Condensed review books occupy a strange place in exam preparation. Almost everyone owns one. Many people read one straight through. Very few get much out of doing so.
The problem is a mismatch between what the book is and how it gets used.
What it is
It is compression. Each line stands in for a paragraph of a textbook, and the compression only decompresses if you already have the underlying material somewhere. A line reading as a terse association is a memory aid for a concept you have met, not an explanation of one you have not.
Read cold, it is a very long list of facts with no structure. Read as a reference against material you are actively working through, it is extremely efficient.
Why cover-to-cover reading fails
It produces familiarity. You recognise the page, the layout, the position of the diagram. Recognition feels like knowledge and is not, which is why students who have read the book twice can still be surprised by questions on material they have demonstrably seen.
It also takes an enormous amount of time for something that generates no feedback. Nothing during a read-through tells you which parts you have failed to absorb.
The way that works
Use it as the index to your question practice.
Do a block. Review it properly. For each error, find the relevant section and read it, now, with a specific reason and a concrete question attached. Annotate the page with what you got wrong and why the distractor was tempting.
Over a few weeks the book fills with your own errors, and it becomes something genuinely worth revisiting: a personalised map of your gaps rather than a generic compression of the field.
Some question banks keep that map for you as well. QBankly tracks missed questions into a review queue, which pairs well with an annotated book rather than duplicating it.
Annotation that is worth the time
Write the reasoning, not the fact. “Chose X because I anchored on the fever” is worth more on rereading than the correct answer copied in, because it tells you about the mistake rather than the material.
Highlighting is nearly worthless. It marks text you have read, which is not the same as text you have understood, and it feels productive enough to crowd out things that are.
The final weeks
By then, the book should be doing the job it is actually good at: fast review of material you have already worked through, weighted toward your own annotations.
A student who spends the last fortnight reading their annotated copy is reviewing their own errors. A student who spends it reading a clean copy is meeting the compression for the first time under time pressure, which is the worst possible moment for it.
One book, used properly
Owning several review resources and using none of them thoroughly is a common and expensive pattern. The marginal value of a second book is far below the marginal value of annotating the first one against a full pass of question practice.
Building your own version
The end state worth aiming for is a copy that has become specific to you. Errors annotated in the margins, the sections you keep getting wrong marked so they are findable, and the parts you have never once been tested on left clean.
That artefact is worth far more in the final fortnight than any clean resource, because it is a map of your own gaps rather than a compression of the field.
It takes weeks to build and cannot be assembled at the end, which is why the annotation habit needs to start with your first question block rather than in the last month.
What to do about the sections you cannot follow
Some passages will be compressed past the point of usefulness for a topic you have not properly met. That is a signal to go elsewhere (a textbook, a lecture, a video) learn the concept, and then come back.
The mistake is rereading the compressed version repeatedly hoping it will open up. It will not; there is not enough there. The book is an index, and when the index points at something you do not have, you need the source.
One resource, thoroughly
The temptation to buy a second review book when progress feels slow is strong and almost always wrong. The marginal value of another compression is far below the marginal value of annotating the one you have against a full pass of questions.
Frequently asked questions
Should I read it before starting questions?
No. It is written to compress material you have already met. Read cold, it is a list of facts without the structure that makes them stick.
Is annotating worth the time?
Yes, if the annotations come from your own errors. Copying an explanation in is useful; highlighting text you have just read is close to useless.