“I’d prefer to think,” Holmes said, cutting me off, “that we aren’t all so mercilessly bound to our pasts.”
James Watson dislikes rugby almost as much as he dislikes being sent to the Sherringford boarding school in Connecticut (a mere hour from his estranged father) on a rugby scholarship. The prospect of finally being able to meet Charlotte Holmes is the one bright spot in is trans-Atlantic exile.
After years of imagining what meeting Charlotte might be like and how they might become friends, James finds himself face-to-face with the unlikely and insufferable girl. He also finds himself beside her at the top of the list of suspects for the murder of a fellow Sherringford student.
Armed with little but deductive reasoning on Charlotte’s part and a sharp temper on James’, the two follow in the steps of their great-great-great grandfathers’ working together to solve the case. Even with solving mysteries in their blood, Charlotte and James will have to learn how to work together and trust each other before they can close their first case in A Study in Charlotte (2016) by Brittany Cavallaro.
A Study in Charlotte is the start of a new series and Cavallaro’s first YA novel.
A Study in Charlotte starts with an interesting premise: What if Holmes and Watson were real people? Instead of writing the stories himself, Arthur Conan Doyle was Watson’s literary agent. All of the familiar pieces are still there with the additional baggage of family legacies and descendants.
While Cavallaro does some interesting things to update her source material the novel remains, despite Charlotte’s hopes to the contrary, bound irrevocably to the past. A Study in Charlotte reads as more of a light retelling than any kind of new spin on this familiar duo.
A Study in Charlotte is a charming introduction to the world and wonders of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson but readers more familiar with the original stories (and numerous film adaptations) may well be left wanting more from this tale that stays in familiar territory more often than not.
Possible Pairings: Loop by Karen Akins, Charlie, Presumed Dead by Anne Heltzel, The Body in the Woods by April Henry, Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson, Every Breath by Ellie Marney, Lock & Mori by Heather W. Petty, I Am Princess X by Cherie Priest, Daughter of Deep Silence by Carrie Ryan, Hold Me Like a Breath by Tiffany Schmidt, Never Never by Brianna Shrum, The Space Between Trees by Katie Williams
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