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
A deeply imaginative journey that puts the “cat” in cathartic.
A loyal black kitten’s boy is under supernatural attack.
Eleven-month-old Nimbus loves Fletcher, the boy who nursed her back to health following life-threatening injuries. When Fletcher becomes curious about a strange jar and opens it, releasing a terrible goblin, loyal Nim protects Fletcher, taking heavy damage in the process. But Fletcher’s aunt, who’s caring for him over spring break, believes Nim attacked Fletcher and dumps her far from home. Rhett, a stylish rat with star quality, befriends injured Nim and leads her to a witch’s house. While the witch cares for Nim, the witch’s cats (maternal Fern, bookish Rochester, standoffish Bianca, and openly hostile Abraxas) teach Nim important cat skills. She also discovers she has a supernatural ability: In destroying one eye of the nightmare demon in the fight to protect Fletcher, Nim gained its “dream sight.” But she also learns it might come back for Fletcher, who no longer has Nim to protect him, posing a time-sensitive, high-stakes threat. Even though the witch’s home is nice and magic itself seems to be telling her to stay put, Nim wants to find a way back to Fletcher. As a hero, Nimbus is as gritty and determined as she is adorable. Tear-jerker moments explore pet abandonment—readers may want their own pets on hand to hug—all the way through the magical, action-packed finale. Fletcher and the witch read white.
A deeply imaginative journey that puts the “cat” in cathartic. (Fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780062680372
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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