(2) 4-6 Classmates Chloe and Maddie, both twelve, used to be best friends. Now they decidedly aren't, and they're dismayed to find themselves in the same bunk at a drama camp. Scenes of the summer (and a production of Wicked) alternate with flashbacks to the previous school year (and The Music Man), gradually revealing the embarrassing secrets each has about the other and the incident that caused the rift. The dynamic between Chloe, a professional child actor (but, lately, not child star), and Maddie, a self-described "chubby Jewish girl with thick glasses and a tendency to fall over at the worst possible moments" (she has dyspraxia), has settled into patterns that leave both feeling frustrated. They're each figuring things out about themselves, and what seems a simple case of an unbalanced friendship reveals itself to be more complex as the two eventually speak honestly about issues that have long festered between them. The book doesn't reach for tidy resolutions, but there's lighthearted fun to be had along the way, including some creativity with golem stories in a screenwriting elective and (spoiler alert) a sweet queer romantic subplot for one of the girls.

Reviewer: Shoshana Flax | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2023

(2) 4-6 Lara starts her own detective agency, whose cases involve a few pranks and a missing brooch, but she mostly ends up focusing on the mysteries about the people around her. One of those mysteries: why her younger sister Caroline, who's just joined her in middle school, doesn't seem to want her help and protection. The sisters, whose perspectives alternate in the third-person-limited narration, are both on the autism spectrum, and Caroline uses a speech device. Their difficulties in interpreting social cues play a natural role in the conflicts within their large family; classmates' reactions to Caroline form another conflict. Also naturally integrated is the family's "Ashkephardic" Jewish faith and practice, particularly--after pranks and detective work both go too far--in themes of atonement related to the High Holidays. A sensitive and frequently funny family and middle-school story with two distinctive, memorable heroines.

Reviewer: Shoshana Flax | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2021