juliesplotsandpages 's review for:

Secret Letters by Leah Scheier

2.0

---

This book seemed so promising when I read the premise. The secret daughter of Sherlock Holmes? Yes please! Unfortunately, it wasn't executed very well. I think this is supposed to be YA, but the writing is definitely more Middle Grade. The content is slightly more on the YA side as there are some Victorian-era scandals. But everything is written about so innocently that the scandals are more implied than explicitly stated. Mostly, though, the main character (who is Sherlock Holmes daughter) wants to be a detective like her father, but she spends most of the book being clueless. And I don't mean, Sherlock "clueless" where she doesn't get social cues, but she spends more time thinking about what she should be doing than noticing the things around her. Or that's how it felt. She's supposed to be 16, and she's a very childish 16.

I also wasn't very impressed with the ending. It left it pretty open-ended...like maybe the story would continue. But I think there's only one book. So then maybe the reader is just going to imply that there's more? Or the reader gets to guess what happens next? It just wasn't very satisfying. And everything wrapped up so hastily at the end, too, that I wasn't even sure I would get all the answers before the book ended. Overall, not a fan of this book.