Architects and serial killers and a supernatural dating agency

TITLE: The Devil in the White City
AUTHOR: Erik Larson

Devil In The White City tells the story of the 1893 Chicago World Fair and of two men: the architect who built it, Daniel Burnham, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer who operated in the city at the time of the Fair.
Larson is excellent at painting a picture of what life in Chicago would have been like at the time, and I found myself fascinated by that. The action moves between Burnham and his titanic efforts in organising and building the Fair and Holmes and his gruesome activities, and both were interesting characters. However, I struggled to see the connections, other than being present in the same time and place. It felt more like two independent stories chopped into pieces and mixed up.

MY GRADE: A B-. I enjoyed it, but wasn't crazy about it.

AUDIOBOOK NOTES: The narration is ok, but I think listening to the audiobook exacerbated the slow pace. There were also a few things that didn't lend themselves well to narration, such as a long menu of what was served at a particular celebratory dinner, which in written format would have made the desired point about the lavishness and abundance of the food without the need to be read in detail. Unfortunately for the narrator, there was nothing to do but just read the whole thing!



TITLE: Beauty Dates The Beast
AUTHOR: Jessica Sims

Beauty Dates The Beast is set in a world where humans and all sorts of paranormal creatures coexist. The heroine, Bathsheba, is a regular human who works for a dating agency for supernaturals, even though that puts her and her sister in close contact with them. This is a risk, as her sister is a shifter herself, and really doesn't want other shifters to know and force her into their packs. Beau, a cougar-shifter, is one of their new clients, and when his first arranged date cancels, Bathsheba panics. Her boss is going to kill her, she thinks, so when Beau proposes she replace his date, she accepts.

This was a bit of a mess. I didn't click with the voice or the supposed humour at all. To me, the situations weren't hilarious or lighthearted, they were stupid and juvenile. Bathsheba and her sister didn't have a brain to share between them (see, among many other idiotic decisions, their job at exactly the right place where the sister would be most at risk), and Beau was smarmy and a borderline psychopath. I read almost half of this, but it took me over a week, and I couldn’t be bothered to continue.

MY GRADE: A DNF.