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brandongryder's review against another edition
5.0
I am not sure why I waited so long to pick this up. "Back Bay" scratched my National Treasure itch. Historical mystery, lost relics, a treasure hunt....? Sign me up! Peter Fallon is a Harvard doctoral candidate from mean streets of Boston. He is burned out and questioning his career path when a chance to hunt down Paul Revere's Presidential tea set presents itself. Just a fun book.
jess_mango's review against another edition
3.0
An entertaining piece of brain-candy ---"Back Bay" is a historical fiction novel that takes place in Boston. The book intgrates lots of actual Boston history and trivia, which I enjoyed.
duparker's review against another edition
4.0
Overall this is a fun book. It was great for vacation reading. The mixture of historical fiction and mystery works very well. The history was believable and fact based while the mystery kept the book moving forward, and the mix was enjoyable.
The writing style was simple and fit the style and presumed goals of the book (to be fun and escapist.
The writing style was simple and fit the style and presumed goals of the book (to be fun and escapist.
ello_mehry's review against another edition
3.0
I've read a few of William Martins books and enjoy the style of storytelling. This was, I believe, his first foray into fiction literature. It was not my favorite of his books. I found many of the characters unlikeable, which should have led me to root for our protagonist. I did, but I was only half into it. I did find the history enjoyable to read, especially the story of Abigail. I thought the first half of the book really dragged on before flying full force in the last quarter. It's sort of like a movie and in some parts it's better to just go with it. Harvard Yard has been my favorite of the William Martin books.
tessisreading2's review against another edition
1.0
I picked this up thinking, for some reason, that I was going to get a family saga along the lines of something by Edward Rutherfurd. This is, instead, a thriller whose action flickers back and forth between various historical periods and "present day" (1970s), and revolves around George Washington's stolen tea set. Most of the energy and oomph seems to be devoted to the 1970s sections, which is unfortunate: the main character is a disillusioned Harvard graduate student who is from an Irish family in South Boston (street cred!), the author seems to have felt compelled to throw in various "cinematic" moments (a random prostitute gets murdered some pages in almost immediately after being introduced, and there are several thankfully brief sex scenes which are not only gratuitous but not actually sexy), and the grad student engages in the kind of aggressive pursuit of the completely and totally uninterested love object that makes me glad the 1970s are long over and also that someone invented pepper spray. (I refuse to call her a love interest because, right up until the sex scene, she is thoroughly and understandably uninterested.) In the historical sections, there's a lot of violence and murder and a freedman (i.e. African-American) who hates white people, talks in dialect, and basically reads like, well, a white dude in 1970s Boston wrote him. It's... kind of uncomfortable, honestly. Anyway, it was clear pretty early on approximately how the book would end, and that is approximately how it ended.
A large part of the problem with this book is simply that it hasn't aged well; the (mild) sexism, racism, and clumsy plotting might not have been so obvious forty years ago. However, it's not the 1970s any longer, so if these are things that make you cringe, you're probably better off not wasting your time. Good points: the characters do spend a lot of time running around 1970's Boston, so if you thrill to read about people parking at Faneuil Hall (no, seriously, there used to be parking spaces right there!), this might just be the book for you.
A large part of the problem with this book is simply that it hasn't aged well; the (mild) sexism, racism, and clumsy plotting might not have been so obvious forty years ago. However, it's not the 1970s any longer, so if these are things that make you cringe, you're probably better off not wasting your time. Good points: the characters do spend a lot of time running around 1970's Boston, so if you thrill to read about people parking at Faneuil Hall (no, seriously, there used to be parking spaces right there!), this might just be the book for you.
ericbuscemi's review against another edition
2.0
Back Bay alternates between a modern-day plot and a historical plot that starts in the 1800's and carries through time as the book gets nearer to the conclusion. I found this extremely frustrating, as every time I found myself getting drawn into the book, it toggled back to the historical plot-line. It made it way too easy to put the book down, especially at the beginning of the historical chapters, and hard to pick it back up. I finally sat down and forced myself to finish it over the course of one long night's reading.
Things finally started coming together in the final third of the book, with the tension of the thriller building, and the promise of the lost treasure finally surfacing. But just as I was starting to warm to the book and its alternating chapters, I reached the conclusion, and became frustrated all over again. The end is abrupt, unsatisfying, without much resolution, and suffers from the tropes.
Things finally started coming together in the final third of the book, with the tension of the thriller building, and the promise of the lost treasure finally surfacing. But just as I was starting to warm to the book and its alternating chapters, I reached the conclusion, and became frustrated all over again. The end is abrupt, unsatisfying, without much resolution, and suffers from the tropes.
sarahmkennedy32109's review against another edition
3.0
My reading road trip around the US continued on to Boston, Massachusetts with the novel Back Bay by William Martin. Originally published in 1979, this novel is a fun “national treasure” type mystery story that spans generations of the fictional Pratt family, some of the most influential founders and shipping moguls of Boston. Beginning in the 1780s with the patriarch of the family being present when President Washington is presented with a Paul Revere tea set and continuing on to the 1970s when the modern day Pratts are trying to find this tea set that has gone missing when the British burned Washington DC in the War of 1812. Spanning two centuries this novel moves back and forth from the 1970s into history, telling the stories of each layer of this family tree and the parts they play in this tea set being hidden. It was a fascinating look at this neighborhood in Boston, the Back Bay, which was really a mud flat that was filled in with miles and miles of dirt and then built upon—it’s brownstones are still some of the best examples of 19th century architecture we have in America. I will say this novel was fine, not my new favorite and it felt really long—at 544 pages I felt like some of the stories could have been shortened. It’s the beginning of a series of novels that I probably won’t read but for a book set in Massachusetts this one was worth it—history, architecture, mystery and a national treasure.
m_black's review against another edition
5.0
I read this for the 2023 Reading Across the USA because it is set in Boston, Mass. The concurrent timeline was interesting, especially since I have never read any of the other books in the Peter Fallon series. There's a bit of a feel of "National Treasure" to the story, which makes it interesting.
gavitygravity's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0