The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Flavia de Luce is a fantastic narrator! I've been wanting to read this book for ages and finally found it on the shelf at the library. I finished it this morning and picked up the second book in the trilogy this afternoon (also at the library). I found the plot and setting wonderful and elaborate. The details really make this story!

I started out really enjoying this, and then it tapered off a bit. It was still enjoyable, and I'm still going to give the next one a go, but I'm not as enthralled as everyone else seems to be. Flavia started fairly believable, but got less so as it went on (I'm all for precocious children narrators, but...). The mystery lagged a bit as it went on, too. Still, a fun read and I did get a glimpse of what people like so much, I just found it wanting a bit.

I read this in tandem with [b:The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements 7247854 The Disappearing Spoon And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements Sam Kean http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1276468318s/7247854.jpg 8246153]. What a great combination. The adjective that comes to mind when I think of this is cozy. It reminded me of my own childhood, filled with fingerprinting kits, lust for chemistry sets and Sherlock Holmes books. Flavia is a spunky heroine, who is posed between the confidence that children have as a consequence of not yet knowing enough to feel insecure and the equally inaccurate easy dismissal of children by adults. This tension is expertly woven by Bradley, especially in the ideas of reference that Flavia has - her serious concerns that the adults around her consider her the prime suspect in the central murder (an idea both laughable to an adult, and familiar to anyone who was ever a preteen.)Yes, at times, the mystery is a bit weak and predictable, but a well written child protaganist in a book for adults is much more unusual than a good mystery.