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Enola Holmes #1-6
The Enola Holmes Mysteries
Available together in one digital collection--the complete Enola Holmes series by Edgar Award nominated author Nancy Springer! Read the books that inspired the Netflix original movie starring Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill, and Helena Bonham Carter!
Meet Enola Holmes, teenage girl turned detective and the younger sister to Sherlock Holmes, as she solves the mystery in each of these action-packed adventures! This collection includes: The Case of the Missing Marquess, The Case of the Left-Handed Lady, The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets, The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan, The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline, and The Case of the Gypsy Good-bye.
Meet Enola Holmes, teenage girl turned detective and the younger sister to Sherlock Holmes, as she solves the mystery in each of these action-packed adventures! This collection includes: The Case of the Missing Marquess, The Case of the Left-Handed Lady, The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets, The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan, The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline, and The Case of the Gypsy Good-bye.
719 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 8, 2020
263 people are currently reading
1240 people want to read
About the author
Nancy Springer
191 books2,344 followersBIO -- NANCY SPRINGER
Nancy Springer has passed the fifty-book milestone, having written that many novels for adults, young adults and children, in genres including mythic fantasy, contemporary fiction, magical realism, horror, and mystery -- although she did not realize she wrote mystery until she won the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America two years in succession. DARK LIE, recently released from NAL, is her first venture into mass-market psychological suspense.
Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Nancy Springer moved with her family to Gettysburg, of Civil War fame, when she was thirteen. She spent the next forty-six years in Pennsylvania, raising two children (Jonathan, now 38, and Nora, 34), writing, horseback riding, fishing, and birdwatching. In 2007 she surprised her friends and herself by moving with her second husband to an isolated area of the Florida panhandle, where the birdwatching is spectacular and where, when fishing, she occasionally catches an alligator.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
October 29, 2020
It’s hard to write a review for an entire series, which is what this collection is--six books in one volume. I am particular about this type of Sherlock Holmes spinoff (Laurie R. King👎🏾, Carole Nelson Douglas👍🏾).This one, focusing on his younger sister Enola, also does not put the great detective center stage. When he does make an appearance, his behavior makes sense. But he is not the focus of the story. Enola is more than capable of holding the spotlight, and she is a fascinating and entertaining character on her own. (Side note: whoever wrote that ridiculously diminishing and shallow screenplay should be tried and convicted for character assassination.) Each of these books deserves their own five star review, but I will just say that if I have to choose I think my favorite was The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets, with The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline being a close second. Highly recommended.
September 28, 2020
The writing was excellent. The stories were laid out and told in a way that kept the reader engaged all the way through. Enola was presented as a strong young woman, genius in her thinking, and creative as a sleuth.
Each adventure pulled the reader in and guessing how she would react or resolve a situation.
Each characters development was thorough and gave the reader a sense of the person physically through their mental thought processes.
The books were entertaining, enjoyable, and well-written.
Each adventure pulled the reader in and guessing how she would react or resolve a situation.
Each characters development was thorough and gave the reader a sense of the person physically through their mental thought processes.
The books were entertaining, enjoyable, and well-written.
Read
August 5, 2023This review was originally published to homeschoolingteen
Imagine that you were Sherlock Holmes’ little sister. That one sentence alone is enough to send any young girl’s imagination into overdrive for a month. Girls love dreaming of being an important character in a story, going on adventures and being the shining star. That’s why book series like Enola Holmes are perfectly catered to their audience. Not only does Sherlock’s little sister outwit him, but the whole story revolves around her: her brothers want to catch her; her mother has prepared her, and everyone else needs her detecting skills.
After watching the first Enola Holmes movie and enjoying it a fair bit, I decided to try reading the books. After all, I am very fond of daydreaming. I was hoping for inspiration. What I got was aggravation. But first, a quick overview: the series is about Sherlock’s younger sister, Enola. On her fourteenth birthday, her mother disappears. Enola’s older brothers want to place her in a boarding school, but Enola wants to be free. So she runs off to London and becomes a detective for missing people, all the while trying to find her mother.
One of the main reasons this series made such a bad impression on me was the main character: Enola is a brat. The books are written in the first person, so we get to see a lot of her thoughts. They’re not very nice. She has a habit of assuming everyone is stupid. In book 5, she goes on a whole tirade on how handicapped people are lazy and will use their disability to get other people to to things for them. This kind of behaviour is not limited to evil characters, either. Even people who don’t do anything but help Enola are still described as ‘toadlike hag‘ and ‘stunted slum-bred brat‘. In the first book, we meet Mrs. Culhane. She saves Enola’s life while endangering her own, but is unfortunate enough to be ugly. Yes, she’s the ‘vulgar crone‘. At the end of the series, Enola finds out that the villain is an ugly old woman. Who does she investigate? Mrs. Culhane, who, might I remind you, has done nothing but be good to Enola. Enola’s remarks that she knows ‘Mrs. Culhane’s ruthlessness and daring‘ and ‘the sort of friends‘ she has are therefore complete rot and nonsense. It’s just an arrogant tween looking down her nose and pretty much everyone around her.
