As good as the first

I bought this as soon as I finished 'The Beekeeper's Apprentice' and found it equally enjoyable. Laurie King's writing is very good and her characters have depth. Hope the quality is maintained throughout the series, just started book 3 and so far so good...

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Intriguing

I found the story hard to get into at first until I realised what was actually happening. Then I found it quite a romp!

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Another Fantastic Book

I enjoyed this book as much as Laurie King’s first - the Beekeepers’s Apprentice. I can’t wait to buy the third. The author has developed the relationship between Mary and Holmes very well and the new characters are intriguing. You just can’t be sure who the perpetrator is until the very end.
The narration is excellent and I look forward to listening everyday. Looking forward to the next instalment.

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Holmes & Russell II

Laurie R King continues her Holmes books, and develops the relationship between Sherlock and Mary. The narration is excellent, but there’s a problem with the sound quality; there are noises in the background and in places you can hear the text repeated faintly.

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1 person found this helpful

Trying to keep this spoiler free but of it’s time

There’s two threads running through this book, the detective side which I enjoyed - that side is very much like book 1. So if you liked that element in book 1 you’ll probably like this bit of the book.
Then there’s character development, which is where I found it lost some of the charm - there’s a scene towards the end where a character makes a statement about their past feelings. My response was yuck if that’s true that was really creepy, I know it’s set in a different time with different attitudes but as a modern reader I’m not certain that character has been developed enough to not elicit that response from many, particularly female, modern day reader. It’s the sort of behaviour many of us have experienced in real life and just find creepy and to stand a chance of getting away with it in a book I feel the character needs to be more likeable etc. However, I’m not certain even then it’d work. I see the book was first printed in 1995 and I suspect that getting on for 30 years later that now that scene would be flagged as needing more work, or just dropping that line all together.

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would of been better .........

This series of books by LR King would of been better had they not used and twisted characters from another author. Even Conan Doyle gets sucked in. i guess it's easier than making up your own characters possibly ?
This book is very 'wordy' ,annoyingly so , to the point I quite dislike Mary Russell (one of the main characters and it is she who tells the story). Russell is self opinionated and brow beats Holmes (yes Sherlock Holmes) constantly ! The two are even married despite a forty odd year age gap. There is a strange moment when Holmes and Russell first kiss and Holmes purrs " ive been wanting to do that since I first saw you ", now upon first sight Holmes though Russell was a boy and she was then only fifteen ?
One thing in it's favour is there is a plot and the two work their way through the book detecting it. I struggle to get past King's use of the Conan Doyle characters and her misuse of Dr Watson by allowing Russell and Holmes to belittle him and make him out as some bumbling hanger on is just plain wrong !
Well the beauty of Audlble is you can give it a go and return it afterwards if you want !

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Cannot believe I listened to the end

This really was the most tedious book. I am listening to the series, having read the books a while ago. This book seems to play out in real time, it is so long and rambling. The plot is almost non-existent. It must have hypnotised me, or maybe I just kept going for old time's sake, or maybe it was because I listened on drive to work and dared not touch my phone to press Stop- whatever the reason I wish I'd acted on my first impulse and got a refund. But I do know that the series perks up after this episode, so onwards I go!

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Not an enjoyable listen

I found this book to be quite tedious and somewhat boring. In parts it was like swimming in treacle.

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1 person found this helpful