elodiethefangirl's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.25
malinda_nevitt's review against another edition
5.0
I loved it! Irene Adler is a female version of Sherlock Holmes and she's awesome!
alissabar's review against another edition
4.0
I am a huge Sherlock Holmes fan and have always loved that a woman got the best of him in one of his stories. It was fun to find this book which takes the mysterious Irene Adler and builds a wonderfully layered character out of her. The whole series is a treat.
2019 Popsugar Reading Challenge: #2 A book that makes you nostalgic (brings back memories of stealing moments to read in and around raising toddlers, as that was when I discovered and read this one the first time.)
2019 Popsugar Reading Challenge: #2 A book that makes you nostalgic (brings back memories of stealing moments to read in and around raising toddlers, as that was when I discovered and read this one the first time.)
slferg's review
4.0
Interesting book. It is based on the incident in "A Scandal in Bohemia". And shows Irene Adler as a struggling singer and actress; her meeting with her chronicler and friend Penelope, and her acceptance of work as an 'inquiry agent' and the thrill of using her wits. Then she and Sherlock Holmes cross paths several times when they are both working on cases. This shows an attitude and brilliance of Irene Adler that is only hinted at in the Sherlock Holmes story. I believe I will read the rest in these series. It even covers the background of the story with the King and her meeting and falling in love with Godfrey Norton.
Quite an entertaining read.
Quite an entertaining read.
katyjo13's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
phire's review against another edition
3.0
This parallels a Scandal in Bohemia, starting a few years earlier with the association of the narrator Nell with Irene Adler, going on to describe Adler's adventures from the perspective of the protagonist rather than the object of someone else's story. The book starts off a bit slow and some of the themes were kind of clumsily handled* in the first 25-30% of the book, but it builds into a pretty satisfying ending that both ties up the canonical adventure and an additional original mystery rather nicely. Not a masterpiece, but diverting enough and enough to make me want to look up the next book in the series.
Main gripe, a gypsy [sic] fortune-teller who foretells the identity of her eventual beloved, a man whose identity that the reader knows both from A Scandal in Bohemia and from his earlier presence in the book, only to have both Irene and Nell go "but who could it be?!?!?!" Come on.
*I'm told that this is a later rewrite of the book in which the feminist themes that were present-but-subtle in the first version were dropped on the reader's head like an anvil. Anyone who knows me knows that I am certainly neeeeeeever going to ding a book for being too feminist, but I dislike it when morality is delivered at the expense of the flow and rhythm of a story, and would've preferred a subtler hand.
Main gripe, a gypsy [sic] fortune-teller who foretells the identity of her eventual beloved, a man whose identity that the reader knows both from A Scandal in Bohemia and from his earlier presence in the book, only to have both Irene and Nell go "but who could it be?!?!?!" Come on.
*I'm told that this is a later rewrite of the book in which the feminist themes that were present-but-subtle in the first version were dropped on the reader's head like an anvil. Anyone who knows me knows that I am certainly neeeeeeever going to ding a book for being too feminist, but I dislike it when morality is delivered at the expense of the flow and rhythm of a story, and would've preferred a subtler hand.
bev_reads_mysteries's review against another edition
4.0
The first of the Irene Adler novels by Douglas. And the best. I really enjoyed hearing the story from her side.
cmbohn's review against another edition
1.0
Let me start by admitting that I enjoy Sherlock Holmes, but I am not a Holmesian. I think the actual canon is pretty good, occasionally great, and that Doyle showed rather too plainly his growing dissatisfaction with the series. What Doyle DID do right was create an unforgettable character, an icon, one that writers today would KILL for. Holmes is a character that has survived numerous movie and TV shows, including a cartoon, and inspired literally hundreds of writers to try their hand at a new spin on the old stories. (One of my favorites from last year was [b:Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space|76229|Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space|Isaac Asimov|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1228451047s/76229.jpg|73749] for the amazing creativity it contained.)
I loved the IDEA for this book. Take The Woman, Irene Adler from "A Scandal in Bohemia," the one female Holmes seemed to consider a worthy adversary, and tell her story. The trouble is that the story the writer tells is just not up to the idea. Irene is unconventional, brave, intelligent, and resourceful. So why is she wasted in this romantic meandering that only occasionally involves any real mystery and treats Holmes as a bit player? The idea seemed to be to present Irene as a female counterpart to Holmes. To that end, she has a mysterious past, like his, that same ability to 'deduce' from the clues at hand, an urge to solve mysteries, and a stuffy, conventional sidekick. (I may be doing Watson a disservice here. Penelope Huxleigh is amazingly insipid and uninteresting. At least Watson had something of a life.)
