Rating: 4.25/5

Disclaimer: I found this picture while I was not looking for sexy guys with glasses, and I think he is perfect for Toby.




Favorite quote:

Life wasn’t a detective novel. You couldn’t just be objective and stand back and believe everything would work itself out. Life was messy and had a way of tangling you up in its messiness and making everything all knotted and confusing. Not every crime had a villain. Not every question had an answer. Not every mystery had a neat solution.

I think I’m in love with Aussie authors. And don’t let the cover or the title misleads you, they make perfect sense once you read the book. Especially the cover *swoon*

Every single book I read was absolutely brilliant, with wittiness and funny dialogues and characters adorably engaging.

Beatrice Bee Ross has been a mystery-novel hardcore fanatic since her 11 years old birthday. She knows by heart every work of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew. She even has the notebook, the magnifying glass and the lipstick to go with it.

For her summer job, she’s working as an assistant in the taxidermy lab of the natural museum. Just day after a new, annoyingly cute and trivia-nerd university boy with knee-melting kisses comes to work in her lab, her boss Gus is found dead in the Red Rotunda, with a bottle of mercury chloride in his hand and pocketful of glass eyes.

While everything points out that Gus committed suicide, Bee can’t shake the feeling that his death is a not self-inflicted: so she decides to embrace her Nancy Drew side and takes it upon herself to uncover the truth and solve the case.

Easier said than done.

This book was not the cheesy or a poor imitation of a teenage spy-detective I thought it would be. Bee was smart but not a genius; she had good instinct was very methodic by listing her thoughts and asking questions and trying to figure out the missing pieces of the puzzle but not every clue fell in her lap. She kept reminding herself that her life is no detective novel and she wasn’t after all perfect Nancy or Trixie. She had common sense but her flaws made her a very likable girl.

The mystery she was working on was a good one; Wilkinson did a very good job with messing with my head in an Agatha-Christie-ish way and then baffled me at the end; I admit that I didn’t see that one coming at all!

The relationship with Toby was crush-worthy and melt-your-heart-with-cuteness; he was such a nerd with his fascination for animals mating habits and trying to be the Watson to her Holmes. They had very good chemistry and their banter and flirtation was cunningly sweet and sexy. ( )

3.5 stars. ( )