You may have noticed that the above plot completely hinges on the evidence of someone being ugly. Not a great story. Sadly, all of the books are this way. Enola has the extraordinary luck of bumping into evidence – sometimes literally. The only mystery in these books is how she manages to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time whenever there are clues to be had. Some examples are her catching information outside an open window, hearing people gossip and figuring out someone is evil because her subconscious tells her so. Most of the time, the mysteries are either very easy or so impossible that they don’t make sense. In one book, the presence of asparagus in a hothouse is the clue that tells Enola where to find the missing Dr. Watson.
If the mysteries are this easy, how come Sherlock never figures them out? That, my friends, is because this is not the Sherlock we know and love. In fact, most of the characters in the Enola Holmes books have been strongly adapted to fit the author’s vision.
Take Sherlock and Mycroft, for example. They often fail to see simple solutions. According to Enola, they do this because they are sexist men. She says that 'neither Sherlock nor Mycroft could imaginatively enter the mind of any woman‘. A lot of times, they dismiss clues because they assume they’re just a woman thing. A bouquet with strange flowers? That’s for girls. A woman was wearing strange clothing when she disappeared? Well, you know how women are. It almost feels as if the author has not read the same Sherlock Holmes books as I have. Yes, Holmes was a sexist in those books, but he did not let that get in the way of figuring out a mystery. He noticed everybody and did not dismiss his clients’ comments. He was also not as sexist as he is in these books. In the Enola Holmes books, Sherlock and Mycroft cannot stand being around a woman who is ‘strong-minded […] in possession of herself, her own business and her own affairs.’ Most of this could be disproven by reminding the author of the story of Irene Adler, where Sherlock not only imaginatively enters the mind of a woman, but also respects her all the more when she proves to be in possession of her own business.
While canon Sherlock may have been a confirmed sexist, Watson was definitely not. When Sherlock commented that he thought women to be untrustworthy, Watson calls this an ‘atrocious sentiment‘. However, in the Enola Holmes books he too looks down upon women, having a ‘natural distrust of any female’ and referring to the feminist movement as ‘the cause of women’s so-called rights’.
The worst example is one that concerns a real historical character: Florence Nightingale. She was the handicapped person I mentioned earlier. After subjecting us to various rants before we even meet the woman, Enola figures out why she never left her bed: she wanted to get out of social obligations so she could do more work. Although the author does admit in her note at the end of the book that she did, in fact, interpret Nightingale’s conduct in her own way, I still found it inappropriate. This was a real woman, and not only does the book treat handicapped people in general as lazy, but it also chooses to portray Nightingale as someone who used her handicap as a way to get out of talking to people.
That’s going to be it for this first part. Up till now, Enola has pretended she’s superior to everybody else, has solved mysteries by the grace of sheer luck and has butchered my man John Watson’s character. And yes, there will be more. Lots more. But for now, I leave you with these beautiful quotes:
PART 2
When we last left off, the author had used a real historical person as a prop to further her own feminist narrative. We’ll talk more about the feminist message later, but first I’d like to share this quote about Florence Nightingale: “But why, if she was born into a wealthy family, the sort to be presented at court, had she gone instead to a bloody cesspool of a hospital in the Crimea?” Now, anybody who does a quick search will find Nightingale was a devout Christian. Why, then, do the books mention none of this? That is because these books have an ideological message to share with their young readers.
Enola Holmes considers herself a free-thinker and a rationalist. No hocus-pocus allowed in her worldview. Except, of course, when the second book hinges completely on hypnotism, or when a Gypsy lady reads her palm in the sixth book. Either way, Enola is an atheist and her big heroes are Malthus and Darwin. Of course, when she talks about cross-pollinating orchids, she fails to mention the devout Catholic monk who first started that field of study: Gregor Mendel. Interestingly, though, there is actually a moment in the second book when a character delves a bit more deeply into the moral problems with evolution, musing that natural selection would dictate that it is moral and good to let the weak die. This is only mentioned once, however.
