DREW LECLAIR GETS A CLUE

Can a lonely sleuth learn the identity of the middle school cyberbully?

Drew is a White seventh grader who loves mysteries, true crime, and criminal profiling. And a good thing, too—someone is targeting their class on Instagram, revealing secrets and being supermean. The anonymous bully reveals that Drew’s mom was seen making out with the guidance counselor. Drew (whose mother has not only kissed Mr. Clark, but has run off with him to Kauai to live in a yurt) is crushed but doesn’t want her abandoned, hurting, single dad to know about the bullying and is determined to handle this problem herself. In order to profile the criminal, Drew needs to talk to all the bully’s other victims, but she’s awkward with people even when she’s not falling to pieces. Luckily, her only friend, Indian American Shrey, has her back. Even better, another of the cyberbully’s victims—Trissa, a Black girl who’s as much of a Star Wars nerd as Shrey and Drew—wants to help. (Although Shrey and Trissa do think her crime board, complete with tacked down lines of red yarn, is just a teensy bit on the weird side.) There’s an unexpected level of well-handled emotional realism in this appealing, thought-provoking work: Drew’s family struggles aren’t tidily wrapped up, nor are the issues with the school’s bullying and pervasive racism or even the romantic complications.

Witty kid detectives solve a mystery with believably high stakes.