Well, we're halfway through June and I'm somehow just now recapping a book I read in the middle of March. So as you can see, things are going real well over here.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley was published in 2009 after he won the Debut Dagger Award in 2007 for submitting the first chapter and a brief synopsis of the book. His win sparked a bidding war, he sold the publishing rights in three different countries, and then he spent the next several months developing that first chapter into a full-length novel which was published well after he was 70 years old. After the smashing success of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, he continued to write more Flavia de Luce mysteries turning it into a ten-book series over the next ten years. Amazing, right?
And guess what. It's my favorite book of 2021 so far. (Well, in all honesty, it's now tied for first with another book I read more recently, but that's neither here nor there. And you'll just have to stick around to find out what the other front-runner is.)
In The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, we meet 11 year old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three sisters who live at their country estate Buckshaw in the 1950s with their widowed father. When a red-headed stranger turns up dead in their cucumber patch and their father is hauled in as a suspect, Flavia decides to take matters into her own hands, hops on her trusty bicycle Gladys, and single-handedly solves the case.
I loved everything about this "delightfully old-fashioned mystery" and about Flavia herself. An aspiring chemist with her own fully-equipped laboratory at Buckshaw, Flavia is whip-smart, laugh-out-loud funny, and a mischievous little prankster. Bradley's writing style has been described as reminiscent of the Golden Age of crime writing. As a reader who cut my teeth on The Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew, falling into Flavia's world was utterly charming and somehow nostalgic of what drew me to a love of reading in the first place. I ended up using The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie to check off the "book that reminds you of childhood" slot in The Unread Shelf's 2021 Unread Book Bingo.
Ten out of ten, would recommend. Flavia de Luce is a riot, and I can't wait for my next visit with her.
What books made you love reading? Have you read any of the Flavia de Luce mysteries?
Everything you’ve ever said about these books reels me in even further. I can’t wait to give them a read! Also, what a fun history of the author. Thanks for that 😉
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely hoping to read another Flavia book this year. So fun. And yeah, it just amazes me that he STARTED his career as an author in his retirement. He was a radio and television engineer.
DeleteLove the way you've teased your other favourite read of 2021, my curiosity is definitely piqued 😉 This one sounds a little along the lines of another one I read and loved lately, The Nancys (a young protagonist and Nancy Drew fan, trying to solve a murder in her small town)
ReplyDelete😊 I saw you mentioned The Nancys on your blog and was definitely intrigued by your description. I'll have to keep an eye out for that one.
DeleteYou put it in a pie dish. Of course.
ReplyDeleteHa! It seemed the only right option.
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