A fun, gently spooky mystery.
A slightly magical escape room, a kidnapping, and a tarot-reading ghost set the stage for this fast-paced middle-grade whodunit.
Twelve-year-old Riley Dare lives above the escape room she runs with her Aunt Hayley. Riley loves mysteries, tarot, Dungeons & Dragons, and fine-tuning the escape room’s puzzles, but what most people don’t know is that her best special effects come from real magic. Riley has only recently discovered her modest powers, and since she’s never known her parents, she still doesn’t understand where her magic comes from. Other than Aunt Hayley, only her best friends, Mateo and Kayla, know the truth. Things spiral during the launch of a new escape room when famous mystery author Richard Rillardson vanishes midgame while Riley watches via a video monitor. Stranger still, Riley starts seeing a ghost. As she and her friends investigate the disappearance and haunting, Riley’s powers grow stronger, and ghostly tarot card messages begin pointing her toward answers. Riley makes for a compelling protagonist as a nerdy D&D-loving sleuth, although the supporting characters feel less developed. The mystery delivers plenty of adventure and magical intrigue, though the escape room premise feels like a missed opportunity to weave puzzle-solving into the plot. Still, the cliffhanger ending leaves an enticing thread dangling for the second book in the series. Riley is cued white, and Mateo and Kayla are brown-skinned.
A fun, gently spooky mystery. (floor plan) (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9798217143474
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
Contagiously goofy and fun.
Area 51 gets its first new resident in 5 years—and a new mystery.
When her grandma moves into a kid-free retirement home, 12-year-old orphan Priya “Sky” Patel-Baum and Spike, her pet hedgehog, relocate to Area 51 to live with Sky’s eccentric Uncle Anish. At 51, humans and Break Throughs (government-speak for aliens) live together off-grid in harmony. Unfortunately, several Zdstrammars (one of many Break Through species) mysteriously disappear, disrupting the base’s harmony and contributing to feelings of suspicion. Despite being deputy head of the Federal Bureau of Alien Investigations, Uncle Anish becomes a prime suspect. Can Sky and Elvis, her alien classmate, prove Uncle Anish’s innocence and find the missing Zdstrammars before it’s too late? YA author Buxbaum’s middle-grade debut is a rip-roaring series opener complete with over-the-top characters and jokes galore. Naidu’s black-and-white cartoon illustrations extend the comedy with ongoing commentary that smartly interacts with the prose. The cast of Break Through species—like Audiotooters, Galzorian, and Sanitizoria—have hilariously creative on-the-nose names with illustrations to match. Sky is coded biracial, with a White dad and Indian mom. Aliens appear in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors; Elvis shape-shifts but looks like a brown-skinned boy to Sky. Though the main mystery is neatly wrapped up, the cliffhanger ending promises more laughs.
Contagiously goofy and fun. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-42946-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
Delightful fun for budding mystery fans.
Only children, rejoice! A cozy mystery just for you! (People with siblings will probably enjoy it too.)
Debut novelist Cornett introduces the One and Onlys, a trio of mystery-solving only kids: Gloria Longshanks “Shanks” Hill, Alexander “Peephole” Calloway, and narrator Paul (alas, no nickname) Marconi. The trio has a knack for finding and solving low-level mysteries, but they come up against a true head-scratcher when the yard of a resident of their small town is covered in rubber ducks overnight. Working ahead of Officer Portnoy, who’s a little on the slow side, can Paul, Shanks, and Peephole solve the mystery? Cornett has a lot of fun with this adventure, dropping additional side mysteries, a subplot about small businesses, big corporations, and economics, and a town’s love of bratwurst into the mix. Most importantly, he plays fair with the clues throughout, allowing astute readers to potentially solve the case ahead of the trio. The tone and mystery are perfect for younger readers who want to test their detective skills but are put off by anything scary or gory. The pacing would serve well for chapter-by-chapter read-alouds. If there are any quibbles, it’s the lack of diversity of the cast, as it defaults white. Diversity exists in small towns, and this one is crying out for more. Hopefully a sequel will introduce additional faces.
Delightful fun for budding mystery fans. (Mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-3003-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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