friends are everything

Charlotte Illes Is Not a Detective by Katie Siegel

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: cozy mystery

Review: Charlotte Illes was a detective when she was a kid.  But that was then, and this is now, and she does not want to talk about it.  Unfortunately, she doesn't really have a sense of who she is now.  But she's not a detective, and watching her childhood friends figure out who they are as adults is giving her a crisis of confidence.  Convincing herself that they don't need or want her messy feelings in their lives, she begins to pull away from them, and from her older brother.  But when her brother's girlfriend starts getting love notes from an anonymous stranger, Charlotte agrees to poke around a little bit.  Soon, she's got two mysteries to solve, and her friends are eager to resume their roles as her trusty assistants.  Can Charlotte figure out how to move into adulthood with her friends, and maybe still be a detective, a little bit, on the side?

Charlotte is a very sympathetic character, and readers will be rooting for her to not only solve the mysteries, but also to figure out how to be both a former kid detective and an adult.  The best parts of the book, though, are Charlotte's interactions with her best friends, Lucy and Gabe.  The bond that they share, and the support they give to Charlotte, and that she's relearning to give to them, is beautifully written, and comes wrapped in the best kind of snarky dialogue.

With a cast of diverse, likeable, and offbeat characters, and an intricate plot, this book will have instant appeal for fans of cozy mysyteries.