So I read this story for the first time as a teenager and actually read it during the winter months in Pennsylvania. I loved the atmosphere of this book and it started my interest in the Salem Witch Trials as well. It was great to re-read my copy again and besides a few pacing issues here and there, I thought this was a solid thriller to read for Halloween Bingo 2019. I won't lie though that the medical mystery that Cook gets into is a reach although his proposed solutions to what afflicted the girls during the Salem Witch Trials was also brought up via Shirley Jackson when she wrote "The Witchcraft of Salem Village." I don't think that the "theory" is true at all and I kind of just hard shrugged my shoulders at it. I consider this more science fiction than anything and thought this book reminded me a lot of some of Dean Koontz's earlier works.

"Acceptable Risk" starts off with a flashback to the Salem Witch Trials and the soon to be hanging of a woman, Elizabeth Stewart, is accused of being a witch.We don't know what evidence the man holding the proceedings is talking about, but Elizabeth is accused of also afflicting children as well. Then the book proceeds to the "present" day with one of Elizabeth's descendants, Kimberly Stewart. Kimberly is a nurse and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Kimberly is coming out of a relationship with a dickish resident (sorry he is) Kinnard when she gets set up with by her cousin with a medical researcher, Edward Armstrong. Kimberly and Edward hit it off and start dating. While dealing with that, she is trying to figure out what to do with her family's old home in Salem (where Elizabeth Stewart also lived) and while there, Edward finds a new strain of something that I can't even remember how to spell. Through his research, Edward finds that he can use this strain to turn it into a drug that has no negative side effects, but also causes the user to be more calm and confident.

Kimberly is shy and I felt for her. She is overwhelmed in a good way by Edward and quickly gets talked into things she is not sure about. I think that the biggest issue with Kimberly though is halfway through the book she just lets Edward and her cousin walk all over her. I also hard paused at her jumping into something so new with Edward right away and living with the guy. She also agrees to let the medical research company work out of her home and she is starting to have misgivings about the drug. She flounders around a lot and then starts talking to her ex who was the worst from the glimpse of him we get in the beginning of the book.

Edward is shy and him getting hooked on the wonder drug was a good look at how prescription drugs can cause people to become too dependent on them and the danger in taking them. His whole personality undergoes a change through the book.

We get some secondary characters, but mostly just have Kimberly and Edward's third person POVs. There's also a mystery going around about vandalism in the town of other things that Kimberly finds that get explained by the end of the book.

The writing I thought was good. Cook has Kimberly researching Elizabeth's history and the Salem Witch Trials with her trying to find out what evidence the town had to show that Elizabeth was a witch.

The flow though as I said at times gets a big bogged down whenever we get into the medical aspect of things with the new designer drug. I don't really get anything that Cook is getting into and thought that it seemed beyond strange that Edward and those he hired would just blithely take drugs that had not been through testing.

The setting of the old home that quickly gets overrun by Edward and his colleagues takes a dark turn after a while. Kimberly is having to deal with the fact that the home doesn't feel hers and that many of the researchers are just haphazardly treating the home.

The ending felt gruesome to me and I have to say I wonder at how Cook left things since it seems as if this story would be perfect for a sequel. I also didn't how things ended for Kimberly since I thought that Cook changed the whole tone of the book up and had to make it into a happily ever after for her. The "It was a dark and stormy night" piece from this book comes to the next to last scene with Kimberly running (from something) in the rain.halloween-bingo-201919 s Teri5 1 follower

***SPOILERS*** I Robin Cook. No really, I do. I just seem to review those of his books that make me angry, rather than those I enjoy. This one has a double-whammy of irritants: not only is it politically motivated and scientifically inaccurate, but it focuses around my field, an area where Dr. Cook seems to have done very little research. The story is a morality tale about the "evils" of psychopharmacology. My degree is in psychology, and as someone who has both studied and benefited from SSRI antidepressants, I find this kind of prejudice difficult to understand. I'll spare review-readers the lecture. The initial premise of the book is the question of what set off the Salem witch hunts. Dr. Cook offers the interesting hypothesis that it was ergotism, a kind of hallucinatory or seizure disorder caused by the sclerotia (spores) of certain molds; one common one develops on rye, a grain heavily in use by the poorer families of the American British colonies.

I will leave the rest of the plot to the reader, except for my objections to the ending. It has been established that hallucinogenic compounds can build up in the brain, resulting in increased sensitivity, so that even a tiny exposure can trigger a hallucination. However, Dr. Cook's idea of the "reptile brain" taking over when the mind enters this altered state is, to my knowledge, neurologically unfounded. Even if this were the case, and here I speak from my own specialty, there is no reason to believe that a person being controlled by the "reptile brain" would become indiscriminately violent and predatory. Not even alligators bite everything that wanders past, and snakes are quite selective as to their targets. If personality is as deeply rooted in the genes as some psychologists believe, the individuals' behaviors would be dependent on their overall psychological nature.

My apologies, I lectured in spite of my intentions. This book is a fairly interesting read, provided you can suspend disbelieve and ignore the deus ex machina ending. It would probably be a lot more fun for someone without strong personal feelings on the subject matter.This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.Show full review13 s Joe22 2

This book sucked. Thank god I read it out loud with others so we could all laugh at it together. The romance is especially clunky, unrealistic, and awkwardly written, leaving one to wonder if author Robin Cook has ever had a romantic relationship of his own.11 s Luvtoread540 353

I am a big Robin Cook fan although I read this quite awhile ago maybe even twice and I absolutely loved it! Some may think it was too farfetched but that just made it more enjoyable for myself. It was a horror/thriller and definitely exciting and a lot of fun yet written with dark seriousness. The Salem witch trials thrown end were just the bomb to bring horror into the present day and made the book a stunner! If a reader only wants a classic medical drama or mystery then I would advise you not to read this book but if you want a crazy, creepy medical horror story then this is a Must Read.

A rating of 5 INTRIGUING, SCARY AND SUSPENSEFUL
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