Holmes and Watson in YA: A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro (Spoiler-Free Review)

Welcome back to Musings of an Arthritic Artist! Today I am going to be doing another book review, this one a spoiler free review of A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro. 

Normally I like to spread out my book reviews out a bit more, but I've been incredibly busy with school for the past week and I haven't been able to really keep up. I'm still going to be posting, but don't be surprised if you see a more frequent number of book reviews (they're the quickest type of post for me to write). 

With that aside, let's get into the review!

A Study in Charlotte is a YA mystery retelling of Sherlock Holmes, though it's a bit more complicated than that. It's more of a YA mystery based on Sherlock Holmes. This story's main characters are two teens, Jamie Watson and Charlotte Holmes, the descendants (great great great-grandchildren) of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, respectively. In this novel, Sherlock and Watson were real people of whom Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a publicist for. 

Jamie and Charlotte meet at a school in Connecticut (however they are both from England like their grandfathers), and Jamie is fascinated by her. They become friends. This is a YA mystery novel, though it's also part romance. It is quite clear that Jamie likes her, and I assume Charlotte feels the same way, but we'll see in the later installments.  

I don't want to say too much about it because I feel like it's one of those stories you should go into knowing very little about. Chances are you already know what kind of story it is based on reading the title. And that's really as much as I knew. It's a mystery, so I feel like if I talk about it, it'll just ruin the fun of whodunnit and why. 

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This was the first book I read in 2021. It was a very quick read, allowing me to finish it in one day (New Year's Day). It only has twelve chapters and an epilogue, which makes it fly by. It follows the same basic formula of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, albeit in a modern setting with modern words and technology. It is told in the perspective of Jamie Watson as he befriends Charlotte Holmes. In normal Holmes fashion, there is a plot afoot.

A Study in Charlotte is the first book of four in the Charlotte Holmes series, so there's still plenty of novels left. I'm honestly really interested in how this series ends. I read A Study in Scarlet earlier last year (pre-pandemic), and enjoyed it, though I was confused and kind of bored by the second part. 

This book (as you would expect it to) makes quite a few references to some of the short stories, so much so that--having only read A Study in Scarlet at the time--I finished this book and immediately read the short stories it referenced (The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, The Adventure of the Dying Detective, and The Adventure of the Speckled Band). 

About a month after this, I read much more Sherlock Holmes stories. I read The Sign of the Four, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and The Hound of the Baskervilles. I'm definitely not finished with the full chronology. I've only read about half the stories. There's still more to Sherlock's and Watson's stories that I'm not familiar with.

Reading this made me want to read Sherlock Holmes even more. I do wish that I had read all the stories before reading this, but at the same time, this is a YA novel, and I know that the author probably didn't expect the potential teenager reading this book to have read The Complete Sherlock Holmes. For what it's worth, I think Brittany Cavallaro did an excellent job of writing this for teens. 

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I enjoyed reading about Jamie and Charlotte. I thought they were both complicated and interesting to follow. Having already been familiar with the format of Sherlock Holmes stories, I really enjoyed that the story was told from Jamie's point-of-view, especially since Charlotte seems to solve mysteries almost as fast as Sherlock Holmes himself. 

Charlotte was also very much like Sherlock, while still being her own distinct person. They both have their vices, they both kind of come off as peculiar and off-putting, and they both have their secrets. Charlotte is somewhat unlikeable, while also being likeable. It's complicated for me to explain effectively. 

I really enjoyed and appreciated the references made to the Sherlock Holmes stories, even though I didn't understand all of them. The story itself is pretty simple, but it wasn't too simple to where it annoyed me. 

I haven't read a lot of mysteries in YA, so this is one of the best ones I've read, and I'm really excited to continue with this series at a later time. I rated this five out of five stars on Goodreads. Overall, I really enjoyed it, and would recommend it for anyone who enjoys YA, mysteries, romance, and Sherlock Holmes. It isn't the best, but it's a quick, enjoyable read that I wanted to curl up and re-read the moment I finished it.

That's it for this review! 

I hope you enjoyed it! 

See you Thursday, 

Lexi K🖌