#ItFoundUs

[eldweena]

There's a lot to love in this book. It brought back fond memories of my favorite childhood mystery series, like Scooby Doo; Murder, She Wrote; and Alfred Hitchcock's The Three Investigators, but it's got a fresh, modern take. Hazel, the heroine of the story, is a great role model for girls. She talks about how it's okay for boys to cry, doesn't assume the nemesis of the story is any particular gender, and mentions no less than three times that she may never get married and have kids, but might just "stick with cats." I wish so badly I'd had books discussing viewpoints like that when I was a kid! (I'm in my 40s now and felt that way as a child, myself, but all media at that time was telling me the opposite, that girls had to marry boys and have kids and that was it. Bleh.)

The characters are fantastic. I always love a brother-sister friendship, so watching Hazel take on her latest mystery case in part for the sake of cheering up her brother was touching. They don't always agree, but they're very respectful towards each other and are genuinely friends as well as brother and sister. Love, love, love to see that.

Adults and parents aren't absent from this story. They play some sensible roles and the parents act like parents while still treating their kids with respect and compromising after having heart-to-heart discussions.

Everything was great about this story, but the thing I loved most is that it's actually a horror story. The ghost is real, and I was surprised to learn that the tragedy leading up to the in-story haunting was an actual event that the author discusses in a note at the end of the book so you can research more about it and even look up photos of the cemetery portrayed in the story. So I learned something on top of being entertained, and the story was actually scary. The spirit had seemingly unlimited powers, and you never knew what might happen next.

It was a fun idea for Hazel to have a podcast and I would love to read more of her adventures in the future, if this book were to become a series.

#bookreview #netgalley #ItFoundUs #It Found Us #Lindsay Currie