The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

It feels like it's been ages since I really loved a book. You know, the kind of book that comes along once or twice a year - the one that makes it hard to tolerate any activity other than reading because you must know what happens next. This book didn't quite reach that level of love for me, but I did find myself surprisingly sucked in. More so than I have in a while.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie features an 11 year old Brit named Flavia deLuce who is pretty much completely unbelievable in her Doogie Howserness but is nonetheless charming and so smartly written that I bought into her reality anyways. She lives on a remote English estate post WWII with her sad, widowed father and two snooty older sisters. She's a solitary aspiring chemist that keeps mostly to an old science lab located in one of the far off wings of her family estate, making poisons to use on her sisters.

When a dead jack snipe with a stamp on its beak appears on her doorstop she's intrigued. But when she finds a dead body in the cucumber patch the following morning, she launches into a mini murder mystery adventure.

I really quite liked this book and think I might pick up the next "Flavia deLuce mystery" soonish.