Alison's Reviews > Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation

I wanted to much to like this book and give it a higher review. After all, I grew up 30 miles south of Toms River, so the events took place in my area of reference. I am also very into clean air and water and get almost personally offended when I read about how callously we've treated the Earth and one another in pursuit of the almighty dollar.

I wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't.

Dan Fagin certainly tried his best to tell the story as objectively and honestly as possible, but the ending and overall resolution just felt like such a let-down after investing so much time and effort into the narrative. I understand that as a non-fiction book, the facts are the facts and that's it, but at times Toms River: A Small Town, a Cancer Cluster, and the Epic Quest to Expose Pollution's Hidden Consequences got so bogged down in minutiae and obscure facts/chemicals/history that it made it hard to focus on the story at hand. Science and math are also not strong suits of mine, so I struggled with fully understanding the hard-core statistics and also chemical compositions that Fagin spent so much time writing about. I don't want to feel dumb when I read a book, especially since I am far from dumb.

I went back and forth about the rating of this book. If Goodreads would allow me to give half stars, I would have given it 2.5. I think Fagin truly did try to make the book engaging and emotional as possible, but it just didn't work for this reader. 2 stars.