This turned out quite well, and I am interested in picking up the rest of the series at some point, but it took quite some time to grow on me.

 

I think a chunk of that was Flavia, which is curious because her character description was the reason I picked up the books. I loved the idea of a young, clever girl chemist. In practice, though, it took me quite some time to actually connect with her. She was a bit too methodical and far too interested on playing chemisty-based pranks on her (admittedly annoying) older sisters. It took a long time for her to display any attachments to anyone or anything but the idea of chemistry, and it made her feel overly dispassionate and kind of one-dimensional.

 

Throughout the course of the novel, especially in the very last bits, she warmed up a bit and started displaying different facets of her personality, so I did eventually settle in with her. Her sisters remained extremely annoying and her father was kind of questionable as well; I guess I can't blame her for turning out a bit cold, but it made for a harder read for me since the chemistry was not quite enough to drive the plot for as long as it was supposed to do so.

 

Once things picked up a bit and we started getting more information, the story was interesting, though I did figure out early on who and a hefty chunk of what/why. The "who" was almost too obvious in a "whodunnit," personally, but the background of everyone and the convoluted (in the best sense--this is a mystery!) plotline and character connections were intriguing enough that I enjoyed the novel.

 

I'm interested enough, now that I've formed a bit of an attachment to Flavia, to see where the rest of the series goes, but I'm not in a rush. It seems like it would be hard, given Flavia is a child and has a child's limited mobility, to have an entire series of mysteries with her as the star, but Miss Marple rarely traveled either and mysteries just fell in her lap, so this is clearly a workable problem. I'll be fascinated to see how it is overcome in this series.