By Allesandro Gatti

Overview: Honestly, I didn’t read this for a thought provoking, well developed mystery. I read it because it was fun, quick, and mildly entertaining. While it had some good parts, it also had its flaws. Kids grades four to six might enjoy reading this book. The mysteries are all mostly murder mysteries though, if you’re squeamish, though no grisly injuries or anything are described.

What’s it about? A young Irene Adler stumbles into the greatest adventure of her life when she meets Sherlock Holmes on a beach trip on fateful summer. Together, and with the help of their friend Lupin, they solve many a mystery and develop lasting friendships.

My thoughts: I definitely did not like the writing style at all at first, and was confused as to why the grammar was all weird. Later, I discovered that it had been translated from Italian. *Insert laughing emoji here* Oops. Just know that it had a few mistakes in it, but nothing that really interrupts the reading experience too much. The mysteries in the series were well thought out, but all of the clues kind of just fall into the kid’s laps, and the culprits of each mystery (except for the last one) are super easy to guess. Like I said earlier, don’t go into this expecting it to be super deep and inspiring or anything, or you’ll be disappointing. It can still be entertaining though, if you just go with it! Another thing that bothered me was that the author talks about huge twists way early on, twists that are only discussed in-depth three books later. For example (this doesn’t count as a spoiler because they talk about it in the first chapter of like, the first book) Irene says something like, “Little did I know then, but he was not actually my father, but my adopted father” or something like that, and Irene doesn’t actually find out she’s adopted until like, the fourth book. It might’ve worked if she had found out soon after she mentioned it, but she literally didn’t find out until like, a billion years later. But not really a billion 😉 I was also annoyed how the first thing you hear about Irene is that she ends up as Sherlock’s first girlfriend. Like, wow, that’s the most important thing you need to know about this girl? It kind of sets the tone for the rest of the book. Irene’s a very stereotypical “not like other girls” kind of gal, which is fine, it’s just annoying because she acts like she’s better than other girls because of it.

Anyway, all in all it was an entertaining read, I recommend it for fans of mystery stories and advanced younger readers. *Also sorry about my “thoughts” running long, I just have a lot to say about this series.*