Read: November 15, 2022 

Title: Jackaby 

Series: Jackaby (Book #1) 

Author: William Ritter 

Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy / Mystery 

 

Rating: 4/5 

 

Review: 

This book was pitched to me as ‘Sherlock Holmes meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. As a sucker for all things Holmes, I added it to my TBR. Though, now that I’ve read it, I would disagree with that pitch. The Sherlock Holmes bit is spot on, in fact, the author mentions Holmes (indirectly) as a sort of satire. But this book is less Buffy the Vampire Slayer and more… Fantastic Beasts. Which honestly, I couldn’t be happier about! 

 

This book was utterly delightful! One of my favorite reads of the year! 

 

It’s shorter than most books I read but I found that it didn’t drag on or rush in any places. The writing was consistence and engrossing. Ritter has beautiful imagery that I could spend all day devouring. 

 

I was a bit skeptical when I opened the book to find that it was in first person (which I’m a bit bias against) but was delighted when the writing style felt genuine and smooth; not to mention the main character was a strong female which made me immensely happy. A decently written woman at that. 

 

It was refreshing to see the platonic relationship between Jackaby and Rook, and the bashfulness of the romantic subplots (with other characters) were both a nice change of pace compared to modern Young Adult novels. 

 

The only real negative I have for this book is how supremely predictable it was. Other than that, strongly recommend! 

 

Quotes: 

“That the battles are usually in her head does not lesson the bravery of it.” 

“Monsters are easy… They’re Monsters. But a monster in a suit? That’s basically just a wicked man, and a wicked man is a more dangerous thing by far.” 

“This world is full of dragon-slayers. What we need are a few more people who aren’t too proud to listen to a fish.”