The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie : Book Review

Thanks to Mary R., another participant in the postal reading challenge, I found another book to read!  After Mary commented on my book review post of To the Letter, I went to her blog and browsed around for awhile. I've never read a book blog and I found it really interesting. She participates in a lot of challenges which I thought was really cool. It makes reading seem almost like a scavenger hunt!  

Anyway, I came across a book that sounded really cool, and you'll see why it caught my eye. The title is : The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

I clicked on the link and then I saw the cover...

Yup that's a dead bird with a postage stamp stuck on it's beak! Pie and stamps? I knew I had to get this book.

I got it out from the university library and read it all the same day!
I really enjoyed it. It's a mystery novel and the sleuth is an 11 year old girl named Flavia de Luce. She loves chemistry and poisons and her father is a philatelist!

The action really begins when a dead bird shows up on the doorstep with a stamp stuck on its beak. 

The plot revolves around the story of a very rare stamp, an orange printing of the penny black.  I've searched online and from what I can tell, the story of the stamp is fictional.

My favorite part of the book: Flavia de Luce. She's a really great character, definitely a genius. Some of the reviews I've read say that it's unbelievable that a child of 11 could do these things, but geniuses do exist, and she's also very much a child. For instance she frequently starts singing little bits of song or shouts out things when she's alone, riding her bike or something. That reminds me very much of myself when I was a child.

My least favorite part of the book: This is not to say that this is a bad part, just that... well it's when you realize that she's really learned too much and that she's in grave danger, but she hasn't realized it yet! Oooh, that feeling in your heart when you kind of clench up! It was really quite scary at the end!

So far there are 6 books published in the Flavia de Luce series and I am definitely interested in reading the next one!