Brittany Cavallaro

Jamie Watson has been waiting all 16 years of his life to meet her: Charlotte Holmes, his great-great-great-grandfather's best friend's great-great-great-granddaughter. They just happen to end up at the same Connecticut boarding school, and as soon as they meet a fellow student just happens to be murdered. Funny how that works. Jamie and Charlotte are being framed for the attack, and another, and must work together to figure out who is setting them up and how to stop them. And by "work show more together" I mean Jamie needs to keep her off drugs and get out of her way.

I'll call this book "weak", somewhat charitably. The mystery is not compelling and the clues were broadcast so loudly I could hear them a mile away. I was looking forward to meeting the young, modern versions of Watson and Holmes, and watching them meet each other. However, when the book starts they already "know" each other by reputation, despite having never met, and by taking this shortcut the author denies us the chance to see sparks fly when the two meet for the first time. That would have been the best part of the book, if it was in it. Instead, Jamie comes from a long line of identical Watsons and Charlotte from a long line of identical Holmeses. My two biggest problems with the book are somewhat related to this premise.

Firstly, this first book in a series does nothing to ease us into the lives of Holmes and Watson. Because there is no "getting to know you" period, it's high drama almost from the get-go, with constant heavy references to the original Sherlock Holmes stories, various minor characters from those stories popping up to betray the main characters, and the climax of the mystery hinging on a generations-old feud. There is so much ancillary drama that it completely overshadows the mystery, such that by the time I got toward the end I had fully forgotten that any students were attacked in the first place, or that Holmes and Watson were framed for it.

Cavallaro's effort to gender-bend the character of Sherlock is well-intentioned. Doyle's stories are a sausage fest! But by changing Sherlock to Charlotte, leaving Watson male, and keeping Watson as the first person POV, Cavallaro walks right into a much more modern but equally tired trope - Charlotte Holmes is a manic pixie dream girl. She is an enigma who comes out of nowhere to make boring Watson's life more interesting so that he doesn't have to develop a personality. She is small in stature and needs him to take care of her. Worst of all, because of the Holmes/Watson legacy, Watson has basically been stalking Holmes his entire life. He has scrapbooks of news stories about her and has written fanfic about the two of them for years. It's super creepy! Because Watson is male and Charlotte is female, obviously he must be in love with her. We are told constantly about how he feels about her, with little regard for how she feels about him. She is not interested a relationship, as is canon, but it's because she was raped, not because she's just *not interested*. How tiresome.

I have noticed that this is popularly read in audiobook format, and if I had done that instead I might have been able to overlook the book's shortcomings more. show less

Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: The descendants of the famous Sherlock and Watson unite in a promising start to a detective series.

Opening Sentence: The first time I met her was at the tail end of one of those endless weekday nights you could only have at a school like Sherringford.

The Review:

I have not read the original Sherlock Holmes stories but I adore the BBCs Sherlock television series so I have a tad bit of prior knowledge about Sherlock and Watson’s shared show more history. Before I begin the review, I must point out that I enjoyed it tremendously and was very close to giving this a five star rating.

This isn’t a retelling of the adventures of Sherlock and Watson, it is a story based on the descendants of the famous twosome, Charlotte Holmes and James Watson. The two naturally fall into the roles of their great-great-great-something grandfathers’ as detective and sidekick. The main difference is that these kids have grown up in the shadow of their ancestors’ famous histories and have a reputation to uphold.

“There is nothing interesting about explosions. She ruined a perfectly good lab that I had painstakingly assembled, bit by bit, from things I’d taken from Mr. Lamarr’s biology room – oh, don’t look at me like that, I’ve seen you toast marshmallows on those burners, you’re just as guilty as I am – and really the only thing I’ll miss were my copies of your great-great-great-grandfather’s stories. Categorically worthless.”

I loved both of the main characters. Charlotte is just as practical, observant and appears just as emotionless as Sherlock was described to be. She’s also inherited the same tendency to distrust everyone and use drugs as an outlet, much to James’s frustration.

