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marta_correia 's review for:
Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace
by Patricia Marcantonio
*Thank you to the editor Crooked Lane Books for providing an e-ARC copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*
"Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace" had quite a lot of potential. Among other aspects, it has an interesting premise, a setting with a possible clash of cultures and a character with room to be innovative and inspiring. This is what drew me in. A victorian era murder mystery with a female main character in the field of forensic science? Yes, please!
Unfortunately, I was overall disappointed. I didn't love the main character, Felicity (in fact, I liked some side characters much more). The way the author describes her makes it look like she is perfect, not only in looks but also in brains. She's good at everything, she is gorgeous, brilliant, has a phenomenal photographic memory, remarkable powers of deduction, a vast scientific knowledge... However, I found that she fails more than once at using all her brilliance and knowledge in the story. Adding to that, she does a lot of illegal things to "get evidence".
The more scientific parts were not very good, in particular the optography scene. While I understand wanting to insert elements of the time into the story, this scene was not well done for me. I'm convinced it doesn't correspond to the scientific protocol and the results corresponding to the real experiments. While I know this is a work of fiction, that section read more like science fiction than historical fiction. I could go on an entire tirade about this particular aspect, but in the end, it all comes down to this: if the novel is based on a forensic sciences expert, at least that part and the lab work should have been as accurate as possible.
On the historical aspect of this novel, it didn't feel enough like victorian times. From the dialogue to some of the character's views, it read too modern. I'm sure that writing a story in a time that is far from your reality will be very difficult, as there is a lot of research and effort that needs to go into it to make it believable. Unfortunately, in this case, it didn't work for me.
I wasn't drawn to the writing either. I found some awkward or complicated words thrown into the text and weird expressions/descriptions that took me out of the story. Also, there were too many repetitive moments, the romance involving Felicity was unnecessary, the major plot twist, I liked it but figured it out very early in the story, and finally, the resolution was just too neat and fast, I didn't like the ending given to the antagonist.
To conclude, this is a novel with a good premise and an interesting twist on a real-life case that didn't work for me: 2/5 stars.
"Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace" had quite a lot of potential. Among other aspects, it has an interesting premise, a setting with a possible clash of cultures and a character with room to be innovative and inspiring. This is what drew me in. A victorian era murder mystery with a female main character in the field of forensic science? Yes, please!
Unfortunately, I was overall disappointed. I didn't love the main character, Felicity (in fact, I liked some side characters much more). The way the author describes her makes it look like she is perfect, not only in looks but also in brains. She's good at everything, she is gorgeous, brilliant, has a phenomenal photographic memory, remarkable powers of deduction, a vast scientific knowledge... However, I found that she fails more than once at using all her brilliance and knowledge in the story. Adding to that, she does a lot of illegal things to "get evidence".
The more scientific parts were not very good, in particular the optography scene. While I understand wanting to insert elements of the time into the story, this scene was not well done for me. I'm convinced it doesn't correspond to the scientific protocol and the results corresponding to the real experiments. While I know this is a work of fiction, that section read more like science fiction than historical fiction. I could go on an entire tirade about this particular aspect, but in the end, it all comes down to this: if the novel is based on a forensic sciences expert, at least that part and the lab work should have been as accurate as possible.
On the historical aspect of this novel, it didn't feel enough like victorian times. From the dialogue to some of the character's views, it read too modern. I'm sure that writing a story in a time that is far from your reality will be very difficult, as there is a lot of research and effort that needs to go into it to make it believable. Unfortunately, in this case, it didn't work for me.
I wasn't drawn to the writing either. I found some awkward or complicated words thrown into the text and weird expressions/descriptions that took me out of the story. Also, there were too many repetitive moments, the romance involving Felicity was unnecessary, the major plot twist, I liked it but figured it out very early in the story, and finally, the resolution was just too neat and fast, I didn't like the ending given to the antagonist.
To conclude, this is a novel with a good premise and an interesting twist on a real-life case that didn't work for me: 2/5 stars.