Coming into this series with the third book is somewhat akin to walking into the middle of a play. You are able to catch onto unfolding events fairly well, but you feel like you would enjoy the action a bit more if you had seen the first two acts--perhaps, reason enough to go back and read the first two books.

Nevertheless, The Hollow of Fear by Sherry Thomas is a well-written feminist take on the Sherlock Holmes legend. Charlotte Holmes sets out to solve the mystery of who killed the conniving wife of the man Charlotte has loved from afar since she was a girl. Luckily, Lord Ingram is worthy of her love. However, the book is anything but a traditional romance, or mystery, for that matter, with Charlotte and her Holmesian, analytical nature, hardly a traditional heroine. Nevertheless, she is quite an admirable protagonist, and we root for her to not only solve the mystery but to find some happiness in her life.

The reader is not always in on all the plot points as the story twists and turns on itself and there are several flashbacks that make the reader aware that they weren't privy to the true nature of some events as they occurred in the book.

Mirror characters and parallel plots abound and, just when it seems that none of it makes any sense, Thomas weaves all together into a skillfully coherent whole. The heart-rendng payoff is worth a few moments of confusion.

Full Disclosure--Net Gallery and the publisher provided me with a digital ARC of this book. This is my honest review.