Skip to main content

Review: What Happened to Rachel Riley?

Image
By

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stand Tall by Joan Bauer

By DeeDee
Stand Tall By Siena Siegel by Joan Bauer Putnam, 2002, 182 pgs Realistic Fiction Tree is 12 years old and over 6 feet tall. That would be great if he were a basketball player, but he is not. Dealing with his unusual size is not Tree's only challenge. Tree's parents have recently gone through a divorce, and his grandfather has had his leg amputated as the result of an old Vietnam War injury. The strength of this book is the characterizations. All of the main characters are dimensional and sympathetic. Bauer sets the characters in real and often funny family situations. Best of all is the character of Tree. He is boy with a heart to match his stature. This is a great book for boys or girls ages 9-12, as a read aloud or for individual reading. This book could also be a good Rx book for children whose families are going through divorce, or for anyone who feels like they don't fit in.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The New Girl

By
The New Girl By Cassandra Calin New York: Graphix, 2024. Comic. 261 pages. 12-year-old Lia and her family have just moved from Romania to Montreal, and she's doing her best to keep up with the changes. But, she's homesick. She misses the rest of her family, her friends, and her favorite Romanian treats. She doesn't speak French and her English is shaky, which makes it hard to make friends, even in her international immersion class. And she's dealing with super painful menstrual cramps every month. But before long, Lia starts to hit her stride. She befriends the other bilingual girls in her class, she gets a spot as the artist for her school's magazine, and even has a new crush -- Julien. Though she may be the new girl, Lia is starting to fit in. This slice of life graphic novel is an adorable choice for middle grade readers and young teens. Lia is a likable protagonist and readers will have little difficulty relating to her adjustment to school. The text speaks to a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker

By
  Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker By Heidi Heilig New York: Greenwillow Books, 2025. Fiction. 291 pages. Thanks to Cincinnati Lee's no good, dirty rotten, artifact stealing great great great grandfather, Cincinnati's family is now cursed and Cincinnati feels like it's up to her to break the curse. Which involves trying to steal the artifacts back from museums that her grandfather robbed from graves and archeological sites around the world and return them to their countries of origin. But when Cincinnati's first artifact stealing mission goes awry, she decides it might be more effective to steal an all-powerful artifact herself that she can use to break the curse - The Spear of Destiny. Unfortunately her race for the spear will pit her against art smugglers and thieves intent on finding the ancient artifact themselves. If you are looking for an Indiana Jones read-alike, this is the perfect for you! Heavy on the adventure with similar levels of mysticism to those seen in th...
Post a Comment
Read more