ocoury23's reviews
46 reviews

It was fine and informative, but once my hold was up with my library and I hadn’t finished I didn’t feel like I needed to wait for it again. 

*Review based on experiencing the book as an audiobook

I really enjoyed this! I highly recommend listening to the audiobook, as not only is the speaker the book’s writer, but he also included audio reenactments of some of the speeches as well. There were a variety of topics and speakers researched and represented, and it definitely taught me a lot!

*Review based on experiencing the book as an audiobook

It was really refreshing to hear about someone else’s story with ADHD. I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that the narrator is also the author, and love how she presents her book. I was looking for a bit more direction on resources, techniques, etc. While she mentions some of these things, she does not go in to as much detail as I was hoping. 

*Review based on experiencing the book as an audiobook

I don’t know if I have the words to express how I felt about this book. It made me laugh, cry, scream in frustration, and gasp in shock with almost every page. It was heartbreaking, gut wrenching, and exhilarating and I am in awe of the author’s strength to share her story. I highly recommend listening to the audiobook as the author narrates it herself which is the icing on the cake. 

Had to stop an hour in to the audiobook simply because of the narrator. His disjointed and broken rate of speech was such a headache to listen to. Maybe I’ll give this book another try in the future by reading it, but the audiobook was not worth the 14 hours of teeth grinding it would have caused me. 

*Review based on experiencing the book as an audiobook

I really enjoyed the quick pace of listening to this book. The research is well done and to the point, considering the audiobook is only about 3 hours long. This story is incredibly heartbreaking and eye opening, and even though I knew the basic premise of the story and how it ended, I still found myself wanting to keep reading to find out the details of what happened next. 

*Review based on experiencing the book as an audiobook

I’m very torn in my review of this book. On one hand, I learned so much about a topic I knew nothing of and am so thankful to the author for all of their research and dedication for this purpose. On the other, there were times I felt the story was so disjointed and contained so much extraneous information that I had to fight to not give up on this book all together. 

I’m very conflicted about this book and might even adjust my rating over time. Towards the end, I easily found myself wanting to read more and figure out what happens next, but the way the author just throws you in with the world building made the first half of the book a confusing grind. Maybe it’s just not my preferred style, but I didn’t love spending most of my time confused instead of enjoying what I was reading. 

*Review based on experiencing the book as an audiobook

An incredible amount of research went in to this book, and for that I applaud the author. While I thoroughly enjoyed learning about such an impactful scientist that I had never heard of, I think I would have enjoyed this book more if a lot of the content had not been included. I understand why the author spent so much time discussing the impact that Humboldt had on other scientists, but I would have preferred if much of it had been condensed. At times I forgot I was listening to a book about Humboldt because of the in depth descriptions of so many others’ lives. 

I applaud the author for the amount of research that went in to this book! Lots of love, patience, and energy clearly went in to telling these stories correctly, and it shows. I appreciate all of the annotations and source inclusion, both as a means of fact checking and as a way to find more material if someone was interested in doing their own further research. That being said, I feel like this book was a one and done for a me. I appreciated being able to learn about the stories of these women, but would have liked a little bit of backstory as someone who doesn’t have much previous knowledge about Jack to Ripper. It was a straightforward and easy read, but I did find myself having to remind myself that I still needed to finish as I got past the halfway point.