Series: Flavia de Luce #10

I have to say that listening to Flavia is a lot of fun, although I'm not sure I really understood what was actually going on in the mystery. I'm not sure whether I just wasn't paying enough attention or whether it really was as wishy washy as it seemed. But anyway, even if the mystery was only so so, Flavia's shenanigans are always fun. And I have to say that she definitely deserves her cousin, Undine. That little terror.

This book is creeping me out in all the wrong ways. This is my 6th Flavia De Luce book. I enjoyed the first five. This one changes the direction of the series, which is fine, but it also changes the character of Flavia De Luce, which isn't.

I'd expected a cozy mystery. Something where eleven-year-old Flavia uses her unique intelligence and her knowledge of poisons to solve a murder while trying to find a place to be happy in her fractured family.

What I got is an eleven-year-old girl planning to resurrect the very dead mother who is lying in state in their stately home.

I also got some kind of bizarre spy theme squeezed in, presumably to fuel future books.

I find the plot around the mother creepy. I don't want to work through whatever embarrassing or grief provoking outcome it's going to produce.

The spy thing doesn't interest me. Flavia as a 1950s English version of Spy Kids doesn't sound appealing.

So I'm abandoning the book and the series.

My bingo game is going to suffer for this. I used a Transfiguration Spell to put Cozy Mystery on my board and now I've DNF'd two books in a row that I was reading for that square.

I'm going to try "Real Murders", the first Aurora Teagarden book and see if I can make it all the way through that. 

This is my sixth Flavia de Luce book and something is off about it.

I've always liked Flavia but this time she seems not to be entirely herself.

Of course, her dead mother's body has just been returned to the family and is lying in state in the Hall, so eleven-year-old Flavia could be forgiven for being more emotional than usual but she seems to be surrendering science to magic, I never thought I would hear Flavia say something as stupid as:

"It was a brilliant idea, and because it was scientific, it simply could not fail."

 

I'm a little concerned with where this book is going. At the moment, the mystery doesn't seem that cozy.

Seriously...I see that some of you all liked/loved this one but I am baffled. This is up there with "The Catcher in the Rye" with most loathsome young adult character I have read in like decades. Flavia is dancing towards being a psychopath. I would have brained her for the crap she was doing to her two sisters. And all of them were just the most dysfunctional family ever. I can't even tell you much about the murder. Someone was murdered. Flavia "investigated". Bah. At least I counted it for two separate games. 

So "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" follows Flavia De Luce. A man is found murdered in her family's garden and her father is soon taken into custody accused of the murder. Flavia who overheard her father fighting with the dead man thinks he did it, but is focused on getting him cleared of murder. Flavia's eleven and I guess could be called precocious. I don't know. I know she bugged the ever living life out of me. 

Look I don't know what to even say except I didn't like this one. Bradley didn't do a good job of developing Flavia beyond her being a terrible ass child. I can't say much about anyone else that is in this since they are merely there for Flavia to do terrible things to. My brothers would have buried me in our yard if I got up to half the stuff that she did.

The writing was unintentionally funny and circled back to Flavia being awful.

 

They’ll charge him with murder,” Ophelia said, “and then he’ll be hanged!”

She burst into tears again and turned away.

For a moment I almost felt sorry for her."

 

“What is it? My symbol, I mean.” “It’s a P,” he said. “Capital P.” “A P?” I asked, surprised. “What does P stand for?” “Ah,” he said, “that’s best left to the imagination.”

 

The flow was awful. Seriously. I had a hard time paying attention while reading this one. And it felt like sometimes that chapters went on forever. Bradley didn't do a good job of ending the chapters on a high or low note. Sometimes the next chapter was just following up with the action in the last scene so I was baffled why he chose to cut things off where he did. 

The book takes place in the 1920s in England. I don't know...it just read off to me the whole time. Maybe the dialogue was too modern and other times something seemed off. I don't know.

The book ended and I breathed a sound of relief. I have no intention of reading the other books in this series. 

Not feeling this one very much. Flavia is kind of annoying.