The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

H.P. Lovecraft

Reviewing H.P. Lovecraft presents me with a challenge. His works are horror mystery. So the problem is how do I review it without giving anything away. Well I made the mistake of looking up something about it that contained spoilers but I was still surprised by the end. So for the most part I really enjoyed this story except for one part. While establishing the love of history and architecture by the title character the author describes his home town in crazy exact detail. I was slow and boring part of reading to me personally. But other than that portion of the text I found the pacing of the text to be very good. I really like the progression of the story the suspense create. I will say this Lovecraft seems to have mastered making the readers imaginations do the heavy lifting. So Charles Dexter Ward is a happy go lucky youth in 1920’s Rhode Island. During his many walks around town and visits to the library to look at old books he discovers a link to an ancestor that had been whipped from local history books. And that’s when his life takes a turn for the weird. Eventually he finds a picture of his ancestor and it looks almost exactly like him. This fuels his research that leads him to secrets man is not meant to know. Over all I recommend this story to all I know who read.

Score 10/10