Review 445: Thoreau at Devil's Perch

Thoreau at Devil's Perch by B.B. Oak
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book fictionalizes a real person. Although his name is in the title and the series title, he is not the main character. No. Instead Henry David Thoreau is sidelined into a caricature.

The book format is of journal entries, alternating between Dr. Adam Walker and Julia Bell. They are first cousins who came to Plumford, MA to aid the elder Dr. Walker who broke his leg. I didn’t find the voice to vary much between the two narratives. Perhaps in an attempt to differentiate the two voices, Adam’s portion became full of awkward or incomplete sentences. Also, they aren’t what a typical journal entry would look like, so it was an odd choice for the book format.

The other problem I had with the book was the main concern throughout was this love interest between the two cousins. They longed for each other, but were told by several people that if they married their offspring would be monsters, malformed and hideous. (Quite the extreme, but still found the entire concept odd and a bit disturbing as well.) As if further proof they are made for each other there is even a part where Adam hypothesizes Julia who regresses to a previous life during Roman times, where the two of them have a beautiful baby. This was another distraction, the hypnotizing and past life explorations, Julia wasn’t the only one. It didn’t need to be in the book at all.

What about the murdered man they find? This mystery takes a sideline to another murder Adam and Thoreau start investigating. They keep trying to keep Julia out, but she is a strong woman, particularly for the mid-1800s.

The book had a lot of points of annoyances for me, and quite a few horrific instances (some involving animals). There seems to be a lot thrown into this book that didn’t need to be there, but I will say it did add dimension.

Apparently, there are two more books for this is a first in a series, and they all follow the same format, even with Julia and Adam continuing to pin for each other. No, I cannot follow along with that.