I didn't enjoy this book overall, but I do feel glad that I read it. There's enough interesting bits in here that it felt worthwhile to some degree. I enjoyed learning about Pomeroy and his crimes, which I'd known nothing about prior to this book.

My biggest complaint is the same as everyone else's basically. There are so many weird tangents in this book. Montillo will be in the middle of a story about young Jesse Pomeroy and two pet canaries, and then will interrupt herself to discuss the construction of a nearby prison that has nothing to do with the canaries for a couple pages. Then she'll cut right back to the canary story like she never left. It was weird and she did that a lot. Like that's one example from the beginning, but it was constant throughout the book.

She also wrote a lot about Herman Melville and I could never quite figure out his relation to the rest of this book. Like what did he have to do with Pomeroy? I have no idea, but there were three full chapters about his life with pretty much no reference to Pomeroy or his crimes.

The extra information wasn't uninteresting, but it was so disjointed and difficult to get through. I've read books that include tangential information in an artistic way, but this just read like a jumbled mess. It was almost like Montillo wanted to include every bit of research she'd done.

I also didn't feel like I got a good grasp of Jesse Pomeroy's life, whether as a whole or specifically related to the crimes he committed. There was so much missing and it was all kind of thrown together messily, so I sometimes had trouble following what was happening.

I had a hard time getting through this and reading it felt like a chore, which was really disappointing. If you're really interested in Jesse Pomeroy, maybe this is worth the read. You could skim the unrelated bits and this book would probably be a third the length and a really quick read. But I don't think it's very worth your time.