Earlier, I spoke of Gypsies. This is because Enola’s mother has run away to live with them. They worship her like a deity, by the way. Completely normal thing to expect from an entire people group but okay. Anyway, Enola’s mother is not a role model, although the books try to portray her this way. Besides abandoning her 14-year-old daughter, we learn that she never really showed Enola any love. In the last book, Enola receives a letter from her mother explaining that it might be better for Enola to remain childless because of her personality. Her mother also says that her being a mother got in the way of her being a person so she had to leave. This is only a very limited selection of random nonsense from Enola’s mum. She also seems to believe she owes nothing to her sons (because she does not like them) and that her parenting was good because it made Enola who she was.
Enola’s mother also has very strong feminist ideals, the books tell us. These she has passed on to her daughter. It mostly shows itself in her abhorrence of corsets and marriage. According to the books, “The sufferings of an upper-class girl in a typical boarding school are only slightly less severe than those of an imprisoned criminal upon a treadmill. I speak of painful physical rigours that result invariably in deformity and sometimes in death.” How dreadful. One person did comment on my Goodreads review of this book that this might be because Enola Holmes and her mother are part of the New Women movement, which saw marriage as a form of prostitution (sleeping with a man in exchange for financial security) and viewed corsets and long skirts as a source of oppression. While this may be the case, it is never explained in the books that Enola’s views may be subjective. Her horror stories are treated as fact. Either way, in these books, Enola does not have to learn anything. If she hurts her brothers’ feelings, it is because she would literally die if they made her conform to societal norms. Instead, it is the men who need to learn to leave Enola alone.
Speaking of which, Enola’s journey seems to end when her brothers learn to let her – a 15-year-old girl – do things by herself. Now, this would make sense if the world of the book was a softer version of actual Victorian age London. However, it is not. Each book has various descriptions of prostitutes and old women with ringworms in their hair. We are treated to an extensive description of how rats would eat a baby’ face. A lady has a stillbirth, after which a crazy person steals the baby from her arms and yeets it into the sea. This is not a sweet world where young girls would easily survive. But Enola’s smart, you see. She can read and fully understand a page at a glance. She can carry people around without a problem for considerable amounts of time. And, as mentioned in part 1, she is so much more intelligent than everybody else. This part was so annoying to me because we really are supposed to side with Enola when her brothers are literally afraid that she might be kidnapped and turned into a prostitute.
Other than that, the books have a few other irritating qualities:
– A very surprising use of the phrase “proud b*tch” in book 2
– Showing off vocabulary at the expense of reading pleasure. Nobody understands the word “dolichocephalic.” Just say “long and thin.”
– Random philosophical musings that take 2 paragraphs and are then never referred to again.
– Clothing descriptions like this: “a heavenly confection of cerulean blue dotted swiss gathered into scallops over a skirt of midnight blue, with a wide white satin belt, a blue bodice trimmed in white, a dainty blue hat topped with daisies and ribbons, and a blue-and-white parasol ruffled with dotted swiss.” Please stop.
– Sherlock and Mycroft change their minds on women very quickly, which begs the question: Why did their mother not raise them differently? How did they end up so sexist when both their father and mother were very forward-thinking?
Anyway, that’s it. Yes, I enjoyed some parts of these books. However, the sheer amount of nonsense and contrivances was too much for me. I would never let my young, impressionable daughter read these books. It would only teach her that everyone around her is wrong whereas she is perfect. That is not the type of message I am looking for in a fun children’s book.
“I have quite changed my mind, Enola, about your future. I pity any man who ever marries you. Indeed, I think perhaps you ought not to marry.” – Sherlock Holmes, speaking facts
“It amused me, as I resumed my perch atop my cab, to glimpse Mrs. Culhane down on her hands and knees, hunting for the money as I drove away. Her greed was greater than her moral outrage, apparently.”
Imagine that you were Sherlock Holmes’ little sister. That one sentence alone is enough to send any young girl’s imagination into overdrive for a month. Girls love dreaming of being an important character in a story, going on adventures and being the shining star. That’s why book series like Enola Holmes are perfectly catered to their audience. Not only does Sherlock’s little sister outwit him, but the whole story revolves around her: her brothers want to catch her; her mother has prepared her, and everyone else needs her detecting skills.
After watching the first Enola Holmes movie and enjoying it a fair bit, I decided to try reading the books. After all, I am very fond of daydreaming. I was hoping for inspiration. What I got was aggravation. But first, a quick overview: the series is about Sherlock’s younger sister, Enola. On her fourteenth birthday, her mother disappears. Enola’s older brothers want to place her in a boarding school, but Enola wants to be free. So she runs off to London and becomes a detective for missing people, all the while trying to find her mother.
