As a recent addition to A level psychology, I needed the perfect book to guide me through my studies; and not just any book would have cut it, but this books passes with flying colours. The layout of the guide is useful, with hints and tips to help if you get stuck. The language is simple, yet complex when it needs to be, although with the odd grammatical error (well chuffed I found one!) The books is split into categories for each individual topic, with a question and answer question at the end of each one.
The real thing that stood out about this book was the colours, I know it sounds silly but if you've ever done a lot of reading/ or had to do a lot of reading looking at a black and white page for hours on end can make your eyes hurt, so with the odd change it colour and images, your brain is constantly awake and ready to learn!

As a topic, psychology requires you to learn lots of studies, so with each study squared off it's easy to distinguish between the different segments of knowledge you are required to learn. The books also allows you to see the key terms for which you need to learn the definitions for, they are also sectioned off in the corners of the page so you can either highlight or add a post it note to it for easy access ( that's my little way of navigating around my books!). Usually in the top left corner there is a little box which is called ' do it yourself' which allows you to carry out tasks as home and outside which let you expand your knowledge on a topic, and overly help you remember it better for better application in the exam.

However, the books does, unfortunately carry some weaknesses: the information is clumped together in big chunks of writing, where the color and key term analyzer help dim this fact, it is textbook that looking at bulks of writing will just make you bored and your mind will eventually drift off, and then you are not focusing 100% so information will not be processed properly! Despite this, the book is still my primary source for knowledge when I need to refresh my memory or simply have a good read with something that I am quite interested in, but I'm sure there are other books out there that have that credibility!

Price and availability wise, I got it on Amazon for £14.99 a while back, but I'm sure it is still available and I highly recommend it to anyone studying the AQA A specification.
The book also has little exam tips in the bottom corner which allow you to see an example answer for exam use, whether it be a good or a bad one, I prefer the bad ones as the incorrect knowledge will just make you feel smarter and then the information will be elaborated on ( just from personal experience ;)
There is also a section for real world applications, which allow you to see how psychology is applied in the real world, really showing that step up from GCSE study where you would simply have to define and evaluate the terms. This book really showed me how to manage the change between GCSE and AS study, and I think it's safe to say I'm looking forward to furthering my study. But, hopefully it will all be worth it after my exam, which is on Tuesday, wish me luck and happy Dooyooing! xx