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Monday, April 6, 2015

42) As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley

The Blurb :

Hard on the heels of the return of her mother’s body from the frozen reaches of the Himalayas, Flavia, for her indiscretions, is banished from her home at Buckshaw and shipped across the ocean to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in Toronto, her mother’s alma mater, there to be inducted into a mysterious organization known as the Nide.

No sooner does she arrive, however, than a body comes crashing down out of the chimney and into her room, setting off a series of investigations into mysterious disappearances of girls from the school.

My Thoughts :

Flavia de Luce is taken out of her comfort zone in this seventh and latest installment in the mystery series.  The young girl who has already solved her fair share of mysteries is packed off to Miss Bodycote's Female Academy in Canada.  A place her mother spent her time studying and a faraway place from her home of Bishop's Lacey.

I won't give much away about the plot because this installment only released in January so it is pretty new compared to the rest of the series that has dominated my Audio book listening for the last couple of months.  There are some very interesting twists and turns in this murder mystery and as things progress it is hard to keep all the new characters in their place.  Luckily it was pretty easy to deduce the events that took place and led to the body finding its way into the chimney.  Which was very cleverly plotted out storywise.

Miss Bodycote's Female Academy was a nice location change and it was interesting to see how Flavia dealt being away from Buckshaw.  I thought by the end that she wasted her time a little because she didn't really take the time to see anything of Toronto or really get to know it well.  I guess her homesickness was well hidden but shown in a different way.  I certainly missed the characters of Buckshaw and Bishop's Lacey and hope that the next book will bring things back into the lovely England countryside.

I found it hard to know how long Flavia was investigating this mystery.  This was an aspect of the story that I didn't like.  Flavia sometimes made it sound like she had been in the school for months but most of the time it felt like it only a week or two had passed.  However the story, as always, was wonderful to listen to and Flavia was a delight to follow through the adventure.  Her ideas, musings and general outlook on things is not only refreshing but adult like.

This is a series I have throughly enjoyed so far and I am really excited to say that I am now up-to-date with Flavia's mysteries.  I look forward to more and hope that some more time will have passed between this and the next installment so that Flavia gets just a little bit older.  Also I am hoping that that the author has plans for Flavia to continue her lessons with the teacher she was last seen with in this book.  She really does deserve to learn more from such a clever woman.



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1 comment:

Aurian said...

I am so glad you are enjoying this series. I need to pick up the second book.