Another great read!!!! Alan Bradley you are a genius!!!!!

I am rounding this up because my love of Flavia, Dogger, and yes, Aunt Felicity, is strong enough to give back the half star this book should have lost. It should have lost the half star in part because of some loose threads in the plot, and partly because due to inclement weather, Gladys the bicycle was only mentioned, not featured.Still though, I could spend all day happily reading as young Flavia rhapsodizes about poison.

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

I picked this one up expecting only to read a few pages and to put it aside again in favour of something else but found myself once again sucked into Flavia’s world right away. Obviously, I got a bit impatient at the repeated background information as I was eager to get on with the story. Yes, yes, it’s needed for the readers who dive into the middle of the series, I know.

Flavia is still an adorable protagonist. The supporting characters are just as intriguing and peculiar as in the previous adventures. Everyone seems to be surrounded by a mystery of their own and Bradley adds more layers to them with every new novel. Superbly done.

I admit that I am a bit worried about Flavia’s apparent lack of personal attachment. She cares deeply for Dogger, that much is clear. Her sisters are an altogether different topic. Even though she would never admit it, she yearns for her sisters’ acceptance and love, but neither of them would ever allow themselves to show affection for the other, which is explained away by way of upbringing and a bit “stiff upper-lippiness”. Flavia also seemed to get on well and have a connection with actress Phyllis Wyvern, who came to Buckshaw for the filming of a movie. However, as soon as Flavia gets into the sleuthing she seems to detach herself from every personal emotion. This is most likely a trait of every great detective, but it seems a bit disturbing in one so young: treating someone as a surrogate mother figure one moment and only taking a scientific interest in a murder victim the next.

All in all, it was great fun. I couldn’t put it down and I vow to devour whatever Bradley churns out next.

As mysteries go, I don't think Bradley was trying very hard. After all, he managed to get an enormous cast together for a real, old-fashioned, Agatha Christie murder in the mansion over the holidays, and he can't even be bothered to come up with a compelling reason for a lot of people to have possibly done the crime.But that's okay, because I'd happily read all about Flavia and her eccentric family and her chemistry with no plot at all. It was particularly fun reading about all the snow, because this wasn't a white Christmas by a long shot.Library copy.

Rating: 4* of fiveThe Book Report: Flavia de Luce does Christmas. Buckshaw, Bishop's Lacey, is now the scene of Ilium Films's new Phyllis Wyvern extravaganza, The Cry of the Raven. The film company has paid the desperately strapped-for-cash Colonel Haviland de Luce a sizable sum to use Buckshaw as the backdrop for this bound-to-be-mega hit, which means Christmas will be spent with an entire film crew up the family's collective backside. Flavia meets the famous Miss Wyvern as she enters the house, charming as cheesecake on a plate of strawberries, even winning the adulation of the normally suspicious Flavia by demonstrating her apparently genuine interest in matters of murder: She quotes from the dreadful gossip sheet Illustrated London News about a recent scandalous killing. Well then!Not long after the lady's arrival, the cast and crew and director make their various appearances, as doe the Vicar, with a modest proposal: He'd like famous movie star Wyvern to appear as Juliet, her star-making role, in a village fete in aid of the church roof's repair. To absolutely universal astonishment, Miss Wyvern agrees, and the plot begins to spin faster and faster. Since the hairpins have begun to fall, and Miss Wyvern's true meanness is revealed, the fact that she's murdered by someone present at Buckshaw after the fete...which includes just about the whole village, since a blizzard's blown in, sealing all the audience in Buckshaw's foyer...comes as no surprise whatever.Even though the bloom has gone off the rose of Flavia's admiration for the lady, a murder under her own roof is simply too much to resist meddling in! And meddle she does, searching the victim's room and even standing in at the post-mortem examination of the body. Flavia, though, is callously shut out by Inspector Hewitt of the Hinley P.D., as is his wont. He has, thinks Flavia, personal animus against her now, as Flavia made a terrible break at tea taken in the Hewitt home.But in the end, Flavia solves the horrible, tawdry crime, and fails to become the next murder victim herself by dint of one of her chemistry experiments designed to trap Santa Claus on his way to the chimney, thereby disproving her horrible, heartless sisters's claims that there is no Santa. And, at the very tippy-end of the book, Buckshaw's future at the hands of the tax receivers is probably averted thanks to the very play that caused the Christmas crisis to begin with...a lovely, deft scene that wrapped up an end I was really ticked about having loose.Merry Christmas indeed, Flavia.My Review: Every series needs a Christmas book. This is it. If you liked the others, this one will please you; but it has the standard plot-hole and plausibility flaws. If they didn't tick you off before, they won't now, either. Happy Holidays!