There are numerous "Best ACT Books" lists out there. But we think most of them aren't very good or thorough, so I've tried to write a much better guide here.
In this article, you'll learn which books are absolutely critical for your ACT prep, which focus on improving individual sections, and which you'll need if you're aiming for a top score. Most importantly, you'll learn how to use these top-notch ACT prep books for effective studying.
This guide is pretty detailed, so here are some quick links you can use to jump around to different topics. That said, I recommend reading the whole article if you can!
Because your ACT score is important for getting into college and you'll probably spend a good amount of time studying, it's important you get the right advice. Follow the wrong advice, and it might be too late to improve your score before you need to apply to college.
You'll need to vet the advice you get (including ours) before deciding on your ACT prep plan. As you read each article in your research, ask yourself: why should I trust this person online giving me advice?
To be transparent, here's why we believe our ACT prep books guide is better than others online:
One important disclaimer: I'm co-founder of PrepScholar, an online ACT prep program. I believe we've built the best prep program available. It diagnoses your strengths and weaknesses and gives you a structured all-in-one program, combining the best aspects of the books below, so you know exactly what you need to study at every point in your prep.
However, I want to stress that you don't need a program to excel at the ACT. In fact, writing this guide might lose us some customers if you decide you don't need a program at all. But if you'd rather not have to manage 10 books and would prefer an integrated, complete program with the greatest chance of raising your ACT score, check out our comprehensive ACT program.
No matter what you ultimately decide, if you're serious about ACT prep like I think you are, keep on reading.
First, this guide is for students who are serious about ACT prep. You must be motivated to get a high score, and you need to be willing to put in hard work. Getting through these books will take dozens of hours, simply because the ACT covers so much material.
If you plan to study just five hours or so, your choice of book won't make much difference. You should focus your time mainly on taking ACT practice tests and reviewing your answers. With such a short amount of prep time, your score won't go up much—and you shouldn't expect a miracle.
Buying high-quality ACT prep books—and actually using them!—is the first and easiest step of ACT prep. You'll need to put in serious work to actually get the score improvements you want. We'll explain below the best ways to use ACT prep books.
Secondly, this guide is for students who want to improve their scores by more than two points. To make consistent improvements at this level, you need more than just tricks. You need to understand the content being tested—like the underlying math concepts and grammar rules—rather than just ineffective "tricks" that make you feel like you've learned something when you actually haven't.
Now, if you're looking to improve by only one point, you might be able to do that simply by retaking the test, especially if you've taken the ACT only once.
Overall, as long as you're serious about score improvement and want quality ACT books to study with, this is the guide for you.
We're going to divide the best ACT books into a few categories:
These must-have books are what I believe everyone should have, regardless of your current score or what you need to improve. This category is extremely hard for books to qualify for. In fact, there are only two ACT books out of the dozens I've tested that I think are worth buying.
We've written at length about the importance of official ACT practice questions. The ACT is weird and tests concepts in ways you've never seen in school before. This means that you need to train with realistic questions so you can learn the patterns of the ACT.
Official ACT practice tests released by ACT, Inc., are the gold standard for ACT practice questions. Each test contains real questions given to students at previous test administrations. The quality of official questions is far better than those written by unofficial sources such as Kaplan and The Princeton Review.
This particular prep book, informally called the "Red Book," is by far the best source of ACT practice tests.
This is the only other critical book I recommend for ACT prep. Just using the Black Book alone, you'll likely need supplemental help (which I'll talk more about below). But what it does have is so good that I believe every student using ACT prep books in their studies should read it.
What you'll get from the Black Book is a way to think about the ACT. But what does this mean? Here are a couple of examples of what you'll learn:
Some of the concepts in this book were things I understood intuitively back when I took the ACT, but the author here articulates them in a crystal clear way. It's influenced the way that I think about teaching our students at PrepScholar. Of all books on the market, this book aligns most closely with my personal philosophy on the ACT and how to succeed on it.
Beyond the critical books above, you'll most likely need supplemental help on specific sections. This section discusses the best books for ACT English, Math, Reading, and Science. These books all follow my prep philosophy:
The best way to excel at ACT English is to understand the grammar rules and how they appear on the ACT. You also need to do a lot of focused practice questions to make sure you learn the patterns of the ACT. That's how we designed our online ACT prep program to teach you grammar.
My recommendation for best ACT English book is The Complete Guide to ACT English by Erica L. Meltzer. The book is fantastic at distilling grammar into exactly what you need to know for the ACT; you won't have to learn any arcane grammar concepts that won't appear on the test. As for the rules that are tested, Meltzer presents them all clearly and covers the essential foundations for those who want to brush up on basic grammar knowledge.
