Seventh-grader Drew Leclair is on her way to becoming a great detective. She knows all of the cases her hero, criminal profiler Lita Miyamoto, whose podcast she listens to religiously. She even has a few cases under her own belt: she identified the graffiti artist at school and found her neighbor’s missing rabbit. For someone named after Nancy Drew, it’s only natural. What Drew didn’t have a clue about, however, was her mother running off to Hawaii with the school guidance counselor, leaving her and her father in the lurch.
Drew doesn’t share the news of her mother’s betrayal with anyone, even her best friend Shrey. Things have been awkward between them since he tried to kiss her. But a cyberbully starts targeting kids at school, and soon reveals Drew’s secret to everyone.
Drew has the profiling skills, along with notebooks of observations about her classmates, to find the culprit. Her friends Shrey and Trissa (a fellow Star Wars nerd), want to help, but what happens when Drew feels she must profile them, too? Will she need to lose her friendships to solve the case?
Add in the complication that, while kissing is clearly on the minds of many of her peers, and Drew has crushes on both boy and girl characters in the books she reads, she doesn’t know if she wants to kiss anyone in real life. Turning to Google, she does some research and then asserts that “it’s too soon to know whether I’m asexual with any certainty,” though she notes that she could still be interested in romance even if she was. Later, she explains that if she had to guess, “I’ll probably fall somewhere in the middle. You know, boys and girls. But I don’t even know that.” Even though Drew is still figuring herself out, it is great to see more exploration of both asexual and bisexual identities in middle grade books, here wrapped in thoughtful context to teach readers that asexual people can still have attractions. We don’t know quite where Drew will land, but the fact that she is considering these possibilities is notable.
Drew also describes herself as having “a little chub” but says she’s “learned to like my pastry belly, thank you very much.” At another point, she observes that other kids are “treating fat like it’s an insult instead of a body shape.” While Drew’s weight isn’t part of the plot per se, she also gives us a rare female character who is comfortable being above what some might consider a weight norm.
The story also lightly but clearly touches on issues of race and privilege. Mystery fans will love this one, but the story is as commendable for the social and emotional arcs of its characters as for the puzzle that confounds them.
Drew is White; Shrey is Southeast Asian, and Trissa is Black.
