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I Am Half-Sick of Shadows (Flavia de Luce, #4)

Alan Bradley

Start date: June 15, 2021

Finish date: July 8, 2021

Discussion: Buddy reads

Why we're reading this: Next in this popular series.
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Oct 30, 2011 Susan in NC rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

5/9/2021 reread: listened to the audiobook this time, the narrator is terrific, really captures Flavia’s youthful exuberance! The Christmas setting at a snowed-in Buckshaw was interesting after the last few books where our heroine rode her bike all over her rural English village, chasing adventure and clues. I’m also enjoying rereading these books to reacquaint myself with a fascinating young heroine, and her very complex relationships with her widowed father, two elder sisters, and the elusive 5/9/2021 reread: listened to the audiobook this time, the narrator is terrific, really captures Flavia’s youthful exuberance! The Christmas setting at a snowed-in Buckshaw was interesting after the last few books where our heroine rode her bike all over her rural English village, chasing adventure and clues. I’m also enjoying rereading these books to reacquaint myself with a fascinating young heroine, and her very complex relationships with her widowed father, two elder sisters, and the elusive Dogger, her father’s general factotum.

2011: One of my favorite characters in a long time, Flavia de Luce is back just in time for Christmas in Alan Bradley's latest entry in this wonderful series. This book went on my wish list as soon as I heard it was in the works, so I was delighted to have it offered through the Amazon Vine program. Bradley has done it again - Flavia is feisty, smart, funny and utterly ruthless in her quest to uncover the truth, whether it's the identity of a murderer or the reality of Father Christmas.

In this outing, a movie crew has descended on Buckshaw, the crumbling ancestral pile of the de Luces; Colonel de Luce, Flavia's father, has agreed to allow them to use the estate for a film in a last-ditch effort to stave off the Inland Revenue and keep the property in the family. Flavia is delighted with all the activity and drama surrounding legendary actress Phyllis Wyvern and crew, and she's also planning a grand experiment to catch Father Christmas in the act and prove once and for all to her snotty older sisters that the jolly old elf is real. Sounds like a full plate for Christmas for our heroine, but things really heat up when a blizzard traps half the village of Bishop's Lacy at Buckshaw - and Phyllis Wyvern turns up dead . . .

I love this series; like Flavia, it's funny and dry, yet sweet and touching at the same time. Bradley does a superb job with the old variation on the locked-room mystery - a snowed-in country estate with passions and tempers flaring and suspects abounding. The author has made a cast of wonderful recurring characters - we still don't know what's eating at Flavia's nasty older sisters Daffy and Feely, but we get a little glimpse of the humanity, hopes and dreams behind their witchiness and that's encouraging. Dogger, Colonel de Luce's batman in the war and a former POW who now serves as general factotum (and Flavia's dear friend and confidant), is really coming into his own and I look forward to learning more about him in future books, along with cranky Aunt Felicity, Daffy, Feely and the other residents of Bishop's Lacy.

Colonel de Luce, unfortunately, is almost absent in this book until the very end; he is obviously still very much in love with his dead wife, Helen, and her absence hangs like a pall over the whole family and estate. That leads me to what I feel is the most amazing accomplishment of the character and series Bradley has created: Flavia's situation is so sad, a young girl who never knew her mother, growing up running wild on an ancient, vast estate, puttering with her poisons in her chemistry lab unhindered - but rather than being maudlin or sentimental, she is a wonderfully cheeky, spunky girl having grand adventures. In all of the books in the series, however, Flavia has had confrontations with her sisters, or her father, which allow Bradley to give the reader a heart-stopping glimpse of the depth of her loneliness and longing - again, without unnecessary pathos. Flavia's wonderful independence and spirit reasserts itself, she reminds herself of what the Colonel has drummed into his daughters, "only foreigners cry", and she carries on to her next adventure . . . I look forward to each installment in this delightful, original series! ...more

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Aug 27, 2011 Julie Durnell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: england-uk, mystery

This series just gets better and better, can't get enough of this precocious young lady chemist/sleuth! Alan Bradley has a marvelous way with words and writes from Flavia's point of view flawlessly! Keep the stories coming... ...more

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Jul 22, 2024 Pat rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, veddy-veddy-english

Somehow missed this when I was reading the series. Always a joy to spend time with Flavia. Very much looking forward to the next book in the series after such a long gap.

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Jan 08, 2012 Louise Culmer rated it liked it · review of another edition

The little girl who is cleverer than all the grown-ups returns to solve another murder mystery, this time involving a film being made in her ancestral home, during the course of which the leading lady is killed.

This series is quite amusing, but I find the precocious heroine entirely unbelievable. Still, if you can suspend disbelief entirely, her adventures are entertaining enough. I do wonder though why they even bother to send for the police inspector, since he is clearly quite superfluous.

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Dec 09, 2012 Laura Anne rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, british-isles

Yaroo! It's Christmas-time and Father has let Buckshaw to Ilium Films. Much like when Marina Gregg came to stay at Gossington Hall in The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, the arrival of film star Phyllis Wyvern requires a line from Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott."

Mystery/plot-wise this the weakest in the series so far; however I still adore spending time with Flavia.

...more

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