Reading From A Study in Chocolate
Check out this video clip of me reading from A Study in Chocolate. This is a scene near the beginning of the book, where Felicity has accepted an invitation to a tea party at Wobble House, a (very fictional) historic home in Galveston. She has been invited by the party host, an art collector, to view his private gallery and discuss a project for which he would like to partner with her. But it turns out he wants to discuss something more sinister.
Here’s the video:
From a character development aspect, I love this book. It’s the fifth one in the series, so Felicity in particular has made huge strides towards competence, which flips a lot of the dynamics between her and other characters from the first book – when she was just learning how to do the whole detective thing. Also, she was emotionally frozen, and existing in the negative space of grief. There was a shift in Book 4 towards the positive, as she has finally worked out a lot of what has been weighing her down. This positive space, where she hasn’t yet resolved her love triangle and is deciding what she wants her future to look like, presents an opportunity for her to explore sides of herself she never really had time to think about before the series started. After all, she was working her way through college and then juggling a marriage and a thriving physical therapy practice.
In this positive space, she’s getting to explore her creative side, and in A Study in Chocolate she will get to discover she does indeed have a favorite artist. But she’s also challenging herself in other ways, leveling up as a sleuth, becoming a more equal detecting partner for whichever guy she winds up choosing. And she’s becoming a more empathetic person, and a better friend. Which is all going to be challenged in both this book and the next two in the series.
At the same time, she has to deal with the puzzle at hand, never letting her personal growth or relationship issues overshadow the fact that this is, after all, a mystery. And because she’s a more empathetic person, finding justice for the victim means even more to her.
If you want to follow Felicity and the cases she gets wound up in you can get them here: