- 28 - The Weed That Strings The Hangman's Bag

-Flavia de Luce #2

Author:

Alan Bradley

Published:

2010

Genre:

young adult, crime

400 pages [German Edition]

364 pages [English Edition]

I already reviewed the first book of this series which is called ‘The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie’.

If you want to read its review, click HERE. You definitively don’t have to read the books in the right order though. You can understand this book without having read the first one. So you can also just continue reading this review. :D

Content

England in the 1950s

In the small village Bishop’s Lacey the Puppeteer Rupert Porson is muderered while giving one of his famous shows for the small amount of villagers living here.

11 year-old Flavia de Luce uses her passion for chemistry, death, poisons and crime-solving for finding the murderer. Meanwhile the police of course are helplessly lost.

Review

I reread my review of the first ‘Flavia de Luce’ book 'The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie'. I am going to refer to the first review in this post a bit, but I also am going to talk about new things.

The first thing I wrote about ‘The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie’ was how much I loved this book’s language.

I would say the exact same thing about this book as well. The language is very good and challenging;
not how you would expect it to be from a book for children.

Next, I mentioned Flavia’s love and passion for chemistry. This also stays the same in this book. There are many experiments and chemical facts that Flavia explains to the reader.

I actually don’t have chemistry at school anymore and that’s why I didn’t understand most of the things she is talking about; but I still found it very interesting.

After this I talked veeeery much about the book’s first-person narrator Flavia.

I am not going to write this much about her this time, but basically nothing of my opinion towards her changed.

I am not sure whether I should like her or not. She is very clever, but I feel like she is equally as annoying as clever. :o

The next things I wrote in the first review actually shocked me a bit.

I said that I liked the way Flavia and her sisters argued with each other… it was the exact opposite whith this book. The girls are so mean to each other. They actually told Flavia that they would prefer her being dead. It destroyed me to read that.

Especially because the rest of Flavia’s family is equally as or even more horrible than her sisters. Flavia might seem like a tough girl, who doesn’t care about all this, BUT I actually think that that’s not true and that’s why I felt miserable every time a family member interacts with her.

The only one I really, really, really like is the family’s butler Dodger. He is incredibly lovely! <3

Now to the things I want to say about this book only:

The plot evolves veeery slowly.

The murder itself only happens when half of the book already is over. There are many, detailed descriptions and some scenes aren’t necessary for the actual plot.

I personally don't mind this at all though.

The last thing I want to say about this book might be a bit weird but I still HAVE to mention it. xD

g e r m a n   c o v e r

I am from Germany. I live in Germany. I speak German. All my relatives are German. You could say that I am pretty German. xDDDD

… BUT I love English so incredibly much! I love listening to it, reading English texts, speaking it myself, writing texts myself,… *this also is the reason for me writing my blog in English*

Not only the language, also English culture, people, food *I don’t know, literally everything* is
interesting to me!

I don’t want to pretend that I am some kind of English-pro [because I obviously am not] I just love it incredibly much!

Soooo, now to the reason why my love for English actually has something to do with this book:

There is former German soldier named Dieter Schranz who has the same passion as I have.

During the second world war he flew over England with his German fighter jet without permission in order to be able to see the country he loves this much at least once in his live. Unfortunately his plane was shot and therefore he is a prisoner of war eversince.

I can like 100% relate to his behaviour. *Even though, I must admit that I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to fly to England… I am a coward… I am a big coward… but maybe my love for English would have been bigger than my fear… we will never know…*

My Recommendation

If you read and liked the first book, I would recommend you to read this book as well. If you didn’t like the first book, don’t read this book because they are pretty similar to each other.

If you haven’t read a single book of this series, I would recommend you to read the first one; simply because I find it a bit better than this one.

I personally really liked this book and I have already bought the next one; so look forward to the review of A Red Herring Without Mustard on this blog. :D