Tween Tuesday Review: Framed and Dangerous

 *3rd and final book in the trilogy*
**Tween Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at GreenBeanTeenQueen to highlight great reads for tweens. Join the fun! **

Norah and Darcy's friendship is rocky at best. They're both frustrated with each other after their big fight. Norah walks to school alone for the first time in ages.
She's surprised that no one's hanging around outside, until she learns the field house is on fire. The brand new building was two weeks away from being finished. Now it's destruction leaves a lot of questions.
All the evidence points to Zane, the cute boy Norah's crushing over. When he asks Partners in Crime for help, Norah agrees to help him. She summons up the courage to ask Darcy to come back for one last case, knowing that things between them won't be the same. Can the girls work together to solve their biggest case yet? 

My Thoughts: I love this series with smart girls who solve cases. I hated the misunderstandings between Darcy and Norah, but I really liked how they came together to solve this case. I like how the case took on a new meaning with the previous fire and how looking into the past helped them solve the current case. I love the secondary characters and their relationships with both Darcy and Norah. I love the ending, even though I really hope the Norah and Darcy books continue one day. A great tween trilogy featuring smart girls, friendship, mystery, and a little romance.

Cover Thoughts: Cute! And while Kim Harrington was at my library, she dropped some behind the scenes information on the cover - In the previous book Norah got her first pair of glasses, but she has no glasses in this illustration. Kim added in a line about removing the glasses because the smoke was bothering her eyes while she was standing in front of the fire. - pretty cool!

Source: My Library

Author Visit: Kim Harrington

I was lucky enough to get the fabulously funny Kim Harrington to appear for our Teen Summer Reading Kick-off Program.

Here's the book table with all her fabulous books:

And the goodies table, because it's not an author visit without dessert

Kim talked about how she got ideas for her books and how she has an idea notebook now. She talked about characters - and now Clare might be her favorite because she wished that she always had a snarky comeback when she was being bullied, instead of walking away.

Kim shared foreign covers with her. Some are great and some are very strange, not making a whole lot of sense to me. Here's the UK copy -which looks awesome! The model on the cover has major attitude!

Kim talked about her middle grade trilogy, which is super cute. The two main girls are super nerdy and super proud of it, which is great. Kim, herself, is a HUGE Star Wars fan.  I'm loving the nerdy girl trend.

All in all, it was an evening full of bookish talk, lots of laughter, and left several readers eager to read more of Kim's work. Really, it was perfect.

And here are the two if us together - Don't you LOVE Kim's shirt? I do!

 

Kim was gracious enough to pose for a READ poster for the library. Here's what I came up with! Do you like it?

Mysterious Saturday Review: Partners in Crime

* First in a new series *

Darcy and Norah must create a business for a school project. They don't want to do anything lame like a lemonade stand, dog walker, or babysitter. After brainstorming ideas, Darcy comes up with idea of creating a detective agency.

Darcy loves the mysteries and all the forensic science TV shows. She creates a fake website and Norah presents their topic to the class. Their presentation goes well, but the trouble starts when someone uses the site for a real case.

Norah and Darcy want to solve the case of a missing girl, as asked, but they also want to figure out the name of their first client. Can the two best friends solve either of these cases?

My Thoughts: A cute start to a new tween series.

 I really liked both Darcy and Norah. They have a great friendship, but they're both unique in their own ways. Norah really loves astronomy - her dog's name in Hubble. Still, she's not into mysteries. She hesitates at joining Darcy in looking for clues, but then her scientific brain starts getting curious.  Darcy loves mysteries, including forensic sciences shows. She doesn't mind the gruesome scenes and she's a technology whiz.  She doesn't always have the ability to stay out of trouble. Together, they're unstoppable.  I loved that both girls were smart and not afraid to showcase their intelligence.


The secondary characters were interesting and entertaining. I'm hoping to see more of them in the future books. While the bully/prank war was sometimes cruel, there were funny aspects of it. I also liked the moments between Norah and Zane. I'm already looking forward to book 2!


Cover Thoughts: Awesome!


Source: My Library

Fun Fact: Kim Harrington will be the special guest star to our Kick Off the Summer party for the Teen Summer Reading Program on June 27th! So looking forward to having her come visit Otis Library!

Up Next: Sleepover Stakeout  comes out on June 1st