Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson

14 reviews

lyssierose09's review against another edition

dark informative mysterious tense medium-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Medical content, Murder, and Violence

Moderate: Gaslighting, Gore, Kidnapping, Abortion, and Torture

Minor: Fire/Fire injury, Gun violence, Misogyny, and Pregnancy

lexispike's review

dark informative slow-paced

3.0

This book reads like a long essay, very informative and factual. It also gets almost too descriptive with the architectural side of the book, which was personally too much for me. Overall, an interesting read but a little out of my taste. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Murder, and Gaslighting

meganpbennett's review against another edition

dark informative mysterious medium-paced

3.0

I read The Devil in the White City on the advice of a true crime-loving librarian colleague. It's interesting, with H.H. Holmes killing indiscriminately around during the Chicago World's Fair, though I started reading the book without realizing that H.H. Holmes was the Devil in question. 

The book has lots of interesting detail on the World's Fair - after all, how could Chicago hope to beat Eiffel and his Tower from the previous World's Fair? Enter an engineer named... Ferris. 

The book was less graphic than I thought it would be, but there is rather disturbing imagery involving Holmes killing and disposing of the bodies. 

I think the book would have been stronger had the author not switched perspectives between Holmes and the builders of the Fair every chapter. I think it would have made more sense for the author to have chosen a time frame - three months? - and written about the building of the Fair, then Pendergast, then Holmes. That would have strengthened the connect between them

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Child death, Death, Violence, Body horror, Confinement, Gore, Torture, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Fire/Fire injury, Misogyny, Abortion, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Alcohol and Pregnancy

alliemikennareads's review against another edition

dark informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

The Devil in the White City was 10 hours of audio at 1.5 speed. I previously read it in physical format years ago and I must say I liked the audio format much better. 

Bullet point review: 

- I forgot how much the book discusses architecture; this got tedious at times. 
- I loved the rich detail about the Chicago worlds fair and the way the book splices the fair, its history, and HH Holmes’ evil deeds together. 
- I still found it a great form of true crime/ nonfiction that reads like fiction. 

TW for some really graphic descriptions of a slaughterhouse, gas chambers, suicide, murder of women and children and dead body discovery. 

If you can get past the graphic parts and like historical fiction, I’d definitely recommend this one!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Murder, Violence, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Child death, Child abuse, Body horror, Confinement, Death, and Medical trauma