The Passenger by Lisa Lutz & In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

I've been on vacation for the past week visiting my son in Kitchener/Waterloo. Managed to get lots of reading done while he was at work but not up to writing reviews so will be putting together one post of (mostly) mini-reviews to both of my blogs.

The Passenger by Lisa Lutz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hardcover, 304 pages
Published March 1st 2016 by Simon & Schuster


I loved this fast-paced thriller. A page-turner and a quick read kept me glued to the pages. I just thought the wrap-up was less than shocking but I certainly enjoyed the ride!

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hardcover, 365 pages
Published May 10th 2011 by Crown

I honestly don't have much to say about this book. I found it readable but not all that exciting. My exact same opinion as I had for the only other book I've read by Larson, "Dead Wake", is that it was not hard to read but it wasn't hard to put down either. Again, I found the book much more political and militaristic than my tastes lie. I'm more interested in social history and the lives of people. Since this book is mostly about William Dodd and his daughter Martha I was disappointed that they never fully came alive on the page. It's an interesting story which I hadn't known about before and I'm a lot wiser now as to why the US was so late to join WWII and it's early attitude towards Hitler. I'm glad to have read the book but it certainly was not a page-turner.