Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Because I am a born and raised Mainer, I followed the story about the "North Pond Hermit" in the news pretty closely when he was found. When I heard there was a book being written, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it! I was seriously like a little kid that was about to be handed a giant ice cream cone when I heard it was available at my local library. Unfortunately, I did not like this book at all. Reading it actually made me angry. So angry that I've been sitting on this review for a while so I could cool off. It didn't help. Other first five chapters totally captured me! I loved the way that these were written. Unfortunately in the sixth chapter things started falling apart for me. The book turned away from the story-like format into a story that was incredibly unorganized. I had such a hard time following. I also found this book to be incredibly repetitive. Rather than going from point a to point b, the storyline jumped forward or back in seemingly random intervals. So many things that we had already read were repeated to the reader as a refresher about a certain topic. I also didn't care for all of the personal touches the author included. Like I didn't care about his family life or how he went on a silence retreat. I picked up this book to read about Christopher, not Michael. I got really bored with the author constantly trying figure out the why behind Christopher's motives when Christopher himself said he had no reasoning. It was like he was reading far too deep into things an analyzing things that didn't need to be analyzed. The authors insistent personality really rubbed me the wrong way. Mainers definitely appreciate their privacy. I was so irritated that he was told not to keep calling or visiting. Like my jaw dropped when Michael showed up at Christopher's parents house with a pie for Christopher's mother. I could not believe he dared to do that. Many chapters of the book really dragged for me because they were more like history lessons. There was a ton of information and quotes from various doctors, hermits, or scholars that I simply didn't care about. I felt that it was far too much information. And again, none of it seemed organized. Sure, it was grouped by topic, but other than that it was just lumped together. Most of it honestly seemed like it was just thrown in to take up space. It reminded me of a middle school student writing a science research paper... throwing quotes in left and right just to try to make their argument stronger, but ending up going way overboard. I wanted more about Christopher. I didn't want to read a person trying to figure out Christopher and making all kinds of assumptions.