Fantastic Designs but printed double-sided and across two pages makes it less than friendly for the colorist

Attached to this review will be a silent flip-through of the entire coloring book so you can make an informed decision as to whether or not it will work for you.

Rather than discuss how this is like or different from the TV series, I will discuss only how I feel about it as an adult coloring book.

While the book has great designs, it also has a number of issues that make it difficult to work with. I dithered between a three star and four star rating but went with four because the designs are really extraordinarily good.

The designs are fantastic for coloring. They are well drawn with a nice level of detail where I want it and a lack of detail where I would prefer to add my own shading, etc. It feels a little weird to be coloring the faces of actual individuals (and those who have spent many an hour in my house albeit on my television screen.) Using the coloring tools that will work best with this book, I will have fun with it. Maybe do a little Andy Warhol riff with unusual colors on some of the characters.

Physically, the book is well made. The front and back covers flip out with a scene of London that can be colored. The designs are printed on both sides of the page. The pages are a good heavyweight and white; however, they are not perforated. The sewn rather than glued, so removing the pages from the book involves snipping several strings in a couple of places. Most of the designs span across two pages and merge into the binding. Though I will remove the pages from the book, it may be difficult to line up pages and that makes coloring in this book less fun. As there are so many of these designs that will be effected, I have detracted a star from an otherwise good book.

My particular book had two issues which may not be in others. On a number of pages, my double sided images did not line up. That happens sometimes. The other problem with my book was that there were four rippled pages. Amazon is replacing my book as it was obviously damaged in printing. I am not taking away points for this as mistakes can happen and it is being fixed for me.

All of my markers, both water and alcohol-based, leaked through the page. None of my gel pens bled through to the back of the page. My colored pencils all worked well on the surface of the paper. Given this, I would not recommend using markers in this book if you want to color each page as you will definitely ruin the design on the back of the page otherwise.

In summary, a coloring book filled with great designs but which has a number of physical issues. The book could have been improved in a number of ways, such as printing on one side only and if not, using a better grade of paper which allows markers to be used without seeping through to the backside. Perforated pages would have been nice. But the real improvement would have been to have less designs that span two pages. If you must do this, 1) make sure the images line up properly and 2) give us some room at the bound edge to be able to get our pencils and pens in to draw.