“I’m bad with words.” She sat down next to me. “Too imprecise. Too many shades of meaning. And people use them to lie. Have you ever heard someone lie to you on the violin? Well. I suppose it can be done, but it would take far more skill.”

Then there’s James Watson, who has been developed as a brilliant character to complement Charlotte’s nature. He’s funny, smart and although he’s constantly trying to figure out the inner workings of Charlotte’s mind, he still ends up being many steps behind! James’s instinct to protect Charlotte, despite knowing that she’s a genius and more than capable of taking care of herself, was rather sweet.

“It’s fine,” I said, sitting at the edge of her bed. “You’re probably still catching up on sleep. It’s not healthy to go three days without it, you’ll start hallucinating.”
“Yes, but the hallucinations are always fascinating.”

In terms of the detective investigation itself, the mystery and danger was very convincing. Charlotte was framed for the murder so convincingly that there were several times when I too had my doubts!

“…Unfortunately, I was wearing this when I heard” – she indicated her outfit with a frustrated hand – “and so I decided to stay away from the dorm so that nobody would see me. It’s bad form to be dressed as a burglar on the night if anyone’s murder, much less that of someone you hate.”

This book is full of suspense, humour and a hint of romance and I enjoyed reading it sooo much. Then why wasn’t it given a five star rating? Although A Study In Charlotte was original in its own way, I couldn’t disregard the constant references to the original Sherlock and Watson adventures. The author was trying to recreate that magic and did an excellent job, but her use of those already hyped and well-loved stories to make this book work came across as a little cheeky. I look forward to reading the rest of this series to discover what other crazy adventures the new Holmes and Watson get up to!

Notable Scene:

I was forcibly reminded that she was from London, like me. For a moment, I felt so homesick I thought that I’d make an even worse show of myself and throw myself at her feet, beg her to read me the phone book in that extravagant voice that had no business coming out of such a thin, angular girl.

FTC Advisory: Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins provided me with a copy of A Study in Charlotte. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. show less

I think I knew going into this that this whole book would be more about Charlotte and Jamie finding their way post-Moriarty than either the book's mystery or the Holmes-Watson-Moriarty drama, and from that perspective, A Question of Holmes proved very satisfying. But I, like many other readers, found the ending frustrating.

Cavallaro has shown a predilection for narrative ambiguity throughout the series, and while it has at times annoyed me—mostly because it came across less as narrative show more ambiguity than narrative obfuscation, the author sniggering over her cleverness instead of realizing she's failed to hint at half the things she thinks she has—it's also read as an appropriate echo of Charlotte and Jamie's emotional immaturity and preoccupation with their own cleverness.

But Charlotte and Jamie come so far in this last book, have such mature and vulnerable conversations, that ending the series with her typical slapdash ambiguity felt like regression. I believe Cavallaro intended to offer a "realistic" portrait of two people carefully unfolding their love for one another into a world they know all too well offers a surfeit of uncertainty and danger, but my ability to believe that says much more about my skill as a fanfic reader than Cavallaro's skill as a subtle, nuanced writer of relationships.

I've enjoyed this series very much, and am very proud of how much Charlotte and Jamie have grown in the course of it, but I think they deserved—have earned, even—a little more clarity in their epilogue than their author provided here. show less

so much fun. smart, funny, charming, full of Holmesian references that don't annoy me in the least because Cavallaro and I clearly agree on all things Holmes, and also … not that great?

except! so fun to read! SO FUN. I love them both, I love their dynamic, I love how painfully realistic Holmes' upbringing is -- not so much the literal "walking a beam blindfolded while wearing high heels" parts, but how a family can get locked into a certain form of overachievement, and completely warp show more their kids with it? Oh yeah.

Combine that with Holmes' issues -- the drug use, the rape (bless Cavallaro for spelling it out as "rape", clearly and without flinching) -- you can see why she's into Watson, right?

And Watson. I have been in love with Doyle's Watson since i first read Hound, and nothing has happened to shift my viewpoint in the meantime.

Including this modern version where Watson is routinely called "a hipster", somewhat to his annoyance, and he is routinely kicked out of Holmes' life (very much to his annoyance).

i would have been SO HARD into this as a teen. show less