Nigel Connor has promised to do a review for FM. He should hopefully have received his copy by now.
I know I'm biased but I own a copy of virtually all of the specialist roach books published over the last 140 years, and this is an eminently readable book, and one that I'm proud to have contributed to. Prior to publication I has a quick peruse of some of the other contributions but it is only this week that I've seen the complete book. I find it thoroughly readable from cover to cover. By comparison, Mark Everard's The Complete Book of the Roach, which is the same price yet has nearly three times the content, I find very difficult to actually read, and despite repeated attempts have yet to fully read. It seems full of superfluous detail yet skimps on the stuff you'd expect to find. John's book sticks to the tales of giant roach and the circumstances surrounding them. One detail that at least some of the authors added at my suggestion is actual dates which gives a perspective to anyone reading the book in decades to come. This revealed some remarkable coincidences about peaks of roach fishing on different rivers.
One or two incidental factual errors and typos don't detract from a book that I've read 4 times already and still want to read some more.