Too Sweet??

This book has been on my to-read list for a while and I’m not sure why I thought it was a southern gothic tale; perhaps I didn’t pay close enough attention to the reviews. When I finally got a copy of Alan Bradley’s novel, I was surprised to find that it’s set in the world of early 1950’s Britain, where Flavia de Luce, a precocious young woman with a keen interest in chemistry, lives with her father and sisters in a crumbling but once grand mansion called Buckshaw. The story begins with a dead bird and soon escalates to man a dying in the garden, just as Flavia stumbles upon him. Rather than being thrown by this, Flavia sees it as the start of something truly interesting—even as events seem to cast guilt on her father. Soon, Flavia is forced to use her smarts to find out who is really to blame and so save her father from being charged with the crime. Though I didn’t love this novel as much as I hoped to, I did like Flavia and the way she uses her intelligence for good and for evil (torturing her older sisters). This is the first in a series and I’m curious to see where Flavia ends up next.