advanced topics in English, Reading, or Science for the purposes of the ACT® Test.

The math section is good. It offers some work on Matrices, Ellipses, Asymptotes, Advanced Trig and more that could be useful for students looking to bump up their Math score. I’d say the sort of student who would benefit from the math section in this book would score a 28 or higher consistently. Even then, this book’s math section is of limited value.

This book could be a “consider” on its own merits. There are much better ACT® Books that are amazing. This book is okay, which makes it feel redundant when there are better options.

The questions are alright – not bad, not great. They’re appropriate and true to the ACT® Test. Sometimes students will have to work to decode the way this book asks questions in order to use that information on the real Test.

The Reading section had some questionable approaches. The Reading Test had several questions that were phrased quite differently from the ACT® Test has ever done it or does it currently, which is the same thing.

The Science section in particular seems very odd. The tables and charts didn’t look like anything that’s ever been on the ACT® Test.

If for some reason you find this book and need to use it, the answer explanations seem pretty good. That alone isn’t enough to seek this book out of all the available options.

This book is really good if you want more practice questions. The best available is the Red Book, followed by the TPR book. If that’s somehow not enough, then I’d look at this book for more practice in the same exact vein.

Immediately upon opening the book, its similarities to “Conquering” are evident. The explanations are pretty much the same, but not verbatim.

I checked the tests. They were different. Continuing my hard pass for the same reasons as the other two conquering books.

The Black Book exudes confidence. It has a lot of good information. The information is sometimes presented in too many words. The style takes precedence over actually teaching effectively.

Beyond that concern, the book is somewhat disorganized. There’s a long pre-amble that then turns into the actual book. You have to do the work of reading the quite lengthy introduction and the relevant sections in order piece together all of the information you need.

It’s also a little bit outdated – published in 2018. The content is good, don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t have vectors for example, which are becoming increasingly common on the ACT® Math.

I don’t see vectors, but the book as a whole is great value if you’re above a 30 and trying to get a 36. This book has some really complicated questions. The reason that’s a good thing in this book is it’s done in a very deliberate way to cover any possible case you might see on the ACT® Math Test.