Where I Liked Some Ingredients but not the Cake

The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl by Theodora Goss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's okay.

Seriously, I really enjoyed the first book in the series. I rather liked the second, though it was (IMO, as always) a lot too long. But there was so much I liked that I bought the third, intending to love it, and I gotta say--I didn't.

There are still so many things I admire. I love the whole conceit of putting together all these female characters from stories mostly focused on other characters; of them finding a way to survive as a family in an overtly patriarchal society; of their investigating strange mysteries and crimes. I like Mary, Diana is kinda funny, I have sympathy for Justine, I am charmed by Mrs. Poole, and most of the others have their moments. And I really like the intrusive comments, with the various characters breaking in as if the book is a performance that they're interrupting with objections and arguments and the like. I liked that all the way through, especially the pitch to buy the books.

But the pacing is deadly. The story is so cozy and the arc is so flat that I barely cared what happened (except for the scene in the British Museum, which was pretty good). There's almost no mystery, no tension, no excitement; we see bravery and hard work, but nothing awesome. These characters all have skills and abilities, and they're not entirely forgotten, but they're underused. I want to cheer for Justine doing something noble that requires strength or Mary solving a hard riddle that no one else can make sense of or Catherine doing what only a puma woman could. We get Diana picking locks and the like, but it's not much.

(And for god's sake, if you're gonna put Sherlock in your book, don't have him unconscious for half the novel and in captivity for the other half! He was wasted.)

Anyway, I liked the book enough to give it a passing 3-stars evaluation, and I liked the series, but if I'm honest it wasn't much fun to read past the middle of the second book. I started this one with high hopes, intending to read it straight through, but started leaving it on the desk day after day as it dragged, reluctantly picking it up from time to time over many weeks.

I have no doubt others will see virtues I didn't.

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