I usually love Erik Larson’s books, and The Devil in the White City was definitely well-written and packed with fascinating detail…but it didn’t hit quite as hard for me as some of his others. Compared to something like In the Garden of the Beasts, where the stakes are literally WWII and the fate of the world, this one felt a little… lower-key. Designing a fair just doesn’t carry the same weight as surviving the 1930s Germany. 

The H.H. Holmes sections were obviously creepy and compelling at first, but after a while, it was just too much. He’s absolutely disgusting, and at a certain point I honestly didn’t want to read any more about what he did. It stopped being insightful and just felt like piling on the horror. (Not necessarily Larson’s fault, he was just informing the reader; I just personally don’t have a stomach for shit like that).

That said, the stuff about building the fair was really interesting. I loved learning about the people behind it and how much work went into pulling it off. It just didn’t have that same page-turning intensity I’ve come to expect from Larson. Still worth a read, just not my favorite of his.