gstrad's review
2.0
I was looking forward to this book but was disappointed. The writing was very dry, riddled with gramatical errors and lots of random information thrown in at odd places, seemingly not even related to the story, which made it hard to follow at times. It reads more like a listing of the author's knowledge on various subjects from her own historical collection with splashes of newspaper content thrown in. Some of the more interesting stories seemed like almost-stories as the author couldn't find evidence that they had actually occurred or they were based off something someone said they thought they might do. (So WERE there alligators in Snake Lake or are we just making an assumption since someone mentioned putting his there and later another person noted there were no fish. Huh?) Tacoma has a really interesting history, I just felt it could have been told in a less encyclopedic fashion.
thecozyrogue's review
2.0
I was excited to read this, but really disappointed with how poorly it’s written. It reads like a middle schooler’s research paper. It is full of tangents and the author jumps around so much it is hard to follow. There’s a lot of recitation of facts that are unnecessary and make what could be an interesting story just boring. Half the information in this book really had nothing to do with the actual Tacoma stories and should have been cut out. Not sure what happened on the editing front, but it feels like it wasn’t edited at all.
More...