The early Dana Girls books have glossy internal illustrations.
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Nancy Drew Diaries #25, What Disappears in Vegas..., will be published early next year. The synopsis begins, "Bess and George's cousin Veronica is getting married..." STOP! Allow me to guess. The wedding isn't going as planned. Could it be sabotage? Surely not, right? But if it is, Nancy will find out!
Nancy and her friends travel to Las Vegas for the wedding of Veronica and Xavier. Veronica is Bess and George's cousin, and Bess will be one of the bridesmaids. Xavier owns Redd Zone, an extreme-sports complex in Chicago. All of the wedding events include extreme sports like BASE jumping, and Xavier films everything for social media. After an accident during one of the sports stunts, Veronica mysteriously disappears. Nancy and her friends search for clues.
This book has way too much exposition. The plot is mostly exposition up until page 70 when the suspense and mystery finally begins. The disappearance does not occur until page 99. I read these books to see what they are doing with Nancy Drew, and I will read the book regardless of whether it is good or bad. In this case, I was mostly bored with the story until page 65. When I reached page 65, I made this note to myself: "finally, some tension on page 65."
I was still a little bored with the story between pages 70 and 99. From page 99 on, I was interested and engaged. The story is 255 pages long. This means that I was nearly 40% through the book before I was interested in the plot. The reason Nancy Drew has been successful for over 90 years is because the plots have always started off fast. The readers get hooked by an interesting plot within the first chapter, often on the very first page. Instead, this book starts very slow and plods along until the mystery begins.
The book also has too many characters. I had trouble keeping track of them. It's not necessary to give the reader the names of everyone who comes in contact with Nancy. For instance, we don't need to know that the cab driver is named Mario.
I'm a little bewildered that Bess is described on page 1 as liking to "drive fast, take risks, and ride every roller coaster in a hundred-mile radius." On page 7, Nancy thinks to herself, "Sometimes it's hard, loving a daredevil."
I correctly deduced the culprit early in the story, long before the story becomes interesting. It's fairly easy to figure most of these books out.
These books tend to describe technology in an awkward fashion. From page 140:
I scrolled down through the list of messages, looking for the little paper clip icon that denotes an attachment.
I feel like the text should simply have stated, "I scrolled down through the list of messages looking for an attachment." I felt like I was reading a book from more than 25 years ago. Books from back then always had awkward explanations of technology.
A passage on page 157 gave me pause.
George looked at the assembled crowd. "I wouldn't say Macy's," she said. "I'd say more... JCPenney? Sears?"
That was where I stopped. My reaction was, "That's odd to mention Sears..." I then saw the next line.
Bess frowned at her. "Sears doesn't exist anymore, George," she said. "Anyway, what are you getting at?"
"I'm trying to think of places my grandma shops," George replied.
Ah, I see. When my local Sears store closed in 2017, I went by one time to see if there were any good deals (there weren't). All of the customers were using walkers or wheelchairs or were walking very slowly. Most were extremely elderly. It was a sad and depressing experience.
I rate this book as overall good. It is kind of boring, during the first part of the book, and then very good later in the story.
eBay's international shipping program makes international shipping much easier for sellers, who don't have to figure the shipping costs. eBay also assumes all the liability, so this increases the likelihood that an
eBay seller will be willing to ship internationally. It can also save the
buyer some money. This is a win-win situation.
Currently,
eBay's program does not offer combined shipping. If you are an
international buyer and want to purchase multiple items from a seller,
ask the seller to put them in one listing. For instance, I had a buyer
from the UK wish to purchase two Sweet Valley High books. eBay was
going to force the buyer to pay twice for shipping. I created a listing
with both books included, and this cut the buyer's shipping charge in
half. I didn't have to do anything special except place the two books
in the one listing.
Every so often, an international buyer feels
that eBay's shipping charge is too high and wants to negotiate with me.
Each time I receive an request like this, I play along but know
immediately how the situation will unfold from start to finish.
Spoiler: The buyer ultimately will decline to make the purchase because
the shipping is too high.
I recently had an inquiry about this bulk lot of blue tweed Nancy Drew books that are in rough shape.
The early Dana Girls books have glossy internal illustrations.
Click on each image in order to see it at a higher resolution.
What started as a game turns into something much darker in this fast-paced YA thriller with a plot to die for, perfect for fans of Natasha Preston and Hannah Jayne.
Harper Jacobs and her friends are just looking for some fun when they decide to start breaking into one another's houses. It's enough to give them a rush, and it's pretty harmless since they all promise not to take anything that can't be replaced. But when they target the home of a classmate, it crosses a line, and one of the group turns up dead.
Harper needs to figure out what's happening fast…or else she might be next.
I found the early part of the book to be extremely interesting. After Harper's friend dies, the plot seems to stall. The story is not very interesting for a large chunk of the book. Towards the climax, the story becomes interesting again, but not nearly as much as the beginning of the story. This book is just okay.
The early Dana Girls books have glossy internal illustrations.
Click on each image in order to see it at a higher resolution.
Don't Let In the Cold by Keely Parrack was published on September 6, 2022 by Sourcebooks Fire.
A claustrophobic, high-stakes thriller that will have you fearing what waits out in the cold.
It was supposed to be just one night in the cabin: one night for Lottie and her brand new stepsister, Jade, to try to get along. When a solar flare causes a massive blackout—no power or cell signal—Lottie knows they've got a long night ahead of them.
Then, in the dark, someone else shows up at the cabin—a stranger named Alex, claiming to be lost and needing shelter from the coming snowstorm. But later that night, Lottie spies him in the driveway talking to two mysterious men in a pickup truck, and she's sure he's lying about why he's here.
Before Lottie can find out more, a fire forces her, Jade, and Alex out into the blizzard, where they must rely on one another to get to safety—wherever that is. In the remote, freezing Tahoe wilderness, they have to survive more than just the elements. Soon it becomes clear that Alex's accomplices are hunting for all three of them, in a scheme that's gone too far and taken a chilling, deadly turn.
The early Dana Girls books have glossy internal illustrations.
Click on each image in order to see it at a higher resolution.
