The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love the premise of this book, being a researcher and historian myself. I also like investigations into the paranormal. However – this ends up bordering on magic and fantasy. The historical side of the story was very well done. I would like to have learned more about these women and their relationships with their daughters. It’s interesting to see Connie’s mother covering up her magical abilities in New Age mysticism, and to show the relationship develop between Connie and her mother. I did find it a little hard to swallow the idea that Connie is only learning of her own paranormal abilities in her twenties. I also wish that the psychic and paranormal elements had been more “ordinary” and less fantastical. The love story between Connie and Sam the steeplejack was sweet. I wouldn’t call this a mystery exactly, since the clues were obvious to the reader, nor is it a thriller. You’ll know who the bad guy is long before Connie does. I listened to the audiobook, so the phonetic dialect spellings didn’t bother me. On the other hand, I wasn’t at all convinced by the narrator’s (Katherine Kellgren) Boston accent.

Description: Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin plans on dedicating her summer to research. Her plans begin to fall into place when she is tasked with selling her grandmother’s reclusive Salem home. However, upon discovering a seventeenth-century Bible, Connie unwittingly walks into an ancient mystery and embarks on a quest to discover a book that contains ultimate knowledge.