One of the main reasons this series made such a bad impression on me was the main character: Enola is a brat. The books are written in the first person, so we get to see a lot of her thoughts. They’re not very nice. She has a habit of assuming everyone is stupid. In book 5, she goes on a whole tirade on how handicapped people are lazy and will use their disability to get other people to to things for them. This kind of behaviour is not limited to evil characters, either. Even people who don’t do anything but help Enola are still described as ‘toadlike hag‘ and ‘stunted slum-bred brat‘. In the first book, we meet Mrs. Culhane. She saves Enola’s life while endangering her own, but is unfortunate enough to be ugly. Yes, she’s the ‘vulgar crone‘. At the end of the series, Enola finds out that the villain is an ugly old woman. Who does she investigate? Mrs. Culhane, who, might I remind you, has done nothing but be good to Enola. Enola’s remarks that she knows ‘Mrs. Culhane’s ruthlessness and daring‘ and ‘the sort of friends‘ she has are therefore complete rot and nonsense. It’s just an arrogant tween looking down her nose and pretty much everyone around her.
You may have noticed that the above plot completely hinges on the evidence of someone being ugly. Not a great story. Sadly, all of the books are this way. Enola has the extraordinary luck of bumping into evidence – sometimes literally. The only mystery in these books is how she manages to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time whenever there are clues to be had. Some examples are her catching information outside an open window, hearing people gossip and figuring out someone is evil because her subconscious tells her so. Most of the time, the mysteries are either very easy or so impossible that they don’t make sense. In one book, the presence of asparagus in a hothouse is the clue that tells Enola where to find the missing Dr. Watson.
If the mysteries are this easy, how come Sherlock never figures them out? That, my friends, is because this is not the Sherlock we know and love. In fact, most of the characters in the Enola Holmes books have been strongly adapted to fit the author’s vision.
Take Sherlock and Mycroft, for example. They often fail to see simple solutions. According to Enola, they do this because they are sexist men. She says that 'neither Sherlock nor Mycroft could imaginatively enter the mind of any woman‘. A lot of times, they dismiss clues because they assume they’re just a woman thing. A bouquet with strange flowers? That’s for girls. A woman was wearing strange clothing when she disappeared? Well, you know how women are. It almost feels as if the author has not read the same Sherlock Holmes books as I have. Yes, Holmes was a sexist in those books, but he did not let that get in the way of figuring out a mystery. He noticed everybody and did not dismiss his clients’ comments. He was also not as sexist as he is in these books. In the Enola Holmes books, Sherlock and Mycroft cannot stand being around a woman who is ‘strong-minded […] in possession of herself, her own business and her own affairs.’ Most of this could be disproven by reminding the author of the story of Irene Adler, where Sherlock not only imaginatively enters the mind of a woman, but also respects her all the more when she proves to be in possession of her own business.
While canon Sherlock may have been a confirmed sexist, Watson was definitely not. When Sherlock commented that he thought women to be untrustworthy, Watson calls this an ‘atrocious sentiment‘. However, in the Enola Holmes books he too looks down upon women, having a ‘natural distrust of any female’ and referring to the feminist movement as ‘the cause of women’s so-called rights’.
The worst example is one that concerns a real historical character: Florence Nightingale. She was the handicapped person I mentioned earlier. After subjecting us to various rants before we even meet the woman, Enola figures out why she never left her bed: she wanted to get out of social obligations so she could do more work. Although the author does admit in her note at the end of the book that she did, in fact, interpret Nightingale’s conduct in her own way, I still found it inappropriate. This was a real woman, and not only does the book treat handicapped people in general as lazy, but it also chooses to portray Nightingale as someone who used her handicap as a way to get out of talking to people.
That’s going to be it for this first part. Up till now, Enola has pretended she’s superior to everybody else, has solved mysteries by the grace of sheer luck and has butchered my man John Watson’s character. And yes, there will be more. Lots more. But for now, I leave you with these beautiful quotes:
“I knew invalids as peevish, malingering, demanding people who simply chose not to be valid, so to speak. Scarcely a household in upper-class England had not at one time or another suffered under the paradoxical power of the invalid. Many a lady thwarted had taken to her bed for the sake of ordering folk about.”
“The Professional Women’s Club democratically welcomed any female who could pay the membership fee—which was quite substantial enough to keep out the undesirable classes.”
“Gypsy women in the city were beggars, wheedling for pennies.”
PART 2
When we last left off, the author had used a real historical person as a prop to further her own feminist narrative. We’ll talk more about the feminist message later, but first I’d like to share this quote about Florence Nightingale: “But why, if she was born into a wealthy family, the sort to be presented at court, had she gone instead to a bloody cesspool of a hospital in the Crimea?” Now, anybody who does a quick search will find Nightingale was a devout Christian. Why, then, do the books mention none of this? That is because these books have an ideological message to share with their young readers.
