Where It's Better the Second Time Around

Jane and the Man of the Cloth by Stephanie Barron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a reread, and I see I originally gave this 4 stars. For me, that means I liked it and it didn't lose my attention anywhere, but it wasn't quite my favorite.

I'm changing that to a 5. Maybe I'm different now. Not sure why. This is what I like to read.

To be honest, I think when I started reading this series, I almost never read mystery, and I wasn't doing it right. Some Sherlock Holmes was about the extent of my mystery reading. I started reading these books because I liked the main character. (Still do.) Now, though, I'm a different reader. With a lot more experience with mystery, I'm better at keeping characters straight, who they're connected to, their comings and goings, and other details, so that I'm less often confused. More genre-savvy, as they say. That makes it easier to just read. I still have to pause once in a while and say wait, is that the guy who loves the fossils or the guy who lost his leg in the war...... But then I get there.

With that advantage, I read this with even more pleasure than the first time. This version of Jane is probably my favorite literary character--I'd have to sit and ponder that for awhile, because there are others I love, obviously, but she's right up at the top for sure--and it's so fun to see her being awesome. She is not an action hero, but she gets to be *involved* in the actual action here, doing things that a proper youngish woman would not do in that era, and so contribute to the outcome. Yes, she gets to be smart and figure stuff out. Yes, she gets to say clever things. But she also risks her own safety to solve the mystery, and it matters.

I love it.

You see, they're in Lyme, and there are some deaths, and there's some smuggling, and maybe some French dudes, and.... it's a whole thing.

Excellent mystery, good misdirections, good action, excellent conclusion. Seriously--5 stars. Recommended.

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