Tornado Brain

Life seems easier for everyone else from Frankie's perspective.  It's so easy for her twin sister Tess to make friends and be successful at school.  Frankie is neurodiverse.  She doesn't like being touched, loud noises that don't belong, and change.  Making friends is hard for Frankie.

In fact, her only real friend, other than her sister Tess, is Collette.  They met one day in elementary school when a tornado touched down near their school.  Collette was terrified.  Frankie was enraptured.  Somehow things just worked.

But things are different in 7th grade.  There's a new girl who seems to have stolen Tess and Collette, and Frankie has felt isolated these last few months since she overheard the girls talking about her "tornado brain."

But now Collette is missing.  At first, Frankie has no idea about where her former best friend could be, but as she starts thinking about events leading up to Collette's disappearance, she gets an idea.  Could Collette's disappearance be related to Dare and Scare, the game the three girls used to play?

As Frankie tries to unravel the clues, she's frustrated because she sometimes has difficulty communicating with other people.  She just has a feeling she's right, and she sets out to track down Collette.  As she follows the clues, she thinks back over her friendship and everything that led her to this point.  Is it possible she didn't understand everything correctly?  Will she be able to solve the puzzle before it's too late?

This new novel about a neurodiverse protagonist by Cat Patrick is a must read!  It's a great story about friendship and misunderstanding and a great mystery.  I do think it's a step in the right direction for books about neurodiverse people.  For a long time, these stories have just been about the world trying to accommodate people who struggle to fit in.  That's an important part of this story, but Frankie also comes to some realizations about herself and learns that she has to accommodate and try to understand other people, as well.  This is an empowering notion for people who are neurodiverse.  Highly recommended!

Throwback

Everyone always says Corey has an active imagination.  He seems to see things no one else does and say things no other 13 year old would say.  He kind of hates when people say that.

One day as he's looking at an old photo at his best friend Leila's house, he suddenly finds himself in the past!  Talking to the guy from the photo!  It turns out he doesn't just have an active imagination; he has the ability to travel in time.

That's when his grandfather, who's been missing for a few years, reappears to explain things.  Corey inherited the time travel ability from Papou.  All he needs is something metal from the time he wants to travel to.  Just focus on it, and POOF, you're there!

That's when Corey has an idea.  He's never met his grandmother because she died on 9/11.  His grandfather has tried many times to save her, but it never works.  One of the rules of time travel is you can't change the past.  It's generally accepted that no time traveler has the ability to change things, but there are legends about throwbacks, rare time travelers who can change the past and affect the future.  Corey is a throwback, and he wants to save his grandmother.

What starts as a quest to save his grandmother in 2001 leaves Corey stranded in 1917.  Corey has to find a way to get back to the present; he's not cut out for a life on the gang-riddled streets.  You can't die before you were ever born, right?

This series opener by Peter Lerangis is a fast paced adventure.  There are some bizarre things you just have to accept and move on, like the side effects of too much time travel.  You somehow turn into an extinct animal from earth's past.  Umm...ok.  I'll go with it for now.  Corey's adventures in 1917 are pretty intense, and he comes close to death more than once.  Fans of adventure and time travel will enjoy this one!

Goldie Vance and the Hotel Whodunit

Goldie Vance works as a valet at the Crossed Palms hotel in Florida, but she really wants to be the house detective.  That's why she's wormed her way into a self-appointed position as assistant to Walt, the hotel's house detective. 

Life is always busy at the Crossed Palms, but things are especially crazy right now since a movie studio has basically taken over the hotel.  All the cast and crew are staying at the hotel, and they are even shooting some scenes at The Mermaid Club where Goldie's mom works. 

Goldie is in on the two big secrets of the production.  One, Delphine Lucerne, megastar, is starring in the movie and staying at the hotel.  It has to be a secret to protect Delphine from the paparazzi.  Two, Delphine will be wearing a diamond encrusted swimming cap for her role as the mermaid queen.  The cap is covered in real diamonds, and the hotel is responsible for keeping it secure.