Enola Holmes considers herself a free-thinker and a rationalist. No hocus-pocus allowed in her worldview. Except, of course, when the second book hinges completely on hypnotism, or when a Gypsy lady reads her palm in the sixth book. Either way, Enola is an atheist and her big heroes are Malthus and Darwin. Of course, when she talks about cross-pollinating orchids, she fails to mention the devout Catholic monk who first started that field of study: Gregor Mendel. Interestingly, though, there is actually a moment in the second book when a character delves a bit more deeply into the moral problems with evolution, musing that natural selection would dictate that it is moral and good to let the weak die. This is only mentioned once, however.
Earlier, I spoke of Gypsies. This is because Enola’s mother has run away to live with them. They worship her like a deity, by the way. Completely normal thing to expect from an entire people group but okay. Anyway, Enola’s mother is not a role model, although the books try to portray her this way. Besides abandoning her 14-year-old daughter, we learn that she never really showed Enola any love. In the last book, Enola receives a letter from her mother explaining that it might be better for Enola to remain childless because of her personality. Her mother also says that her being a mother got in the way of her being a person so she had to leave. This is only a very limited selection of random nonsense from Enola’s mum. She also seems to believe she owes nothing to her sons (because she does not like them) and that her parenting was good because it made Enola who she was.
Enola’s mother also has very strong feminist ideals, the books tell us. These she has passed on to her daughter. It mostly shows itself in her abhorrence of corsets and marriage. According to the books, “The sufferings of an upper-class girl in a typical boarding school are only slightly less severe than those of an imprisoned criminal upon a treadmill. I speak of painful physical rigours that result invariably in deformity and sometimes in death.” How dreadful. One person did comment on my Goodreads review of this book that this might be because Enola Holmes and her mother are part of the New Women movement, which saw marriage as a form of prostitution (sleeping with a man in exchange for financial security) and viewed corsets and long skirts as a source of oppression. While this may be the case, it is never explained in the books that Enola’s views may be subjective. Her horror stories are treated as fact. Either way, in these books, Enola does not have to learn anything. If she hurts her brothers’ feelings, it is because she would literally die if they made her conform to societal norms. Instead, it is the men who need to learn to leave Enola alone.
Speaking of which, Enola’s journey seems to end when her brothers learn to let her – a 15-year-old girl – do things by herself. Now, this would make sense if the world of the book was a softer version of actual Victorian age London. However, it is not. Each book has various descriptions of prostitutes and old women with ringworms in their hair. We are treated to an extensive description of how rats would eat a baby’ face. A lady has a stillbirth, after which a crazy person steals the baby from her arms and yeets it into the sea. This is not a sweet world where young girls would easily survive. But Enola’s smart, you see. She can read and fully understand a page at a glance. She can carry people around without a problem for considerable amounts of time. And, as mentioned in part 1, she is so much more intelligent than everybody else. This part was so annoying to me because we really are supposed to side with Enola when her brothers are literally afraid that she might be kidnapped and turned into a prostitute.
Other than that, the books have a few other irritating qualities:
– A very surprising use of the phrase “proud b*tch” in book 2
– Showing off vocabulary at the expense of reading pleasure. Nobody understands the word “dolichocephalic.” Just say “long and thin.”
– Random philosophical musings that take 2 paragraphs and are then never referred to again.
– Clothing descriptions like this: “a heavenly confection of cerulean blue dotted swiss gathered into scallops over a skirt of midnight blue, with a wide white satin belt, a blue bodice trimmed in white, a dainty blue hat topped with daisies and ribbons, and a blue-and-white parasol ruffled with dotted swiss.” Please stop.
– Sherlock and Mycroft change their minds on women very quickly, which begs the question: Why did their mother not raise them differently? How did they end up so sexist when both their father and mother were very forward-thinking?
Anyway, that’s it. Yes, I enjoyed some parts of these books. However, the sheer amount of nonsense and contrivances was too much for me. I would never let my young, impressionable daughter read these books. It would only teach her that everyone around her is wrong whereas she is perfect. That is not the type of message I am looking for in a fun children’s book.
“I have quite changed my mind, Enola, about your future. I pity any man who ever marries you. Indeed, I think perhaps you ought not to marry.” – Sherlock Holmes, speaking facts
“It amused me, as I resumed my perch atop my cab, to glimpse Mrs. Culhane down on her hands and knees, hunting for the money as I drove away. Her greed was greater than her moral outrage, apparently.”
