MGH Update and Board Preparation has all the elements of a good review book: easy to read, full of information, and organized. It even highlights the important stuffs to remember. Overall, this is a great reviewer.

I bought this book to brush up for my 10 year board recertification exam and, after the exam, I would say I have mixed feelings about having used it. First, if you are someone who believes that studying the material of your chosen profession should be a slightly rewarding experience, I suggest you look elsewhere. Reading through this book is about as engaging as reading the phonebook, with the crucial difference that in many towns you would get through the phonebook faster. The chapters are typically written in outline form and are quite dry. Unlike other books, each chapter is not followed by review questions (which can break up the reading experience). Instead, the 400 review questions are left for the back of the book. This also means that it is tricky to use the questions as a way of learning which chapters you need to read more carefully as they don't obviously map to the chapters.

A few years since its publication, the book is already slightly out of date, if only in emphasis. For example, a full 5% of the 200 questions on the test (yes, I counted) related to the use of buprenorphine, naltrexone, naloxone, and acamprosate in the management of substance abuse disorders. These treatments, which were newer when the book was published, get scant attention here. In addition, the test at the back of the book contains many K-questions, those often perplexing multiple-multiple choice questions, but they are (thankfully) no longer used in the actual exam.

Nevertheless, reading this book, painful as it was, did help, and I am sure that I got a number of questions right that I would otherwise have missed. As recertification is still new, I expect that there will be better books coming out soon. I would recommend looking for them.