A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro I read this in one sitting HALP!?

A Study in Charlotte 

by 

Brittany Cavallaro

 I’m terrible with mysteries! As soon as I pick them up I can’t put them down! It doesn’t even matter if they’re a good mystery or not I just can’t stand not knowing. Of course this book was far from a subpar mystery. After all it had to be decent if I finished it in four straight hours.

I’m not sure how I couldn’t have enjoyed this book. I’ve been trying to read it since it came out! In fact I was in the process of counting up my Christmas money to see if I could squeeze this book in when I magically found it at the library. 

How cool is that! 

Also I adore everything Sherlock Holmes! Stories, retellings, TV shows I want them all!

              

So what actually is this book? Well it’s not actually a retelling. Because in this alternate universe Sherlock Holmes and John Watson actually existed. And Charlotte and James are the descendants of the famous pair. Now the Watsons are . . . pretty normal. But the Holmes?! They’re still crazy as heck. Anyway Charlotte and James run into each other at school. Murder happens. 

And off our protagonists go to solve the mystery. 

              Characters

Charlotte Homes: said Sherlock Homes. And I mean Sherlock Holmes. She’s intelligent, emotionally oblivious and a drug addict. Yeah Holmes was never perfect Y’all. Actually from what I’ve read a lot of people really didn’t like her. Apparently the main complaint was that she was super mean. Did you guys expect her to be all nice and cuddly? 

However I do understand the people who complained that she was exactly like every other Sherlock Holmes out there. I do because you’re right she didn’t really surprise me. But that doesn’t mean she was bad.

James Watson: oh Watson. I really liked you eighty percent of the time. The other twenty percent though. 

Look Watson was great! He had this awesome yearning to be more, to have adventures in life which was awesome and gave great context to his (admittedly swift) attachment to Charlotte. But dear Lord this child needs some anger management classes. Yes BBC John Watson regularly punches people in the face which is actually quite funny but in his defense he’s an adrenaline junkie who misses the war. 

What’s James excuse?

Likes

I really liked that epilogue: In the real life stories Holmes complained incessantly of Watson's inaccurate storytelling and often spoke of how he would one day write his own less cinematic description of his talents and cases. Well at the end of Study in Charlotte, out Holmes go to just that. And it was hilarious.

The deductions were pretty cool: Okay so I’ve been totally spoiled by BBC Sherlock’s minute long rambling deductions that end thirty miles from the first clue. 

Study in Charlotte wasn’t quite up to that length or difficulty but that didn’t make them any less enjoyable. Still I am a bit annoyed that the ending set aside deductions and reasoning for running, explosions, and poison.

Pacing was A+: Despite my complaint of the ending the pacing was really well done. There were extremely exciting bits broken up by short little moments of quiet that made the next dangerous part all the more surprising and scary.

Dislikes

Aaand we’re back to teenagers who are literally the spawn of evil: Seriously! This is a YA book!  A book for teenagers. And how do you portray everyone except the main characters? Backstabbing, alcoholic, rapist jerks who are unreasonably terrible. 

I swear it just got increasingly more ridiculous.

Up until the end of the story the bad guy wasn’t actually physically threatening the main characters. It was literally everyone else in the school who were being threatened. Yet I could not gather enough energy to care about any of them.

Why does no one help Homes with her addiction? Watson you had one job! And you goofed it up. Not to mention that she admitted to multiple adults that she did drugs. Did ANYBODY do ANYTHING! No. nope. Nah. Too much work I guess.

Can we just not have any kind of Holmes and Watson relationship ever, please:  It just never makes any sense guys. Never ever. I stand by the idea that if any Watson ever expanded their feelings for their Holmes it would literally be the most one sided unhealthy romance in the entire world. Anybody who believes anything else is kidding themselves. So let’s just step away from the whole concept for a while.

So ultimately, how was the book? Well I said I read it one sitting. While I was reading it was awesome! But . . . when It was over and I could actually think about it as a whole the book had a lot of problems with it. It was certainly still enjoyable but not perfect by any means. Still I’m glad I finally found it and will look forward to the second one. If only to see if the ironed out any of the wrinkles.