Format: Hardcover
Pub. Date: June 18th, 2014
Summary:
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?
My rating: 4 out of 5 cases!
My recommendation: Anyone who wants to read a good girl detective story!
My review:
My copy was provided by Netgalley.
Jex has lived the life of the child of divorced parents for ten years. After her mother divorced her father, Jex has lived with her mother for ten years, hardly making any contact with her real father. Yet he's making her spend the summer with him after a judge declares that Jex has to visit her father after Jex's mother ignored several warnings that Jex's father had visitation rights. So now Jex has to spend the whole summer with her father, but she does find ways to amuse herself.
Her father is a top detective, but he has a personal cold case that hasn't come close to being solved. Jex, along with her new friends, are determined to solve the case, no matter what. Yet the killer is still out there and he/she wants to stop Jex from getting too close.
I really liked how this book didn't just deal with the mystery of the cold case. Jex also had to deal with her father and her confused feelings about him. Like, how can he be a father to her when she doesn't even know him. She also has to deal with her new friends and decide if these are friends who she'll keep forever or if they're just interested in Jex because of her father.
I also liked how Jex wasn't alone. She wasn't considered crazy for wanting to solve the murder and she had friends who wanted to help. Instead of hunting after a killer alone, her friends stayed with her, even at the risk that they might disappear like Patty did. Her friends weren't background characters that didn't have any personalities.
These friends had problems of their own and I liked how the author included these issues in developing their personalities. All the girls related to Jex like how they're interested in solving the case just as much as Jex is.
The plot was fast-paced and exciting. I never got bored and it was a real page turner. I couldn't wait to read the ending and figure out the mystery. Like a good mystery book, this one kept me guessing the whole time and I when the truth was revealed, I was completely wrong! And that's a good thing!
The only thing I didn't like was how Jex appeared to be self-centered at times. I know all teens are self-centered, basically all the time, but it made me dislike her at times. She just sometimes seemed more worried about herself than others when it should've been the other way around.
This was a very intriguing book and I can't wait to read the next book about Jex and I really want to know how her relationship with Cooper progresses.
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