A lovely cozy mystery.
Two “baking and busting” besties navigate their changing friendship as they attempt to solve another crime in this follow-up to 2024’s The Cookie Crumbles.
Laila Thomas, who’s cued Black, is a 13-year-old budding chef. She’s looking forward to a slower pace after recently participating in a baking competition and solving a mystery with her best friend, Lucy Flores, who reads Filipino. But life feels frenzied as she’s featured in magazines, works on her cooking vlog, and starts the Bakers Gotta Bake club at school. Meanwhile, Lucy is now co-editor of the school newspaper and interning with Ariella Winborn, her investigative journalist hero. Laila loathes Ariella—even more so because Lucy’s time is consumed by the internship, leaving Laila missing her. And Lucy is disappointed that Ariella just seems to want her to fetch coffee and keep track of her phone. When Cal Parker, one of the fathers of their friend Jaden, is accused of stealing diamonds from the mansion where he’s filming a kids’ holiday baking show, Jaden asks the girls for help. They go undercover to solve the crime: Lucy fills in for a contestant who's dropped out, and Laila joins Jaden as co-host. The nuances of friendship dynamics are realistically portrayed, and the inclusion of confessionals in the narrative adds to the well-portrayed reality TV vibe. Readers will easily make themselves at home within Laila and Lucy’s relatable narrative arc.
A lovely cozy mystery. (Mystery. 10-14)Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780063254633
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
A thrilling first installment in an adventurous new series.
An orphaned street urchin is recruited into an elite school for thieves.
In an alternate world where France is the dominant world power, 13-year-old Tom Morgan has had to scrimp, starve, and steal on the streets of London to survive. Born into a workhouse, he doesn’t know anything about his father, while his mother may have been from North Africa. One thing he does know is the sort of cruelty that awaits the poor who are sent to the workhouse, and he’s determined not to go back. But when their camp is raided and his friends are captured by workhouse agents, the only thing Tom can think of is how to get them out. Enter the Corsair, a cunning and mysterious man with a proposition: He wants to recruit Tom into Beaufort’s School for Deceptive Arts. From nabbing treasures to forging identity papers, Beaufort’s promises to teach Tom everything he needs to know to become a Shadow Thief and a member of the Shadow League, the secret global organization that helps keep the world’s political power in balance. But Beaufort’s has its own rules and secrets, and if Tom is to survive long enough to help his friends, he’ll need to figure them out quickly. Clever and gripping, this fast-paced boarding school story will appeal to fans of the Mysterious Benedict Society and Spy School series.
A thrilling first installment in an adventurous new series. (Adventure. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9781665982283
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
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