Rating: 
Summary: Worth Every Penny!
Review: As a professional soapmaker I own just about every soapmaking book published. "The Handmade Soap Book" by Melinda Coss is my favorite and I highly recommend it. The photographs by Emma Peios are sensual and entice you to want to make each and every soap in the book. The recipes are for small batches which works well while you are just learning and when you've found your favorites you can double or triple the recipes. The recipes are well written and pretty much fail-proof. Coss is not a soap snob or purist, rather she uses color freely to produce delightful results. Coss features both vegetable soap and animal-based materials for those who would like to experiment and choose for themselves rather than have the decision made for them which is done in many soapmaking books. Yes, the book is a bit pricey but it is hardcover so it is durable, the photographs are inspirational and the recipes make "The Handmade Soap Book" worth every penny.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for inspiration, but...
Review: I am a beginner soap maker, and found the recipes and pictures good for inspiration. Also, the sequence of pictures for a basic recipe from heating stage to the trace stage are useful. However, the book is not useful for creating your own recipes. While the book has a saponification table and a description of how to calculate amount of lye to use, it does not tell you how much liquid to use in a new recipe.
Rating:
Summary: What to do with all the soap you've made!
Review: I bought this book after reading all the reviews as one of my information sources for soap making. However, now that I have about a year's worth of experience, I would not recommend this book for the beginner. ALL of her recipes need to be checked with a lye calculator as they are lye heavy. This will cause the soaps to be crumbly, harsh, drying. She also feels that beeswax is needed in most of her recipes, which one doesn't need. Also, most experienced soapers wouldn't use such high amounts of coconut oil as this is drying, even though it makes wonderful lather. Fresh fruit nave no place in cold process soap...they will mold. Fragrances need to be added at the rate of about .5 ounce per pound of oils, she falls way short, so the soaps will have very little fragrance. The photographs appear wonderful, until you have experience making soaps, then you will notice how lye heavy they are. The amount of water that is needed in her recipes is also off. Her recipes are small (32 ounces) so your margin for error is very slim. I suppose you could use the book for ideas, but you really need to rework the recipes. After you have learned how to make cold process soap elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Some Pretty Photos and Some Not-so-Pretty Ones
Review: I checked out this book along with Susan Miller Cavitch's The Soapmaker's Companion. The information in this book is presented simply. It's more of a picture book with a few recipes. I found the other book much more informative for a new soapmaker. This one does present some interesting recipes and the photos do help. As others have mentioned, some of the soaps pictured look lye heavy. I recommend checking the recipes with a lye calculator before trying them.
Rating:
Summary: Good Source of Information but Caution on Recipes
Review: I like the way the book is organized and written, and the photos are inspiring. The writer does a good job of organizing the topics. I found the lists of additives, essential oils, and fillers especially interesting and informative, and I return to this section often. However, after plugging in a few of her recipes in a lye calculator, I was disappointed in the lye heavy recipes. I felt this was very lazy editing and a potential danger to new soap makers who do not know how to design their own recipes. I checked some of her sap values and they are correct, but, out of a sampling of 5 recipes, 2 recipes are lye heavy: "Grapefruit Slice" is -1.6% lye heavy; "Fresh as a Cucumber" is also -8% lye heavy. However, "Blackberry Smoothy", "Peach Melba", and "Strawberry Soap" are all okay. If you already know how to design your own recipes, this is a good book for inspiration.
Rating:
Summary: Good Source of Information but Caution on Recipes
Review: I like the way the book is organized and written, and the photos are inspiring. The writer does a good job of organizing the topics. I found the lists of additives, essential oils, and fillers especially interesting and informative, and I return to this section often. However, after plugging in a few of her recipes in a lye calculator, I was disappointed in the lye heavy recipes. I felt this was very lazy editing and a potential danger to new soap makers who do not know how to design their own recipes. I checked some of her sap values and they are correct, but, out of a sampling of 5 recipes, 2 recipes are lye heavy: "Grapefruit Slice" is -1.6% lye heavy; "Fresh as a Cucumber" is also -8% lye heavy. However, "Blackberry Smoothy", "Peach Melba", and "Strawberry Soap" are all okay. If you already know how to design your own recipes, this is a good book for inspiration.
Rating:
Summary: Good for inspiration, but...
Review: I returned this book. As an experienced soapmaker, I found that this book just repeated a lot of the same information from other books I have read. There are better books out here and this one is pretty mediocre. I would recommend "Essentially Soap" over this book.
Rating:
Summary: Lovely Photos, Iffy Recipes
Review: The recipes in this book are, compared to the recipes in the Susan Miller Cavitch "Soapmaker's Companion", deceptively simple. This can be good and bad -- I've made two soaps from this book, and one came out super-soft and the other came out fine. As for their lye content -- yes, compared to Cavitch's computations, they do seem on the heavy side. Someone recommended calculating before you make the recipes, and I think that's a good suggestion.The photos are gorgeous, and give you a sense of what your final product will look like. She has some good technique suggestions, and the standard list of sap values for soaps. Her list of ten things to do when making soap is amusing. But I don't recommend this as a first book for beginning soapmakers. I do recommend it if you are buying it along with other books on soapmaking (such as the above-mentioned Cavitch book) and for those who are moderately familiar with soap-making. This book does contain animal-fat based recipes, which can be a drawback to some.
Rating:
Summary: Lovely Photos, Iffy Recipes
Review: The recipes in this book are, compared to the recipes in the Susan Miller Cavitch "Soapmaker's Companion", deceptively simple. This can be good and bad -- I've made two soaps from this book, and one came out super-soft and the other came out fine. As for their lye content -- yes, compared to Cavitch's computations, they do seem on the heavy side. Someone recommended calculating before you make the recipes, and I think that's a good suggestion. The photos are gorgeous, and give you a sense of what your final product will look like. She has some good technique suggestions, and the standard list of sap values for soaps. Her list of ten things to do when making soap is amusing. But I don't recommend this as a first book for beginning soapmakers. I do recommend it if you are buying it along with other books on soapmaking (such as the above-mentioned Cavitch book) and for those who are moderately familiar with soap-making. This book does contain animal-fat based recipes, which can be a drawback to some.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful and Inspiring, with Caution
Review: This book is an inspiring look at handmade soap recipes. The photographs are helpful as well as beautiful, and there are some good photos of the soapmaking process. Readers should always be aware that every soap recipe should be run through a lye calculator before use, and this book is no exception. Typos do happen, and a few of these recipes are lye-heavy. The descriptions of each recipe are also not very informative, but rest assured that every recipe will create luxurious handcrafted soap. The photos will also inspire the reader to create their own recipes and experiment with color and fragrance options.
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