I kept at it, waiting for the fatal meeting between the two, but wound up embroiled in Bohemia, where Irene is protecting her virtue by declining an offer to be the new king's mistress. Come on. Not buying it. So I gave up and never got to see what happened when Adler and Holmes finally met.
What really bugs me is that this series means that someone else can't use the same great idea - the story of Irene Adler - and turn it into something really WORTH reading. Don't bother.
I loved the IDEA for this book. Take The Woman, Irene Adler from "A Scandal in Bohemia," the one female Holmes seemed to consider a worthy adversary, and tell her story. The trouble is that the story the writer tells is just not up to the idea. Irene is unconventional, brave, intelligent, and resourceful. So why is she wasted in this romantic meandering that only occasionally involves any real mystery and treats Holmes as a bit player? The idea seemed to be to present Irene as a female counterpart to Holmes. To that end, she has a mysterious past, like his, that same ability to 'deduce' from the clues at hand, an urge to solve mysteries, and a stuffy, conventional sidekick. (I may be doing Watson a disservice here. Penelope Huxleigh is amazingly insipid and uninteresting. At least Watson had something of a life.)
I kept at it, waiting for the fatal meeting between the two, but wound up embroiled in Bohemia, where Irene is protecting her virtue by declining an offer to be the new king's mistress. Come on. Not buying it. So I gave up and never got to see what happened when Adler and Holmes finally met.
What really bugs me is that this series means that someone else can't use the same great idea - the story of Irene Adler - and turn it into something really WORTH reading. Don't bother.
purplcrosswords's review against another edition
3.0
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.
in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’
This is probably a book I wouldn’t have picked up on my own. I do love Mr. Holmes just as much as the next person, and a re-telling of ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ based on Irene Adler’s – the woman – side of the story is a quite compelling outline. That being said, I often postpone my readings of the original Sherlock adventures and, since most my primary school readings were mystery books, I have for many years naturalized a sort of notion that crime books are behind me, or stating it more accurately, I was past them.
Well, even though it’s naturalized, I know it’s not quite fair, and I do enjoy reading mystery books whenever I actually do it – thing is, I seldom do it. I read this for a seminar on Sherlockiana (feminist revisions of the sherlockian myth) I had this week. We were also asked to watch BBC’s Sherlock’s episode ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’. Contradicting all my friends’ wishes and delaying watching the series up to this point, I quite enjoyed the first season, but was astonished to find out that watching the episode referring to Irene Adler was as much fun as having a hedgehog nesting and dancing in my stomach.
Because you see, if you have any idea at all how the story goes in the original, you can do nothing but resist an urge to hunt down Steven Moffat and swear under your breath.
I mean, sir, in case you missed it on your readings, Irene Adler beats Sherlock. Yes, Mr. Moffat, A WOMAN. Now get over it and quit writing boring Doctor Who companions while you’re at it. Argh.
Moving on to the book: I love that it gives Irene Adler a story. A voice. A motive. It gives her, besides her woman-ness and wits, her humanity. If you’ve watched/are considering watching BBC’s Sherlock, DO give this a try. We need more realistic approaches to smart girls, less naked dominatrixes.
That being said, do not believe for a minute that Irene Adler is the woman. She is extraordinary, that’s true, but it needs to be stated that she is simply a woman among many who share her talent, wit and virtues.
foxwrapped's review against another edition
3.0
This amused me mostly because the two female characters (Irene Adler and her Watson, Nell) really reminded me of two of my good friends. One's a singer and the other a serious-minded literature student, haha. So that's close enough to a parson's prudish daughter, right? Very entertaining fleshing out of "Scandal in Bohemia," quite fluffy but that's exactly what it wants to be, what am I to complain that is exactly what it puts itself out to be? The characters felt like truly Victorian ladies instead of just... modern women in steampunk clothing, which isn't bad but sometimes I don't wanna read that much of an AU, ykwim. Lots of descriptions of Victorian clothes, drooooooool.