June 20, 2023
I first became aware of Enola Homes while watching Netflix. Then I found out that it was a book series, so I decided I have to read the first book. Enola Holmes The Case of the Missing Marquess did not disappoint. Enola (Alone backwards) was the younger sister of detective Sherlock Holmes and an older brother Myrcroft. Set in England in the 19th century, Enola finds herself alone on her 14th birthday, her Mum has gone missing. She decides to call her brothers in London whom she has not seen since she was very little. They come to find the family estate in shambles and wonder what their Mum had been doing with the money they sent her. Back in the day widows were not allowed to own property and the eldest son would manage the family funds. They are shocked that Enola has not had the proper upbringing of a lady. Mycroft tells Enola that the first thing will be enrolling her in boarding school. She on the other hand has a plan of her own, to find her Mum herself by traveling to London. Enola is a bright, resourceful, brave protagonist that you can’t help but root for throughout her adventures. This mystery keeps you on the edge of your seat and you really can’t put it down.
July 25, 2025
The perfect palate cleansers
The Enola Holmes Mysteries reproduces the six short Enola Holmes mystery novels published by Nancy Springer between 2006 and 2010. They recount one year in the life of Enola Holmes, younger sister of famous detective Sherlock Holmes, from her fourteenth to her fifteenth birthday. Most of the story takes place in London, and for most of the year Enola is in hiding, so as not to be put in a finishing school by her brothers Sherlock and Mycroft. Enola sets herself up in business as a "Scientific Perditorian" -- one who finds lost persons and things. The six mysteries (which I have reviewed separately) mostly concern missing persons.
And they are tremendous fun! On finishing the last, I had that all-too-rare feeling of sorrow at finishing a good book and knowing that I would never again be able to read it for the first time. I have been using them as palate cleansers between heavier works. Robert Galbraith's (AKA J.K. Rowling's) The Running Grave and Robert Jackson Bennett's Divine Cities Trilogy are very good books, but they are long and serious works that leave a reader (or me, at least) tired -- in need of refreshment. An Enola Holmes mystery is the perfect dessert.
If you are expecting novels in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, don't. Conan Doyle, a Victorian writing for his fellow Victorians, doesn't remark on things that are unremarkable to him. To Springer, a 21st-century American writer writing for the 21st century, there is much in Victorian London worthy of remark. To me the Enola Holmes novels feel Dickensian, although with more of a feminine perspective than Dickens. As mysteries they are somewhat lacking, since Enola often solves her mysteries by a combination of code-breaking and improbable coincidence. Although they are Young Adult novels, there is no romance whatsoever. (Being one whose intellectual development arrested at the age of seven, I still eschew the mushy stuff, so the absence of sticky YA romance was a recommendation.)
It will be very clear when you read book 6, The Case of the Disappearing Duchess, that it is intended as an conclusion to the series. However, an Enola Holmes movie (which I have not seen) was released in 2020, and since then a new Enola Holmes short story, Enola Holmes and the Boy in Buttons, and three new novels have appeared, as well as a second movie. I certainly intend to read the new story and novels.
Some reviewers undervalue pure fun. I am not one of them. Hence my five-star rating of the series.
Blog review.
The Enola Holmes Mysteries reproduces the six short Enola Holmes mystery novels published by Nancy Springer between 2006 and 2010. They recount one year in the life of Enola Holmes, younger sister of famous detective Sherlock Holmes, from her fourteenth to her fifteenth birthday. Most of the story takes place in London, and for most of the year Enola is in hiding, so as not to be put in a finishing school by her brothers Sherlock and Mycroft. Enola sets herself up in business as a "Scientific Perditorian" -- one who finds lost persons and things. The six mysteries (which I have reviewed separately) mostly concern missing persons.
And they are tremendous fun! On finishing the last, I had that all-too-rare feeling of sorrow at finishing a good book and knowing that I would never again be able to read it for the first time. I have been using them as palate cleansers between heavier works. Robert Galbraith's (AKA J.K. Rowling's) The Running Grave and Robert Jackson Bennett's Divine Cities Trilogy are very good books, but they are long and serious works that leave a reader (or me, at least) tired -- in need of refreshment. An Enola Holmes mystery is the perfect dessert.
If you are expecting novels in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, don't. Conan Doyle, a Victorian writing for his fellow Victorians, doesn't remark on things that are unremarkable to him. To Springer, a 21st-century American writer writing for the 21st century, there is much in Victorian London worthy of remark. To me the Enola Holmes novels feel Dickensian, although with more of a feminine perspective than Dickens. As mysteries they are somewhat lacking, since Enola often solves her mysteries by a combination of code-breaking and improbable coincidence. Although they are Young Adult novels, there is no romance whatsoever. (Being one whose intellectual development arrested at the age of seven, I still eschew the mushy stuff, so the absence of sticky YA romance was a recommendation.)
