Enola Holmes: The Case of the Missing Marquess ~ Nancy Springer

If I’m being honest I hadn’t heard of Enola Holmes until Netflix released their first trailer. I was immediately interested and that interest only expanded when I watched the movie. When I saw Enola Holmes: The Case of the Missing Marquess on my daily ebook deals, I just knew I had to read it. 

I did go into this book comparing it to the movie and they are actually quite different, but in most cases, it would be a bad thing, but it doesn’t feel so irritating here. Despite having similar concepts, the book and the movie feel like different entities. Nancy Springer’s Enola Holmes is for a younger demographic and so, is kept easier to follow. Netflix’s adaptation is a family film and gives more time to the case. 

Enola is younger in the book than the film and so, a lot of things she does seem a lot more impulsive and her deductive reasoning a bit more impressive. I alos liked how she wasn’t good at everything and that she slipped up several times making her seem human. 

Sherlock wasn’t as much of the focus as he is in other Sherlock Holmes books. I also liked that there was mention of his depression and understanding that some things about him appeared differently because of that. Springer also plants seeds that his relationship with Enola is going to evolve throughout the series and I liked the beginnings of that.

I loved the ingenuity of using women’s fashion to smuggle things and the complete lack of knowledge Sherlock had about this, I thought it was very funny. Something that was a little disappointing, was the lack of effect the case and its solving had on the world around them. Everything in this book seems to be in isolation to the constantly changing time around them. That’s something the movie does really well, making Eudoria Holmes a suffragette and the Marquess of Basilwether more than just a boy fed up of the clothes he is forced into.

Overall, I enjoyed this story and give it four stars. Unfortunately, I kept comparing to the movie but that will hopefully lessen when I read the next books in the series.

C🌙