About the book
A famous case. A missing girl. If they find her, will they be heroes? Or dead?
Bored out of her mind during a summer with her police detective father in Las Vegas, Jessica (aka "Jex") Malone starts doing what she does best--snooping. When she meets three new friends who share her passion for crime, from the geek to the fashionista, suddenly, the stifling desert days don't seem so long.
Her dad is never around, just like when her parents were married. But Jex's crew, the Drew-Ids, take the pledge of eternal secrecy and then get down to the good stuff--digging through the cold-case files in Dad's home office.
One of them, the thirteen-year-old case of Patty Matthews, is still a mystery. Finding Patty, who vanished into thin air, became such an obsession for Jex's father that it destroyed the Malones' marriage. So not only is this a big deal, it's personal.
Jex is determined to find out what really happened, and her excitement is contagious. Soon her friends are all on board and so is the missing girl's brother, the hunky Cooper Matthews.
But as they dig up more and more troubling information--more than the cops ever did--they also get the clear message that someone out there wants to prevent the truth from coming out. That somebody is also prepared to do anything, absolutely anything, to prevent it.
Jex isn't afraid; after all, she's a cop's daughter. But maybe she should be.
Laced with humor, toughness, and real CSI investigation techniques, Jex Malone could be the Nancy Drew for a new generation--but with a chilling twist. These wannabe detectives are on the brink of finding out the fate of poor missing Patty. But will they disappear without a trace, too?
About the authors
C.L. Gaber is a well-known entertainment journalist, syndicated worldwide through the New York Times Syndicate. She also interviews A-listers from Jennifer Lawrence to Robert Pattinson for theChicago Sun-Times. A movie-loving kid in Chicago, she grew up to earn a degree from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State. Now she lives Nevada with her husband Ron, once her high school boyfriend; her stepdaughter, Sabrina; and their dogs, Colt and Georgie.
Veteran reporter V.C. Stanley covered breaking news for the Associated Press and was an investigative reporter for the Tampa Tribune, and is now a speechwriter at the University of South Florida. She grew up riding horses and hiking the woods of her native southern Oregon before earning a journalism degree from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State. She is married to Doug and is mom to Nicholas. The authors of Jex Malone met on their first day of college in a journalism class and became forever friends--a friendship that, just like the Drew-Ids, proves that the new friend who shows up out of nowhere might be the best present fate can ever hand you.
My thoughts
I literally grew up on Nancy Drew books. My mom owned at least 50 Nancy Drew books, and I would borrow Nancy Drew books from my local library every week for the entire summer! So you can imagine my excitement when I heard about a new mystery book that is inspired by the wonderful Nancy Drew books. Without a moments hesitation, I knew I just had to read it.
Overall, the book was fun to read. I thought the plot was captivating, the characters intriguing, and the secret organization called "Drew-Ids" was fun. I loved how the four main characters were able to form a strong friendship despite their differences and create "The Drew-Ids" in order to solve mysteries.The book started off really well, but toward the end of the book when the mystery was getting solved, I felt that a lot of things just didn't seem really logical or practical. I was kind of wondering, "Really? Why?" However, if you just read the book to have a good entertaining book and not over think everything, then you will really enjoy the book. I tend to be critical how plots are set up, but I have to say that the authors did a pretty good job at writing their first mystery novel. I feel that these authors will probably only get better as they develop their mystery skills.
Jex Malone is a book that one will struggle putting down because you just want to know what happens next. It is definitely a smart choice for a teenage reader, and I feel even adults will enjoy it because, hey, I did :)
Giveaway
*open to anyone 18+ that lives in the United States or Canada
*Winner has 48 hours to respond to email before a new winner is randomly chosen
*Disclosure: I received the products mentioned in this post at no cost in order to do this review. All opinions are my own.
I read Nancy Drew books when I was young. There weren't a lot of choices back in the late 50s that I was aware of. Those, Trixie Beldon, Hardy Boys and Cherry Ames. I read pretty much each of them.
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