It will be very clear when you read book 6, The Case of the Disappearing Duchess, that it is intended as an conclusion to the series. However, an Enola Holmes movie (which I have not seen) was released in 2020, and since then a new Enola Holmes short story, Enola Holmes and the Boy in Buttons, and three new novels have appeared, as well as a second movie. I certainly intend to read the new story and novels.
Some reviewers undervalue pure fun. I am not one of them. Hence my five-star rating of the series.
Blog review.
November 16, 2020
Enola Holmes, the entertaining missing person specialist.
I truly believe I will want to reread these books down the road. I did discover them after watching the Netflix movie so as I read I kept seeing the Holmes siblings played by the actress & actors from the movie. While the final book in this collection has a satisfactory ending I'd love to read more of Enola's adventures.
I truly believe I will want to reread these books down the road. I did discover them after watching the Netflix movie so as I read I kept seeing the Holmes siblings played by the actress & actors from the movie. While the final book in this collection has a satisfactory ending I'd love to read more of Enola's adventures.
March 6, 2021
Series just gets better and better.
July 29, 2021
Sometimes these type of books feel like a modern person has been transported to the past, but Enola was very convincing, as her search to escape the limitations for women was so grounded in the vocabulary and ideas of her time. I was more invested in her emotional arc with her mother and brothers then the cases, but I felt like the last two books interwove them very well. I definitely will always imagine this family with Enola from now on.
It’d be fun to have a series of her as a young adult as she reunites with some of the younger characters!
It’d be fun to have a series of her as a young adult as she reunites with some of the younger characters!
February 3, 2025
Liked series a lot have every book except the first, where I was introduced to it on Kindle. I am so glad I read it all before it got popular on Nextlix. Got it about when I was in Year 5 - 6.
Enola is the epitome of feminism. She is a well thought out character, very unique and intelligent young girl. Similar age to me but I will not compare my intelligence to hers! Want to see a bit more of her and Cecily (?).
Perfectly captures Sherlock and Mycroft’s distinct personalities, I would’ve thought they crawled out of their original books. The style was very 19th century too, I think it improved my comprehension.
Was a little DISTRAUGHT there was not going to be anymore books, last book Gypsy Goodbye, published in 2010 unfortunately. Maybe if it blows up again, Nancy Springer will be forced to make more Enola Holmes series!! (Please Nancy Springer).
All those books and she never got to see her mother! Bawling!
Definitely recommend if you like mystery, London and an independent girl!
Enola is the epitome of feminism. She is a well thought out character, very unique and intelligent young girl. Similar age to me but I will not compare my intelligence to hers! Want to see a bit more of her and Cecily (?).
Perfectly captures Sherlock and Mycroft’s distinct personalities, I would’ve thought they crawled out of their original books. The style was very 19th century too, I think it improved my comprehension.
Was a little DISTRAUGHT there was not going to be anymore books, last book Gypsy Goodbye, published in 2010 unfortunately. Maybe if it blows up again, Nancy Springer will be forced to make more Enola Holmes series!! (Please Nancy Springer).
All those books and she never got to see her mother! Bawling!
Definitely recommend if you like mystery, London and an independent girl!
May 22, 2022
I read all the books within a couple of weeks but out of order because that was what I had. Read 4-6 the 1-2. There were hints about things that happened in the later books but not so extreme that there were not surprises in the first 2. The mysteries are stand alone but the the story arc of Enola and her brothers and her search for her mother is continuous. It's a delightful series but I would have found it a bit more believable if Enola has been just a few years older. The use of the bustles and corsets to hide so much was quite fun. Good for Enola to out smart her brothers until they could realize that she was not just a silly girl.
January 5, 2023
I liked the movies and decided to read the books. No masterpieces, but interesting and entertaining enough. I like that we aren't following the famous Sherlock Holmes, rather we get to know his younger sister Enola - whose name spells Alone, we learn multiple times throughout the series.
While not similar to the movies, they stand strong on their own. Book Enola is funny, smart and her ability to climb trees is rather fascinating. I like how book six, the last one in this set, circles back to the first one come the end. It feels like it was supposed to be the last one, the following two being released after the movies, and I will probably not read them.
While not similar to the movies, they stand strong on their own. Book Enola is funny, smart and her ability to climb trees is rather fascinating. I like how book six, the last one in this set, circles back to the first one come the end. It feels like it was supposed to be the last one, the following two being released after the movies, and I will probably not read them.
