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Review: What Happened to Rachel Riley?

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By Claire Swinarski
New York: Quill Tree Books, 2023. Mystery.

12-year-old Anna Hunt is the new girl in school. Starting a new school in eighth grade should be scary, but she's surprised that the kids at her new school are mostly pretty nice -- to her and to each other. With the major exception of Rachel Riley. Anna can't figure out any reason why the kids in her grade wouldn't like Rachel Riley, but she is a complete and total outcast. Anna can't stop thinking about what happened to make Rachel Riley -- a girl who seemed popular and friendly -- turn into a social pariah. Anna dreams of being the next Sarah Koenig, so she turns her investigative podcast skills towards the story of Rachel Riley and starts asking the difficult questions of her peers to figure out what happened.

This is a quietly suspenseful book and a great audiobook that reads like a podcast. We are solving the mystery of what happened to Rachel Riley right alongside Anna. The slow reveal works well for this book, and clues dropped along the way show what happens when bullying goes beyond bullying and into the land of sexual harassment -- and the ways that harassment can be swept under the rug. The characters in this book are complex, the plot and pacing are compelling, and older middle grade readers will be invested in the mystery.
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