Elena Reviews a DNF - The Starlet Letter by Julie Mathison

Title: The Starlet Letter
Author: Julie Mathison
Genres: Young Adult, Historical Mystery

When a washed-up Ziegfeld Follies star goes missing, can the Van der Beeck twins crack the

case without breaking their necks... or losing their hearts?

It’s 1931, and the once grand, always eccentric Van der Beecks have taken in borders to make ends meet. Canary House, their rambling Upper West Side mansion, boasts six tenants: a pianist, a poet, an erstwhile diplomat, a psychiatrist, a bootlegger, and a philanthropist who is always short on cash. Life has never been more interesting until a seventh checks into the turret room – Babs Le Roy, a washed-up Ziegfeld Follies star with more than one skeleton in her cluttered closet.

It's all the twins can do to mind their own business. Nearly eighteen, they only look like angels. Vivian has a nose for trouble and Viola has her nose in a book, but between the two of them, the villain doesn’t stand a chance – if only they can find one to spice things up. Then Babs goes missing, and one ransom note, two gangsters, and a handful of red herrings later, the twins find themselves confronted with more villains than they bargained for. Throw in a soft-boiled detective, a handsome sergeant, and a houseful of tenants graced with more whimsy than wit, and you have the makings of a mad-cap mystery that will keep you guessing till the end.

I received this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

DNF'ed at 61%, which is why I feel comfortable in rating it and sharing an actual review, which is something I wouldn't have done if I hadn't reached at least a reasonable 50% of the story, where this or any other book is concerned. I had high expectations, I'm not going to lie. The Starlet Letter sounded exactly like my cup of tea, since I immensely enjoy light, historical mysteries set in the 20th century! I want to be completely transparent and admit that under different circumstances, I would've forced myself to finish this, just because I received it as an advanced reader's copy, which might sound good to some or bad to others, depending on how you look at it (that obviously doesn't mean that I wouldn't have shared my completely honest opinion, it just means that I would've pushed myself and ended up not enjoying the reading process just to finish the book).

The book itself deals wit the Van der Beeck twins, who find themselves in an unusual situation after their parents are forced to turn their mansion into a boarding house, in order to achieve some financial stability. You wouldn't call them poor, just struggling financially and losing their status as upper class members of society. When a famous Ziegfeld Follies star disappears a couple of days after she rents a room in Canary House, the aforementioned mansion turned boarding house, they decide to take matters into their own hands and discover what really happened to her and whether she's alive.

After that small introduction to my experience while reading this one, I'd like to say that I found the writing style enjoyable enough and the plot quite compelling. It started out with an air of mystery I couldn't wait to get to the bottom of alongside the characters. Everything felt to drag on though and as the story progressed, it became even more complicated where each character and their occupation, if you will, was concerned. I felt like the author threw me into this web of complexity I couldn't free myself from in order to understand what was going on with all those characters that were caught up in it as well. Even though I tried to keep on reading, the two main characters (twins, side note) did nothing to convince me. They were trying really hard to be complete opposites, but all they managed to achieve was blend into each other so much that at one point, they basically became the same person, while simultaneously making assumptions that were getting really hard to follow where the crime aspect of the novel is concerned.

The chapters themselves were nicely set up and the setting intriguing, but I feel like the narration was going back and forth between so many characters while the story was progressing, somehow trying to introduce them, without actually contributing towards the plot itself. The twins as main characters kind of trope, which I don't think I've come across in a Historical Mystery novel before, was actually quite promising and it might've worked for me if the story was told in a first person POV, which would've distinguished them from each other, while giving a more detailed insight into their personalities as individuals! I quite enjoyed the references to The Scarlet Letter, which are quite obvious just by the book's title, but after a while they took up the majority of the plot, and I eventually got a bit tired of Viola pointing towards the classic tale of Hester with every chance she got.

Overall, it's safe to say that The Starlet Letter was not the book for me. Even though I was fascinated by the premise and the intriguing mystery it promised, it didn't manage to impress me and I couldn't push myself in order to actually finish it. Writing this review over the span of a few days has allowed me to skim through the remaining chapters and reach the ending, but that unfortunately doesn't change my opinion or the outcome of this reading experience.

Until the next post,