Jamie and Charlotte are looking for a winter break reprieve in Sussex after a fall semester that almost got them killed. But nothing about their time off is proving simple, including Holmes and Watson’s growing feelings for each other.

When Charlotte’s beloved Uncle Leander goes missing from the Holmes estate—after being oddly private about his latest assignment in a German art forgery ring—the game is afoot once again, and Charlotte throws herself into a search for answers.

So begins a dangerous race through the gritty underground scene in Berlin and glittering art houses in Prague, where Holmes and Watson discover that this complicated case might change everything they know about their families, themselves, and each other.

The Last of August picks up not too long after the events of A Study in Charlotte, with Jamie and Charlotte at her parents’ estate in Sussex for winter break. However, you can’t expect things to stay calm for long, and soon Charlotte and Jamie are whisked away to Berlin, Germany to stay with Charlotte’s brother, Milo. Now with a new mystery to solve  they team up with August Moriarty, who is in fact, a descendant of that Moriarty family.

What I enjoyed about this novel was that we got to see more of Charlotte’s family, and you really learn how she kind of became the way she is. Or at least you feel bad for her by the end of the novel. Her family dynamic is… well, it’s bad. At the same time, it’s kind of to be expected just based off what we learned about Charlotte in the first book.

The plot was intriguing – Charlotte’s uncle goes missing and there’s an art forgery scam going on (that is linked to the other Moriarty siblings, of course). Right off the bat, after silence from Charlotte and August, Jamie finds himself annoyed with the two of them and sets off on his own with this own disguise to do some investigating. Not too long after, he’s joined by Charlotte and August and the investigation is underway. Throughout the book I feel bad for Jamie, again, because he honestly just wants Charlotte to get with the program about the “them” part of everything, but it keeps getting put off because of all the stuff going on around them… and that their lives are in danger again.

I was kept on my toes the entire book and I wasn’t really able to catch onto what was happening like the first book, so the ending was a big surprise for me and not what I had been expecting at all. As much as I like to figure out the endings myself, I also love those surprise moments.

Overall, yet another good new-generation Holmes and Watson book and I can’t wait to see how the third ones turns out (I’m already halfway through it!).

Rating: 4/5 stars