A Study in Charlotte

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 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 show more 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 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 show more 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 cannot say enough good things about this. The writing was absolutely superb, even breathtaking in places. You can totally tell that the author is a poet.

The mystery was masterfully constructed, and the main relationship is deep, intense, and respectful. Holmes has boundaries, and Watson respects them. It is beautiful and I loved it, and I went out and bought the second book before I'd gotten to the halfway point.

I had my doubts going into this because I love Sherlock Holmes so much and I’m always nervous about retellings, especially when the times they take place are so different, but this re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes’s legacy absolutely blew me away. I am in love with this series. I think it’s perfect that it isn’t quite a retelling, but more like a continuation of the Holmes and Watson families if they were real and existed in the present-day.

What I appreciated the most was the level of thought and detail that went into this story. We have a Holmes who is meticulous to a fault and very shrewd; what’s great is that these traits aren’t explained away as inherited from Sherlock or genetic, but it’s known that the Holmes family show more trains their children from a very young age to be able to discern and perform all sorts of strange things that make them super geniuses and able to solve mysteries. It also heavily references the original stories, which is a lot of fun if you’ve read a lot of Holmes books.

The mystery itself is intriguing, but that’s not what drove the story for me. I loved watching Jamie and Charlotte get to know each other and develop a relationship. I really appreciated the humor and inside jokes they develop with one another–I was laughing out loud quite a few times while reading this. Jamie is a wonderful main character and reading about him slowly realizing exactly what’s going on with his dad, his school, Charlotte, etc. is a fun time.

Some stuff struck me as odd; I’m not really sure what two British kids are doing at a prep school in Connecticut. I feel like the author vaguely tried to justify this, but it was still kind of strange. I also couldn’t quite pin down exactly how to feel about James’s relationships with each of his parents. Aside from that, though, I loved this and I’m really excited to continue reading this series.

Also posted on Purple People Readers. show less

...I began wondering if there was some kind of Watsonian guide for the care and keeping of Holmeses.

*flappy hands*

Hands down, the best Holmes and Watson...adaptation?...I've ever had the pleasure of reading. By turns amusing, dark, cute, heartbreaking, and fun as hell.

OF COURSE, there's a riveting mystery here (murder most foul at a prep school), but the real meat of the novel is the partnership and growing friendship between this Watson (Jamie, an honorable, rugby-playing stalwart, as usual) and this Holmes (Charlotte, a violin-playing, drug-addicted eccentric, also as usual). Watson is great at respecting Holmes's boundaries while making sure she doesn't entirely run herself into the ground. And of course, they're teenagers, so show more there's a hint of romance, but it's completely overridden by the splendor of their glowing friendship.

My one complaint is that there isn't more of this duo IMMEDIATELY. show less

A refreshing update to the Holmes-verse, and a good mystery in its own right. Jamie’s definitely a Watson—loyal, a writer, convinced he’s more average than he is—and Charlotte’s definitely a Holmes—abrasive, into science, trained in crime solving since birth, drug habit. They also have hangups from being members of their families, which get dealt with over the course of the book (sort of), and they feel like teens to boot. And the mystery itself? Twisty and interesting and also very Holmsian. (Can’t say more or there’ll be spoilers.) I hope it’s a series.

8/10

James Watson is less than pleased when his mother ships him off to America to boarding school to be nearer to his father. The only upside is that Watson might finally encounter the only Holmes descendant near his age, Charlotte Holmes. However, Holmes is not quite like what he expected and when a student that both Watson and Holmes publicly hated is found dead in his dormitory suddenly the two find themselves under investigation. Can this young Holmes and Watson duo prove their innocence and figure out who is responsible without dying in the process?

A fun contemporary YA riff on the Holmes canon that takes the conceit that Holmes and Watson were real, resulting in the protagonists of this novel. With a solid mystery and some complex show more characters set in a private school setting, there was no way I wasn't going to enjoy this one. A solid first entry that I think holds promise for great things in the follow-up novels, I recommend this to all Sherlock fans who read YA. show less