Sigh. When is the right time to give up a long-running series? Last I heard there were only going to be nine books in the series, but this is book nine, and no end in sight*? I’m just not enjoying them like I used to. Which is weird, because I still love Flavia, her family and friends and assorted hangers-on. But the mysteries and plots just don’t do it for me anymore. I find myself having a really hard time keeping my attention on them. […]
Precocity, Poison, and Pie
I think every review of the Flavia de Luce books contains the word “precocious” in it somewhere. Flavia is no ordinary 11-year-old. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is the first book in this mystery series, and introduces chemistry whiz, poison-obsessed Flavia, her widowed father, her two sisters, their retainer Dogger, and their housekeeper Mrs. Mullett. The de Luces own a slightly dilapidated country home in 1950s England. At the start of the novel, Flavia overhears her father arguing with a strange man, […]
Precocious 11 year old to the rescue
I am late to the Flavia de Luce train, but a random comment about the series that I came across somewhere intrigued me enough to request this book from the library. While I didn’t up loving this book, it wasn’t bad. It’s set in 1950s Britain, and Flavia is a precocious 11 year old girl who lives with her father and two older sisters; her mother passed away some time ago, but she she is far from forgotten. Her family is rather eccentric and Flavia […]
This is book eight; time to stop wanting this series to be something it’s not.
This was back on form after the disappointment of the last one. This series still isn’t perfect for me, but I find it really comforting and enjoyable anyway. I think I just need to let this series be itself and stop wanting it to be what it’s not. The mysteries and plot twists are always going to be predictable. Flavia is always going to pursue random avenues of inquiry that somehow magically lead her to answers. There is probably always going to be a misbalance between the mystery […]
Flavia de Luce – Times they are a changin’
I adore the Flavia de Luce mysteries but kept this one sitting in my Amazon cart for a while. Because I like them so much I tied my reading of it to as a reward for a fitness goal, and I finally made it (self high five). Moving right along, this installment did not disappoint, though it was pretty different than the previous novels. Each previous book had fallen into a “Murder She Wrote” esque pattern, if you are familiar with the Angela Lansbury series […]
Cannonbaaaaaalllll
Yay, I hit my cannonball! “I am often thought of as being remarkably bright, and yet my brains, more often than not, are busily devising new and interesting ways of bringing my enemies to sudden, gagging, writhing, agonizing death.” So this was the second Flavia de Luce mystery. This one had some pretty depressing elements, as it revolves primarily around a dead child and a beaten woman. But Flavia brings her humor to it, and the twisty mystery part was pretty good. When a van breaks down […]