Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Review -- The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley


by Alan Bradley
Random House, 2010
416 pages
*I bought this from the local bookstore.

Summary: Flavia de Luce is an 11 year old girl and aspiring chemist who stumbles upon a dead body in the garden of her English home in the 1950s. With the help of the local townspeople, she learns the identity of the dead man and begins looking for his killer.

Review: It is so easy to fall in love with Flavia, who is such a wonderful and vivid character. She is smart, mature, and wise beyond her years as she determines who committed murder. Yet, she can also be immature, petty, and silly when she is around her father and 2 sisters. The author does a fantastic job of describing Flavia's little world as she races around on Gladys (her bicycle) trying to determine who killed the man in the garden. The mystery itself was a little disappointing and I found myself easily guessing who the murder was. At times, the book had a hard time keeping my interest. In the end, I found it an entertaining and satisfactory read. Rating: *** out of 5

Have you read and review this as well? If so, leave a link to your review in the comments section!

5 comments:

Kerri said...

I enjoyed Flavia as well. The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag is just as cozy.

Kristin said...

Great review...I've been seeing these books around the blogosphere a lot lately.

Thanks for stopping by my blog.

Have a great day!

MissSusie said...

Here's my review on LT of Sweetness
and my review on blogspot of Hangman's Strings

I really enjoyed them both very much.Like I say in the review of the second book she reminds me of a cross between Pippi Longstockings and every good teen detective!

Ali said...

This sits on my TBR pile, where it's been for about a year. I hope I get to it soon!

Darlene said...

I haven't read these just because they just don't grab my interest in the description. Yet I see so many people have loved them. Maybe one day I'll give them a try.