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

I loved the end of this series (at least I assume it is the end). For three books Charlotte has been deeply broken. Her dysfunctional family, her rape, her drug abuse - all these things make her relationships fraught with pitfalls and barriers. But in this book, we finally see Charlotte find some peace in her life and a healthy relationship with Jamie. It was highly satisfying.

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