The Strangest Forms
Grade : A-

Having a number of established and ongoing series on the go for the last couple of years means it’s been a while since we’ve had any new characters and situations from Gregory Ashe, but he’s starting 2023 with a bang and a new mystery series featuring a descendant of literature’s most famous detective. The Strangest Forms, book one of The Adventures of Holloway Holmes, is angsty, it’s funny, it’s poignant, it’s clever and it’s compelling – and despite the age of its protagonists, it’s a Gregory Ashe novel in every respect, featuring complex, flawed characters with trauma in their pasts and messy, difficult lives, and an intriguing, twisty mystery that doesn’t pull any punches.

Jack Moreno’s life was upended just over a year earlier, when a terrible car accident killed his mother and left his father with a TBI (traumatic brain injury) which causes mobility and memory issues, migranes and seizures. With his dad often unable to work, Jack dropped out of school so he could cover his custodial shifts at the Walker School for “troubled teens” in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, basically somewhere the wealthy elite dump their rebellious kids and then pretty much forget about them. With bills continually mounting up – a custodian’s salary doesn’t go far - Jack very quickly learned that there’s money to be made by someone who knows how to procure things, from booze, drugs and condoms to manga and gum – and when the book begins, he’s waiting for Sarah Watson to show so he can hand over the five hundred bucks worth of Xanax he’s sourced for her – on credit – and get paid, which is the most important thing if he wants to remain in one piece. Jack’s night goes downhill really fast when he finds Watson’s dead body laid out on top of the black garbage bags in a dumpster.

Jack’s thoughts are a mess – worrying about how he’s going to pay his dealer is, he realises, a shitty thing to do given the dead girl in front of him – but self-preservation is understandably high on Jack’s agenda; he extracts the money she owes him from Watson’s purse, reasoning that he needs it more than she does now. While doing this, Watson’s phone rings and the initials MM light up on the screen, but Jack doesn’t have much time to think about that; making sure he’s left no traces, he makes his way to the custodial office and calls the police.

That may not have been the best idea, it turns out, because the lead detective seems to have it in for Jack, big time. Realising – with shock and a sense of inevitability – that he and his dad are their prime suspects, Jack realises the only way to prove them innocent is to find out who really killed Watson, and for that, he’s going to need help.

Thus is Jack’s uneasy alliance with the icy and aloof Holloway Holmes born. Jack doesn't know Holmes at all, really, other than as an occasional 'client' – he’s gorgeous as a Greek statue and scary as hell, and that’s all he wants to know – but he hadn’t expected to find him quite so intriguing, and, in spite of himself, wanting to get to know him better.

The Strangest Forms gets The Adventures of Holloway Holmes off to a fantastic start. If you’re familiar with the author’s other books, you’ll recognise the hallmarks of his work here – a clever, mystery that throws up lots of unexpected twists and turns, plenty of snarky humour and banter, a couple of superbly characterised leads whose personalities we’ve only begun to scrape the surface of, and a terrific central relationship that oozes chemistry and develops into a strong friendship with the potential for more. As someone who won’t see twenty-one again (!), I’m not sure how I feel about rooting for a romantic relationship between two sixteen/seventeen-year-old boys, but there’s no doubt that there’s attraction there on both sides – although neither of them really knows how to handle it. Jack is bisexual - he has an on/off girlfriend in this book and there is mention of his having had physical relationships with boys, too – but he’s hooked up rather than had anything emotional with any of the people he’s been with, so the confusing feelings he’s starting to experience for Holmes are very new. Holmes has clearly never had anything approaching a normal relationship – romantic or familial – so he’s equally at a loss, burying his bewilderment behind what Jack calls “Holmes bot” – all cold logic and no emotion.

The books I’ve read so far by this author have all featured a dual PoV narrative, but here we only hear from Jack. Single PoV can be difficult to pull off but of course, Mr. Ashe does it with aplomb and makes it work really well; not only does it keep Holmes at a slight remove and help maintain his enigmatic persona, it is, of course, the time-honoured method of Holmes’ chroniclers. It’s a nice little nod to the originals – of which there are several; I had to smile at finding out that Holmes lives in room 221 in Baker House ;)

I loved Jack’s narrative voice. He’s funny, kind and honest, flawed and complicated and loyal, and the more we learn about him and his situation, the easier it is to understand that he’s had to grow up really quickly, and is kind of stuck on that cusp between childhood and manhood - and he hasn’t quite left the former behind yet. He’s tough and pragmatic, but has a penchant for indulging in high-risk behaviour (as a response to trauma); he hasn’t had the time or space to complete his adolescence and is struggling to make sense of life through an incomplete and underdeveloped lens.

The picture we get of Holmes through Jack’s eyes is of a young man similarly poised between childhood and adulthood and just as adrift, albeit for different reasons. Holmes is an odd mix of confidence, innocence and vulnerability; he struggles with human interatction, doesn’t seem to have had much affection or kindness in his life and often retreats behind a wall of blankness in an attempt to hide what he sees as his deficiencies. Mostly it works, because he’s got a repuation for being a cold, standoffish arsehole, but Jack is the first person to really see Holmes, to see how much he’s hurting and how lonely he is. To see that he needs… someone. Just as Jack does.

Their burgeoning friendship, trust and admiration are really well written, and their off-the-charts chemistry underpins the awkward attraction blooming between them that neither knows what to do with. There are so many wonderful moments of connection – the way they bounce ideas off each other, Jack managing to get a genuine laugh out of Holmes, Holmes’ dry humour breaking through, their teenaged awkwardness, their protectiveness of each other – it tugs at the heartstrings and is ridiculously cute at the same time.

I enjoyed the book very much, but I did have a couple of small niggles. One is maybe a ‘me’ thing in that I had to remind myself every so often that these guys are only sixteen because they feel older than that;  and the other is the whole Holmeses-Watsons-and-Moriartys-gravitate-towards-each-other-across-the-generations thing. I know Moriarty kinda comes with the territory, but I was hoping this Holmes might have had a different nemesis. Too often in Sherlockian stories, Moriarty is the Bad Guy because he’s always the Bad Guy and doesn’t appear to have any real purpose or motivation other than to just be the Bad Guy. But I trust Gregory Ashe to convince me that his Moriarty presents more of a real threat to Holmes - and Jack.

The Strangest Forms is a great series opener, and I’m hooked. I can’t wait to read Jack and Holmes’ next adventure!

NOTE:  Jack and Holmes are sixteen, but I wouldn't categorize this as YA because there is on-page violence, drug and alcohol use and sexual situations.

Reviewed by Caz Owens
Grade : A-

Sensuality: Subtle

Review Date : February 24, 2023

Publication Date: 02/2023

Recent Comments …

Caz Owens

I’m a musician, teacher and mother of two gorgeous young women who are without doubt, my finest achievement :)I’ve gravitated away from my first love – historical romance – over the last few years and now read mostly m/m romances in a variety of sub-genres. I’ve found many fantastic new authors to enjoy courtesy of audiobooks - I probably listen to as many books as I read these days – mostly through glomming favourite narrators and following them into different genres.And when I find books I LOVE, I want to shout about them from the (metaphorical) rooftops to help other readers and listeners to discover them, too.
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