“I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley is a murder mystery set in the small town of Bishops Lacey in the 1950s English countryside. Flavia De Luce is an 11-year-old aspiring chemist (with a passion for poison). At Buckshaw, the once-grand home of the De Luce family, there is a series of strange events, that greatly interest Flavia. A bird is found dead on the doorstep with a postage stamp pinned to its beak. Then, just hours later, Flavia finds a man in the cucumber patch and watches him take his dying breath.
This book was a pretty good murder mystery, with an interesting and unexpected plot. Although there are some references to science and classical music, they were mostly either explained or I understood them (or both). There are 9 or 10 books in the series (I’ve only read 6 of them). But, the ones I’ve read haven’t been too redundant. Reviews for the rest of the series are to come. Overall, I would give this book 4 – 4.5 stars, because I really liked it, it was a great book, but I have read better.
Whenever my family drives to New York, we listen to one of these as an audiobook in the car, to help pass the time. I haven’t actually read any of them, just listened to the audiobooks, so I would be interested to see if they are better (or worse) when they are read physically, and I would definitely re-read (or re-listen to?) this book.
