These three types of publications are part of the scholarly communication cycle, but their content and purpose differ in important ways.
As we discussed, scholarly articles describe new knowledge or ideas based on original research, analysis and/or interpretation. They are often peer-reviewed.
Book reviews are also published in scholarly journals, but they do not contain original research and are not peer-reviewed.
The purpose of a review is to summarize and evaluate a recently published title that contains original research on a specific topic. Often, reviewers contextualize the ideas presented by an author in a particular book within the body of the existing research.
Literature reviews describe and assess original research sources (books and articles) that have been published on a specific topic by scholars. A literature review is usually part of the introduction to a scholarly article.
The purpose of a literature review is to summarize ideas that have been established on a subject and analyze what their strengths and weaknesses are.