Murder by Death

The upside to buying a book on impulse that you later find out from your BL friends is at best an average read: your expectations are set accordingly.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane was an impulse buy at a FOTL sale based on the oh-so-fabulous cover and an ultra-quick scan of the book flap.  A story about a modern day Harvard Ph.D. candidate finding out about her witchy roots while cleaning out her grandmother's house.  How could this be a bad story?

Well, it's not, but it's not a great story either.  It held my attention in a rather detached way and the author did a credible job pulling me into Salem during the late 1600's for the flashback chapters.  The cover quote refers to this book as a "gripping supernatural puzzler".  I'm not sure what Matthew Pearl was reading but I don't think it was this book.  It wasn't gripping at all, although as I said, it's not a bad story.  

Each chapter head has a time frame on it - "Late June, 1991" or "Early August, 1991" but I think my biggest complaint about the story overall is I never got any sense of time passing from the story - the writing is very, very vague in terms of events moving towards their inevitable conclusion.  The narrative really ended up feeling like just a listing of events; if not for the chapter headings I wouldn't have known if this story takes place over 4-5 months or 4-5 years.

I'm not sorry I read it and I never felt like throwing the book across the room, but really it's an average story encased in an extraordinary jacket.