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A review by rwxtd
Pepper's Rules for Secret Sleuthing by Briana McDonald
4.0
This one was cute. I didn't love it, but it's middle grade which means that I'm not the target audience *at all*, so I didn't want to take off points just because I was mildly annoyed when the children... acted like children. That seems dumb.
Characters are all very cute, it's a very cute story about Pepper learning to move on from her mom who died and trying to navigate how she feels about having a crush on a girl. The murder mystery part was fine- again, that part is probably going to be a lot more enjoyable for children than it was for me, because that is who it is written for.
I liked Jacob a lot, he was really great. I wish we had gotten to see more of Andrew, and see him becoming actual friends with Pepper and Jacob- it felt like they got to a point where they could tolerate each other, but Andrew's whole thing is that he's lonely because his parents suck and don't care about him, so I would've liked it a lot more if he had gained some actual close friends over the course of the story. I just felt like they didn't quite get there. So that's the main reason I took off a star.
All in all it's a cute middle grade and I really liked how they explored Jacob's and Pepper's personal stories and journeys and anxieties- I thought it was really well done, but it wasn't the main focus of the story, and I thought it was balanced well with all the other things going on. I wouldn't recommend this to an adult- there are definitely middle grade books I would recommend to an adult, but this isn't one of them. Not really for me, but I don't think that's a fault of the book necessarily.
Characters are all very cute, it's a very cute story about Pepper learning to move on from her mom who died and trying to navigate how she feels about having a crush on a girl. The murder mystery part was fine- again, that part is probably going to be a lot more enjoyable for children than it was for me, because that is who it is written for.
I liked Jacob a lot, he was really great. I wish we had gotten to see more of Andrew, and see him becoming actual friends with Pepper and Jacob- it felt like they got to a point where they could tolerate each other, but Andrew's whole thing is that he's lonely because his parents suck and don't care about him, so I would've liked it a lot more if he had gained some actual close friends over the course of the story. I just felt like they didn't quite get there. So that's the main reason I took off a star.
All in all it's a cute middle grade and I really liked how they explored Jacob's and Pepper's personal stories and journeys and anxieties- I thought it was really well done, but it wasn't the main focus of the story, and I thought it was balanced well with all the other things going on. I wouldn't recommend this to an adult- there are definitely middle grade books I would recommend to an adult, but this isn't one of them. Not really for me, but I don't think that's a fault of the book necessarily.