When the cap going missing, Goldie's mom becomes the main suspect since she was the last person to handle it.  Goldie is on the case and determined to prove her mother's innocence!

This book by Lilliam Rivera is an adaptation of the comics by Hope Larsen, and I was honestly disappointed.  I really wanted to like this book, but it just doesn't really work.  The mystery doesn't even get started until halfway through the book, and I'm not sure why because nothing happens in the first half.  There is very little characterization, and Goldie's friends seem like meaningless shoutouts.  It really seems like something is missing like there was some previous chapter that introduced these characters and their relationships.  Even Goldie herself is lacking in characterization.  She's often annoying and acts like a precocious ten year old, but she is sixteen!  I think kids would be drawn in by the great cover art but then give up 20 pages into the story.

Truly Devious

Albert Ellingham, an eccentric millionaire, had a dream to open a school for gifted kids.  That's why he created Ellingham Academy in the Vermont mountains and moved there with his wife and children.  There's no tuition charge, and the students are an eclectic collection of wealthy offspring and poor but gifted teens.  All is well until Ellingham's wife and child are kidnapped. The only clue is a letter signed "Truly Devious."

One of the students and Mrs. Ellingham are later found dead, but Ellingham's young daughter is never recovered.  Despite the tragedy of its first year, Ellingham Academy has endured, and true crime aficionados around the world have been obsessed with solving the case for almost 100 years.

Stevie Bell is one of those crime buffs obsessed with solving the murders.  She can't believe her good fortune when she wins a spot at Ellingham Academy.  It's the perfect opportunity to investigate.  She can't wait to start investigating for herself and explore the hidden tunnels and details of the historic campus.  Plus, it gets her away from her parents and their ideas of what a good daughter should be.

Stevie quickly finds a place at Ellingham, and no one thinks her obsession with the crime is strange.  In fact, she quickly becomes involved in a group project to create a web series based on the case.  But events take a tragic turn when a fellow student is found dead.  Was it an accident or something more sinister?

Switching between the events of the original murder in 1936 and Stevie's investigations in the present, Maureen Johnson has created a well-plotted mystery with interesting characters.  It ends on a pretty big cliff-hanger so make sure you have book two waiting!  Recommended for grades 8 and up.

The Other Half of Happy

Quijana hates her name.  Everyone calls her Qui, which is a little better, but she doesn't understand why her parents would name her for Don Quijote, Spain's number one loser.  Her dad is always quoting the book, but she doesn't understand why he's so obsessed with a crazy guy who never succeeds at anything.

Everything is fine until her dad's Guatemalan relatives move to town.  Now all a sudden, her dad is really upping the Guatemalan factor in her life, and Quijana is confused and a little embarrassed.  It doesn't help that as a seventh-grader, she's old enough to take Spanish, and everyone assumes she already knows the language.  She doesn't know any Spanish!  And the other Latinx kids at school mock her for being too white.

Spending time with her Guatemalan relatives isn't as bad as she thought it would be.  She gets along pretty well with her cousins, and she learns how to make tortillas.  But when she finds out her parents want to fly to Guatemala for Christmas, she's horrified.

She's never even met her dad's mother, and she can't speak Spanish at all.  There's no way she can go to Guatemala where she can't communicate with anyone.  That's why she has a secret plan to save her money to secretly take the bus to visit her mother's mom in Florida.  Qui has always been close to her grandmother, and she feels confident this is the solution to the situation.

She also spends a lot of time taking care of her younger brother, Memito, who isn't really keeping up with other kids his age.  He hasn't started talking yet, and now he seems to be developing new issues.

Rebecca Balcarcel's middle grade novel is a perfect fit for all those kids who feel caught between two worlds.  I do think it's a bit of a stretch for a 7th grader to believe she could run away from home and her parents would just fly off to a foreign country without her.  This is a gentle story about friendship, family, and embracing your identity.

