The Obsession of Doctor Pendergrass is hard for me to review. There are parts I loved and parts not so much. The writing was a bit difficult to get through and I almost have up by the first three chapters of the book.

Thank you to net galley for the ARC copy of this book.

Set in Victorian London it is loosely based on the criminality rife in its streets and more particularly the crimes of Jack the Ripper. Its narrative provides an alternative historical fiction of these events.

I have to say I very nearly gave up at chapter 2 - those first chapters were so confusing absolutely nothing made sense to me. However the author did get his act together after this false start a created a reasonable story of an "avenging angel" as the doctor sees himself. The connections between the characters are somewhat unbelievable and I couldn't bring myself to think of Dr Pendergrass as anything but a murdering maniac.

The worst thing about this book is the absolutely awful editing - we can hope that this will be improved before publication. The grammar is appalling, tenses change mid sentence, group nouns are used inappropriately and worst of all if you are writing a book set in London ENGLAND why on earth do you use US English for spelling. In England we have Fibres not fibers - just one example

Dr. Pendergrass, a crazy doctor, wants to help the young women in need. The plot is set in Victorian England at the same time as Jack the Ripper murders. I really enjoyed this book.
Thank you Netgalley for this wonderful adventure.

Dr. Pendergrass is a physician at a London hospital at the time of Jack the Ripper. His obsession is to stop the terrorizing and brutalizing of young women in the Whitechapel district. With his gathering of unlikely acquaintances, he systematically examines clue after clue and excludes suspect after suspect.

I read this EARC courtesy of Net Galley and Books Go Social; pub date 05/30/18

Thank you Netgalley for this book. I was attracted by the cover text and illustration and in some ways I was not disapppointed. In other ways I was. Being a fan of books set in this era, I enjoyed reading about London and its inhabitants. But somehow I couldn't get my head round Dr. Pendergrass himself and sometimes my mind wandered off while reading.
So, not a bad idea to begin with, and certainly a nice book in parts, but it lacks some finesse.

This is the first book I received through NetGalley, so I felt compelled to finish it; otherwise, I would have put it down after the second chapter. The concept is interesting, kind of a Victorian Dexter, but the execution is horrifyingly bad. In the first half of the book, the good doctor is clearly crazy, but he's quite sane by the end. A secondary character, Sarah, goes from from blindingly stupid to clever. The dialogue is stilted, and there is a subplot of sorts with absolutely no value...just a random vampire story. Add to all of that poor editing and 100% stupid pictures after each chapter, and you have yourself a really bad book.

In Victorian England Dr. Pendergrass feels that murderers should be killed and so eventually becomes interested in the Jack the Ripper murders.
I found it difficult to engage with the characters or the story though I did finish the book.

I enjoyed this book. The author has obviously done a lot of research. The descriptions of London bring the story to life. I could imagine the surroundings and the characters. The story is an easy read and I read it in one sitting.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.