Reviews

I think the best thing about finally reading this, was learning about the original characters of Sherlock and Watson, rather than 'knowing' them through their TV personas. Sherlock is a lot more eccentric than I ever expected and Watson is a lot less, well... significant in the actual plot (he's the narrator). I also learnt that Sherlock Holmes stories are only 30 pages each! For whatever reason I had always thought that they were a traditional novel length. But short stories make a lot more sense when you learn that they were originally published in a magazine!

So the stories themselves... I really enjoyed them. The writing style was easy to understand, the mysteries unique enough that I couldn't predict what was going to unfold, and honestly Sherlock is just a laugh to read about.

I will say though, that the way each story unfolds is near identical. For example it starts with Holmes essentially saying "this is the case I'm going to share with you today", followed by Sherlock getting the case, case is explained, they collect the clues, Sherlock solves it, the audience is told what happened and who the baddy is. This had a pro and a con for me. Con - By the end of this collection (12 stories) I was starting to get a bit bored with the mysteries because you knew what aspect of the story would come next. Pro - I learnt pretty quickly when the truth was about to be shown, so I could pause with all the clues before me and try to figure out what really happened. I only managed this twice haha!

So ultimately, I think this is a great classic to start with due to it's easy to comprehend writing style. I do recommend that you consider what type of reader you are though and potentially read one short story a night.