The Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England- Brock Clarke

As someone who was raised in New England (yay Connecticut!) and was educated in the private school system there, I was really looking forward to reading this book. Any review I have read has been higher than stellar, so I settled down to read a really fantastic book. Surprisingly, and disappointingly, I feel very ambivalent towards the book. The main character, the ‘arsonist’, quite simply drove me nuts. He continued to make very obvious poor decision after obvious poor decision, and I just wanted to reach through the pages and yell at him to get some common sense. I was unable to connect to any of the other characters as well, and struggled to get into the central mystery of the story. Apart from these personal issues (as in, you might not feel this way about the characters), the book was well written, occasionally witty, and I could completely understand why it was on the New York Times Bestseller List. All in all, I am not disappointed with the novel or upset that I spent time reading it, but I think I was expecting something much more spectacular.

2 ½ bookworms- The conventional side of me wants to conform with the other multitude of reviews and give it a higher score, but that would not be true to the point of this blog. It earned the ½ instead of being a plain-Jane 2 because I really think others will enjoy the book more than I did.