Not What I Thought It Was Going To Be

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

I read this for a couple of reasons. First, my son, who has similar reading interests to mine suggested this to me because he liked it. Second, it is being made into a series on either Netflix or Hulu, so I thought I should read it.

This is one of those books that has more details than I need, and not enough dialogue to move the story along. Also, despite being told that this is equal in subject matter (the Chicago World's Fair and H.H. Holmes), it is not. There is far more devoted to the intricacies of the World's Fair than there was to the famous murderer. You might get five pages about Holmes and ten to fifteen about the Fair. I just didn't care that much about the Fair.

Also, I ended up having to listen to the audiobook and follow along with my print copy because I couldn't get very far into the book without wanting to go to sleep. I blame all the descriptions and lack of dialogue.

There are whole pages on the audiobook that don't appear in the print copy, so there's some confusion when following along. There are also sections of the book that are irrelevant to both the Fair and Holmes. For example, what was the point of including the part about the HMS Victoria? It had NOTHING to do with the rest of the story.

This was less than 400 pages, and should have been a piece of cake to read. It was not. Part of me wants the time I invested in this back.