Good And Bad Neighbors In Mysteries

If you don’t read middle grade books, I can not express how much you are missing out on some book gems. Here you have a puzzle mystery (my favorite which there are not enough of) with one contemporary story line and one historical.

Candice Miller has moved from Atlanta to South Carolina with her mom while their home is remodeled. Her parents are divorced and she has a great relationship with both her mom and dad, but she’s really not happy that the move has taken her away from her dad and friends. As much as she loved her grandmother, whose house they are now staying in, it’s weird that people seem to only remember her for the meltdown that led to her being forced to retire from her post as city manager. Another issue she’s having is that her mom and neighbor have decided to force her and the neighbor boy to spend time together.

So Candace is bored and tethered to this kid who’s being bullied, Brandon Jones. But soon she finds a letter revealing there’s much more to her grandmother’s story, and she gets to know Brandon, a boy who loves books as much as she does and makes for a great friend. They find themselves solving the puzzle that her grandmother failed to figure out and that promises a treasure at the end. We watch both the history of the town and the current town in alternating stories as the past comes to meet the present, both the good and the bad.

This is super bookish, including playing off The Westing Game, with a wonderful friendship and families, and I honestly found more nuance and understanding than I do in adult books/characters sometimes. And for readers who are making their way through the 2021 Read Harder challenge I’ll add this one along with Ophie’s Ghosts by Justina Ireland (review) to must-read for the middle grade mystery task. But this is a great read for all readers with bonus points for excellent narration on the audiobook by Cherise Boothe.

A neighborhood drama with crime and bite! This was a book I picked up knowing absolutely nothing about it and a great reminder of why I love doing that: the opening itself had a nice kick and then I found myself on many twisty turns saying “OMG” out loud to no one.

The setup starts in the future looking back at an event in a Long Island suburb that appears to have started with a sinkhole opening up. But really the sinkhole just created enough new tension to explode out all the tension that was already simmering below the surface between the residents.

I’m going to go vague with this one so as not to spoil anything for anyone who wants the full experience. There’s the recently moved-in family of a rockstar husband, his pregnant wife whom everyone looks at as “trashy” because classism, and their two kids. The queen bee of the neighborhood is a mom of four with an always-working husband, the supermom that everyone turns to for help. While the daughters of the two families are friends and the mom’s were once friends too, there has been a rift recently and only one of them knows why. Enter a sinkhole and the secrets start to come out—and this pleasant, wealthy neighborhood becomes anything but.

I especially liked the balance of child voices and adult voices in the different perspectives of everything happening. This is a great book club pick, and/or one to read with someone else because you’re gonna want to seriously discuss some stuff in this as you process it all out.

(TW child abuse/ side character with cancer/ past addiction/ brief mention of suicide, detail/ murder suicide/ mentions suicidal thoughts, details/ ableism/ talks of past teen sexual abuse)