New England's Best Bed & Breakfasts, 4th Edition : Delightful Places to Stay, Wonderful Things to Do When You Get There

Rating:
Summary: Written for people who like to read, not travel.
Review: This book does not incorporate any standards of rating, allowing for no quantitative comparison of any aspect between properties. Instead the authors rely heavily on flowery, subjective descriptions. There are also no photos in this book, save the color advertising inserts, (Amex, Fordors, and MCI). But the biggest blunder this book makes is that none of the 342 properties are ever shown on a map!! Since the book organizes them alphabetically by area, its virtually useless as a reference guide. All in all; this book obviously required a lot of resources and research to produce. It seems ridiculous that it could somehow still fail so miserably to deliver.

Rating:
Summary: Not useful at all--really not worth buying.
Review: This guide was not useful to us at all on our recent trip to Maine. We traveled from Portland north to Bar Harbor over the course of 8 days, using Frommer's New England, Fodor's New England, and this guide, as well as the AAA tourbook. This guide is organized alphabetically by the name of the B&B; if you want to find something by location, which is how most of us travel, you have to dig through the cross-reference in the second index in the back of the book. It also fails to make recommendations, merely describing a series of lodging choices in vague terms that leave you wondering what you might be getting into. The book lists positive quotes from other reveiwers on its back cover. I don't know how these were solicited, if the reviewers even read the book, they obviously knew nothing about New England.