Let's Bust a Recap : Maisie Dobbs

Well, so much for catching up on the blog during May...or June, apparently. It's now July and I still have a stack of books sitting in my favorite reading nook waiting to be chronicled here. As I shared over in my Instagram stories the other day: 

You're all living in the same world I am so I don't have to explain that any further. 

Anyway, in an effort to revive this little corner of cyberspace, today we'll be talking about Maisie Dobbs. This debut novel from author Jacqueline Winspear was published in 2003 and is the first book in the Maisie Dobbs series which is now 15 books strong. I typically avoid new book series like the plague, usually opting for stand alone novels. Most of my all time favorite books in the world are actually book series (Anne of Green Gables, The Chronicles of Narnia, Christy Miller—I'm lookin' at you) so this aversion to series shouldn't make any sense, but there's this part of me that feels like there isn't any more room in my life for book series and it's too much of a commitment to get involved with a new series when there are so many other books on my shelves. Silly maybe, but there it is. I'm not sure why we've wandered so far down this rabbit hole of my literary psyche, but suffice it to say: I did not go looking for a new series to start. In my many trips to The Book Shelter (my favorite local secondhand bookshop) this slim volume kept catching my eye. I must have picked it up and read the back on no less than five previous visits, and I finally concluded that this book was meant to be added to my collection (along with four of the Flavia de Luce mysteries—another series!) and brought it home earlier this year with absolutely no intention of reading it any time soon. 

However, my mother came over looking for a book to borrow for one of her work trips, and naturally I had to show her my latest haul (keep in mind, this was back in January; that's how far behind we are) and she decided to snag Maisie Dobbs knowing that if she waited for me to read it first, she may never get to read it. Well, not only did she read it, she had my dad read it. And they both hyped it so well that I decided I needed to read it immediately. So the first week of April saw me throwing my 2020 book list to the wind and getting lost in the post-WWI era of Maisie Dobbs and tagging along on her first official case as an independent private investigator. What seems to be an open-and-shut case of infidelity ends up leading Maisie into a much deeper, darker web of secrets that force her to confront the horrors of her own experiences during the Great War.

I loved this book. The pacing was not too fast and not too slow. The historical points were well researched and informed the story without being tedious or inserted awkwardly. I connected emotionally with the story, and it definitely left me wanting to read more of the series although this debut stands easily on its own. I thought the author did an excellent job setting up the case in the first third of the book, taking us back in time and developing Maisie's backstory in the middle of the novel, and then naturally pulling us back to the present for the resolution (and when I say "present" I mean 1929, the year in which the case is set).

I have absolutely zero reservations in recommending Maisie Dobbs. My mom and dad and I all enjoyed it, and this is a book (and probably series) I would have devoured as a teenager. I'm looking forward to adding more Maisie Dobbs to my library and tagging along on more of her cases in the future.

Have you read any of the Maisie Dobbs books? Do you prefer book series or stand alone novels? What are some of your favorite series to get lost in?