A literature review is an argument, not a list. The most common failure is chronological order — "In 2011, Smith found… In 2013, Jones found…" — which forces the reader to build the argument themselves.
Organise by claim instead. Each paragraph makes one point about the state of knowledge and cites the studies that support or complicate it:
- What is well established (cite the strongest evidence, briefly).
- Where results disagree, and the most likely reason why.
- What has not been tested — the gap your project addresses.
Aim for the last paragraph to make your research question feel inevitable. If a reader gets to your question and thinks "why that?", the review has not done its job.
Two rules that save a lot of pain: cite as you write, never afterwards, and never cite a paper you have only read the abstract of.