You can hardly throw a stone outside anymore and not hit a modern Sherlock fan. Either thanks to the BBC, PBS, your grandparents bookshelves, your parents bookshelves, and now we can add Brittany Cavallaro to this list of reasons.
Need a quick synopsis? Here you go! (Courtesy of Goodreads!)
A Study in Charlotte:
"The last thing Jamie Watson wants is a rugby scholarship to Sherringford, a Connecticut prep school just an hour away from his estranged father. But that’s not the only complication: Sherringford is also home to Charlotte Holmes, the famous detective’s great-great-great-granddaughter, who has inherited not only Sherlock's genius but also his volatile temperament. From everything Jamie has heard about Charlotte, it seems safer to admire her from afar.
From the moment they meet, there’s a tense energy between them, and they seem more destined to be rivals than anything else. But when a Sherringford student dies under suspicious circumstances, ripped straight from the most terrifying of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Jamie can no longer afford to keep his distance. Jamie and Charlotte are being framed for murder, and only Charlotte can clear their names. But danger is mounting and nowhere is safe—and the only people they can trust are each other. "
The Last of August:
"Jamie Watson and Charlotte Holmes are looking for a winter-break reprieve after a fall semester that almost got them killed. But Charlotte isn’t the only Holmes with secrets, and the mood at her family’s Sussex estate is palpably tense. On top of everything else, Holmes and Watson could be becoming more than friends—but still, the darkness in Charlotte’s past is a wall between them.
A distraction arises soon enough, because Charlotte’s beloved uncle Leander goes missing from the estate—after being oddly private about his latest assignment in a German art forgery ring. The game is afoot once again, and Charlotte is single-minded in her pursuit.
Their first stop? Berlin. Their first contact? August Moriarty (formerly Charlotte’s obsession, currently believed by most to be dead), whose powerful family has been ripping off famous paintings for the last hundred years. But as they follow the gritty underground scene in Berlin to glittering art houses in Prague, Holmes and Watson begin to realize that this is a much more complicated case than a disappearance. Much more dangerous, too.
What they learn might change everything they know about their families, themselves, and each other."
Beginning with A Study in Charlotte and adding in The Last of August I haven't been able to stop this series once I began reading it. Though it is only planned to be a trilogy, Cavallaro does a great job of encompassing the traditional Sherlock and Watson, bringing them into the present day, and having her readers embrace the complexities of their relationship in an approachable and relatable way. One of the first things you have to know about this series start with the names of the characters. Charlotte Holmes and James (Jamie) Watson. Two teenagers at the Sherringford Prep school in Connecticut. Jamie doesn't want to be there, and Charlotte is trying her hardest to make it though uninterupted.
Their relationship is slow to start, sped along by the murder of Lee Dobson. After reading A Study of Scarlett I truly loathed Lee, he's an idiot, a rapist, and a moron; needless to say I didn't mourn his death any. The baffling part is that Lee isn't even the worse person in the book! You'll end of hating the school nurse, Augst Moriarty's ex-fiance, the architect of Charlotte's rape, and the murder of Lee and almost murderer of Jamie. She's a well written villan, causing you to, for only a moment, sympathize with her and her course of action. Then you realize she's insane and you're mad when Charlotte isn't allowed to completely destroy her.
As their relationship progresses in The Last of August, I was drawn to their hesitation to be anything more. Jamie often feels pushe aside or forces his feelings down his throat, while Charlotte either acknowledges them to the point of insanity or becomes a robot. The complexities of their relationship surpass those of adolescents in literature, because of the writing and the history surrounding their famous ancestors, Cavallaro crafts a love/obession/hate triangle between Jamie, Charlotte, and August that makes you ache and yearn for all three of them to be happy.
The stories themselves follow their original counterparts, brought into the modern world. I found myself far more interested in how Cavallaro modernized them rather than how she deviated from Doyle. Each mystery is centered on Charlotte and Jamie, so the real tale is truly found in their relationship. Any Sherlock fan will love them.
I, like so many others, am eagerly awaiting her conclusion to the trilogy. (Which I estimate to be out sometime next spring!)
Until then, or the next time,
XoXo
BrainyHeroine
Unspeakable by Dilys Rose