My philosophy on ACT Math is that the best way to significantly improve your math score is to learn the underlying math content. Learning some simple strategies like plugging in answer choices can get you a little progress, but you'll quickly run into a ceiling if you have gaps in your underlying math skills. Ultimately, you need to learn algebra, geometry, and number theory to be able to do well on the ACT.
Your best bet, therefore, is to find a book that can both teach you math content in an organized way and give you practice problems to test individual skills.
For these reasons, I recommend the Ultimate Guide to the Math ACT by Richard F. Corn. This is a well-written ACT prep book that forces you to buckle down on your weakest math areas.
If you're struggling with ACT math concepts at a basic level (say, scoring 16 or below), I recommend that you supplement your work with Khan Academy, a free online program that offers an engaging way to train your most basic math skills. Note that it's not customized for the ACT specifically, so this program alone won't be enough for your ACT prep.
In my experience with thousands of students, ACT Reading is the most difficult section to improve. It uses logical reasoning skills that aren't as easy to master as math concepts and grammar rules are. It's very important to figure out what types of Reading questions will be asked and how you can approach these questions in a systematic way.
My recommendation for best ACT Reading book is once again by Erica L. Meltzer: The Complete Guide to ACT Reading. This book dissects the ACT Reading section by both question type and skill. Meltzer does a great job teaching the core of what the question is asking and how to work with the passage to arrive at the correct answer.
Of all writers, Meltzer aligns most closely with my philosophy of drilling questions skill by skill to recognize patterns.
Despite the fact that many students find the Science section to be the most challenging part of the ACT, until recently there were no books specifically dedicated to helping you on ACT Science. At PrepScholar, we know all the tricks for making ACT Science easier, so we decided to compile them into a book.
Because it's the only book on the market specifically dedicated to ACT Science, we made sure to make The PrepScholar Guide to ACT Science exceptional. This book covers every topic, skill, and question type you'll see on ACT Science, which means that nothing on this section will come as a surprise on test day.
Most importantly, this book also includes all of our best ACT Science test-taking tricks. Many students get tripped up on the Science section because it's so different from the science tests they've taken in school. However, this book shows you how to identify all the tricks in ACT Science and learn how to avoid getting fooled by them.
Looking at the list above, you can see that you already have your work cut out for you. With nine full-length practice tests and five books at your disposal, you'll be studying for well over 80 hours. If you go through all of your practice using the guidelines we recommend, you'll likely make huge improvements.
If you still want additional practice, though, I recommend Barron's ACT books—especially if you're aiming for a near-perfect score. I remember using these books during my own prep in high school, and while Barron's questions are inferior to those in official ACT practice tests, they're a solid backup source to use if you've finished everything else above.
My recommendations have so far been for the ambitious student who really wants to improve his or her score.
But I know some students just want to put in five hours, get some exposure to the test, and then take the ACT and forget about it. I personally believe that for most students, improving your ACT score is the best way to improve your chances of college admission. If you feel like you don't want to put much effort into studying for the ACT, I strongly suggest reexamining your approach.
That said, if you're stuck in the mindset of simply getting the ACT over with, the book I recommend is Kaplan's ACT Prep Plus 2023. It's an all-in-one book that covers all four sections and contains practice questions and tests. It doesn't excel at any of what it's doing, but it covers the most important bases. It also tends to have more reasonable content than other all-in-one books, such as the ACT book by The Princeton Review.
I'll be honest: I don't love this book. I don't even really like it. To be frank, I don't recommend it if you seriously want to improve your ACT score and are willing to put in study time. But if you just want a single source that can do an okay job and is easily digestible, this is the best book out there.
More important than buying ACT prep books is knowing how to use them effectively. The more books you have, the more important it is to understand how to build a unified study system.
We've written thorough guides to walk you through your ACT study plan:
There are a lot of ACT prep methods available to you, and book studying is only one of them. Just to explore all of our options, let's quickly examine whether studying with ACT books is right for you.
People who choose to study with books do so for different reasons. Some do it for cost reasons. As I noted above, the best ACT books can get expensive. If you buy all of the top books, you'll be spending around $200. This is already close to the cost of our online ACT prep program, which goes beyond books by guiding your studies step by step and motivating you to put in the time.
Others study with books because they're self-motivated and like teaching themselves. If this isn't you, books can be a disappointing way to spend your time—and you probably won't improve, either. By far one of the most important ways to improve your ACT score is to study your mistakes and learn from them. If you can't do this reliably, you'll need extra help to get started.
We've written a free guide to compare other methods of ACT prep. Click the image below to download this guide so you can compare the different methods and see which one is best for you.
Understanding your ACT target score is critical. Get started by reading our step-by-step guide to figuring out what ACT score you need to aim for.
These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.