The Vanishing Deep

Tempe lives in a world controlled by water.  Since the Great Waves overtook the planet, most people live in floating communities with strictly controlled weight and passenger limits.  There are very few islands of land tall enough to escape the ocean, and Tempe's home is dependant on one of them, Palindromena.

Tempe and her older sister Elysea became very close after their parents died in an accident.  That's why Elysea's death was even harder for Tempe to handle, but then she learns her sister died with a secret about their parents' death. She becomes convinced Elysea had something to do with the accident, and she wants to get the truth.

Palindromena isn't just important because they can grow food on there.  It's also a technological center with the ability to revive the dead for 24 hours.  Tempe has spent all of her time scavenging the drowned buildings of the former world to make enough money to afford the procedure.

But once Elysea is awakened, she doesn't want to just stay in an exam room.  She wants to get off Palindromena and prove she had nothing to do with their parents' death.  Elysea and Tempe make their escape, but they are pursued by two Palindromena employees who are desperate to get Elysea back to the facility before the end of her 24 hours and the real secrets of the revival process are revealed.

Astrid Scholte's post-apocalyptic water world tale is the second one in this vein I've read in the last few months, and both of them were disappointing.  This one started out pretty well, but there were a couple of issues toward the end.  First, there is a forced romance I could definitely see coming, but the two characters don't really have chemistry, and also, they've only known each other for 24 hours!  This next thing is a little bit of a spoiler, but it's the point the author really lost me.  At the end of the 24 hours, the revived person suddenly starts experiencing the symptoms that caused death.  For example, if the person drowned, their lungs would magically start filling up with water.  Even if they are nowhere near the water.  For real.  This is honestly one of my biggest pet peeves.  You can't break the rules you've established for your world out of nowhere.  There is no magic anywhere in this world.  It is set up as futuristic, but realistic.  Even the reanimation process has a "scientific" explanation.  I am probably a more critical reader than most people, though, and if you aren't reading it critically, you would likely enjoy it.

In the Hall with the Knife

Orchid McKee came to Blackbrook Academy to escape.  The small private school in rural Maine is perfect for hiding away from the world.  It's also a perfect setting for disaster when a winter storm knocks out the power and makes roads impassable.  Now Orchid and the remaining handful of students and staff who didn't leave for winter break are huddling together in a former grand mansion turned girls dorm as they await rescue. 

When the headmaster is found murdered, no one is safe from suspicion.  Could it be Beth Picach, all-star tennis player and known hothead, who had an angry shouting match with the headmaster just a few days ago?  Rumor has it she threw a heavy candlestick at him before storming out.

What about Vaughn Green, the townie who attends Blackbrook on scholarship?  No one really knows him, and that's how he likes it.  There are dark secrets in his family tree, and the less said about his weapons obsessed twin brother, the better.

Then there's Scarlet Mistry, daughter of an Indian American real estate mogul.  She doesn't want to lean on her family's money, and she's obsessed with being the top student in the humanities program.  In fact, she'll go to almost any length to get what she wants.

Finn Plum, a science genius, also recently had a dissatisfaction meeting with the headmaster, and he's been keeping secrets from his best friend.

Then there's Mustard, the new kid who is a complete unknown.  He's not a science genius, or any other kind of genius, like everyone else at Blackbrook, and he's not forthcoming about why he had to leave the military academy on short notice.

There are plenty of suspects, but will the Blackbrook students discover the killer before he or she strikes again?

This is the first book in a trilogy by Diana Peterfreund based on the Clue board game.  It's a solid mystery, but not as great as I wanted it to be.  I've read a couple of her other books and loved them, and this just ok.  Mystery fans will enjoy the plethora of characters with secrets and all the hidden passageways in the old house.  Don't expect this to be like the movie with its tongue in cheek humor; this is more a straight forward mystery.