Read
December 27, 2022This was a treasure to listen to on audiobook. One of my favorite narrators passed away a few years ago and hearing her voice again was a pleasure. A creative story, liked the conceit that a girl had unique insight that men refused to listen to. Glad they aged the characters up for the Netflix show though. With a 14 year old main character things remained g rated which is good fir younger kids but harder to relate to as an adult.
June 15, 2023
No wonder they made movies about this character!
So fantastically excellent! Dive in and enjoy these books!
They are different from the movies in some significant ways, but preserve Enola's character, etc.
Really excellent writing! I have up trying to guess what would come next pretty quickly and loved how the stories wove together, how all the characters developed along the way.
Can't wait to get hold of the next one!
So fantastically excellent! Dive in and enjoy these books!
They are different from the movies in some significant ways, but preserve Enola's character, etc.
Really excellent writing! I have up trying to guess what would come next pretty quickly and loved how the stories wove together, how all the characters developed along the way.
Can't wait to get hold of the next one!
October 11, 2020
4,5. This is a truly delightful series with imaginative plots, an interestng voice, and fasciniating historical tidbits. My half point takeaway is because Springer chose to make her character 14 instead of at least 16. Fourteen is simply too young. Yet I am allowing Goodreads to round this off to a 5 because someone without couth or appereciation of good things gave it a 1.
February 11, 2022
Movie is good, books are better!
I first saw the Netflix movie and thought it was wonderful. While the Marquess is different than the movie because they have to make it their own. The books are much much better, by the end the family dynamic has changed and is heart warming. I have always loved Sherlock Holmes but his misogyny was off putting. Enola Holmes changes him.
I first saw the Netflix movie and thought it was wonderful. While the Marquess is different than the movie because they have to make it their own. The books are much much better, by the end the family dynamic has changed and is heart warming. I have always loved Sherlock Holmes but his misogyny was off putting. Enola Holmes changes him.
July 27, 2022
I my opinion these are the best books in the world. They are so good and exciting. I need more books. I love the film it’s my favourite film. I read all of them. At the last one I cried my eyes out. Just read the I swear they are the best. I love Enola she is so a cool person. Just go watch it on Netflix and then read the books.
March 21, 2021
Absolutely delightful!!!
I thoroughly enjoyed every single one of these books. They kept me turning the pages day after day. I love Enola’s view of everything. I love how she takes on every challenge to the very end. A delightful series.
I thoroughly enjoyed every single one of these books. They kept me turning the pages day after day. I love Enola’s view of everything. I love how she takes on every challenge to the very end. A delightful series.
June 28, 2022
Recomiendo los libros para jóvenes que les guste el misterio y la aventura, tienen ganas entretenidas, pero predecibles si eres un adulto. También los recomiendo para practicar "reading" en los primeros niveles.
September 22, 2023
Fantastic!
What a joyous romp through London in the 1880s. This through the eyes of a wise beyond her years 14 year old girl, who has Ben raised as a free thinker, escapes her brothers well intentions, and becomes what she chooses to be. Amazing tale!
What a joyous romp through London in the 1880s. This through the eyes of a wise beyond her years 14 year old girl, who has Ben raised as a free thinker, escapes her brothers well intentions, and becomes what she chooses to be. Amazing tale!
November 30, 2020
This was all 6 books in one and it was a really cute and fun series.
May 20, 2021
This series has been my perfect go-to comfort read recently.
July 11, 2021
Best books ever
August 3, 2021
Sweet Reads
The Enola Holmes mysteries are quick reads and would be a great introduction to mysteries for younger readers. I enjoyed all of them!
The Enola Holmes mysteries are quick reads and would be a great introduction to mysteries for younger readers. I enjoyed all of them!
August 23, 2021
Really interesting depiction of late 1800 London! Fast and enjoyable :)
September 14, 2021
I love Enola Holmes!
December 22, 2021
I have so enjoyed reading these series! Enola is the youngest sister of Sherlock Holmes and is bright clever and very independent like her mother who left to be “true to herself”. She outshines her brother by using her feminine instincts yet remains loyal and determined to develop her relationship with him. Will continue to read them all!
March 21, 2022
Enola is my new favorite heroine
I loved this series! Captivating, touching, funny, asking with a good mystery to solve. What more could you ask for? I want more!
I loved this series! Captivating, touching, funny, asking with a good mystery to solve. What more could you ask for? I want more!
June 3, 2022
I love these books!
June 29, 2022
Great for little investigators.
November 8, 2022
Excellent. Also, I cried.
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