Jackaby by William Ritter

TL;DR "Doctor Who meets Sherlock" historical fantasy / mystery

(finished 3/17/15)

Jackaby was a lot better than I expected. When Gigi told me she'd checked it out from the library because I'd added it on goodreads, I couldn't even remember looking at it. (I add a lot of books. A lot.) 

I honestly can't tell you how accurate the "Doctor Who x Sherlock" tagline is, because my knowledge of both shows extends only to what I've picked up from tumblr. I think Supernatural would be a little more accurate than Doctor Who, since it deals with the supernatural more than sci-fi stuff like I associate with DW. I also don't really like comparing books to other series like that, because it's kind of lame and usually isn't very accurate, but it was the most concise way I could come up with to describe the book. I got kind of lazy.

I really liked Abigail as a narrator. I think some of her potential went unused because her "eye for the mundane" only really was used a couple times, and Jackaby did a lot of the work. Which is kind of to be expected since he knows a lot more about the supernatural than Abigail, I guess. Abigail wasn't a pushover at all, and she went with the flow instead of digging in her heels and refusing to believe Jackaby. Jackaby was a really interesting character, too, and Jenny and Charlie were cool.

Abigail's narration also didn't match my expectation of what a historical mystery would read like, and I really appreciated that. I don't think any of the characters are necessarily 100% accurate to the time period; for the most part, they sounded completely normal to me. I think that's part of the reason why I rated it so highly. It made it easier for me to be engaged in the story.

I do have to say that I liked the book the most because it felt very fluffy. It was surprisingly not dark and depressing despite being about murder investigations. I mean, the circumstances themselves were kind of dark, but the characters weren't all serious and brooding. The plot / timeline moved along at a good pace; the whole book only covers, like, two or three days, I think. A lot happens in a short amount of time. It didn't seem rushed to me, but I guess that could be up to debate.

TL;DR I really enjoyed it, but if you really like Doctor Who / Sherlock / typical historical / mystery stories, then you're probably gonna find it too fluffy.