These things may have been historically accurate representations of feelings and behavior at the time the story takes place, but are at the least racially insensitive and prejudiced.įlavia sees a young man kiss a young woman. Flavia later makes an off-hand comment about colonization “civilizing” the indigenous people– though it’s unclear if she says this sarcastically. I wish it hadn’t included those few references.įlavia’s father and a friend had a performance routine in which they dressed up as a Chinese man using make-up and an unflattering accent. I enjoyed the mystery elements, and felt like the characters are believable and interesting. They may have been historically accurate representations of ideas at the time, but including them feels insensitive to me, and none of them were critical to the story. I feel like the face-painting and Flavia’s comment could have been easily left out.

This book is set in the 1950s and published in 2009 (which isn’t that long ago). To be honest, these are the kinds of things I have the most trouble with as a reviewer. It’s interesting because it’s some of the only real interaction we see between them, but it goes on for a long time and sort of shifts the focus of the story to be about him from there on out.Īnother thing to note is that there are a couple of racially insensitive (at best) situations or comments in the story. One section shows her listening to a long recounting of her father’s life at school. I feel like it should have been harder to believe that she’s eleven years old, but for some reason, I wasn’t really bothered by that as I was reading. I thought Flavia cleverly followed the thread of the mystery, having her own child-like moments here and there between highly analytical research, experiments and deductions. Sort of the only-I-can-mess-with-my-sister type of thing. There’s an undercurrent of protectiveness and caring in there, too.

She has an interesting relationship with her two older sisters which mostly consists of giving each other a hard time and playing tricks on one another. I liked what I’d read, but got sidetracked by other things and didn’t pick it up again until now.įlavia is spunky and whip-smart. I borrowed THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE from the library but only got maybe halfway through before having to return it. A long time ago, after I reviewed and enjoyed a mystery featuring a young narrator, someone suggested the Flavia de Luce series to me.

The sweetness at the bottom of the pie