I love that this book includes a parent with a mental illness and a best friend with cerebral palsy, but in honest, realistic portrayals instead of "token handicapped character" roles.

I thought the answers to the mystery were a bit too obvious, but that may be from years of reading mysteries and watching crime shows.

Note: I received an ARC from the publisher. ( )

From the first paragraph, Footer’s voice is firmly established and sets the tone for the whole book. There will be dark, there will be funny, and there will most definitely be crazy.

The plot revolves around a mystery - who burned down the Abrams’ farm and shot old Mr. Abrams, and what happened to the two Abrams kids? Footer and her best friend Peavine are on the case. Meanwhile, Footer’s mom has been interned in a psychiatric hospital and Footer begins having troubling visions of the night of the fire that seem to indicate she might have been at the scene of the crime.

Aside from being ultra-readable, I found two of the book’s motifs to be consistently poignant and realistic. Footer’s mother has bi-polar disorder, and Footer spends the book concerned that she has inherited mental illness and is beginning to see the effects. Kids dealing with the instability of a parent’s mental illness are not necessarily well-represented in kids’ literature; but a child’s genuine worry about her own level of stability is something you just don’t see. It’s a mature concern, but Vaught handles it deftly.

Another recurring element that moved me was the broken-people-looking-out-for-each-other thing. Peavine has cerebral palsy and requires crutches to walk. Footer’s mom has bi-polar disorder. A neighbor who has returned from the war in Afghanistan suffers from PTSD. Peavine’s sister is incredibly smart and doesn’t fit in at school (which, by the way, does not automatically put her on the autism spectrum, though it’s surely a possibility). Peavine’s mother has been left by her husband. Stephanie Bridges, the social worker assigned to Footer, is a rookie who is haunted by a tragedy she blames on herself - and she has fake blonde hair (an obvious reason to make a snap judgment about her authenticity, in Footer’s eyes). These people refuse to abandon one another to face life’s rockiness alone, even when Footer is stubborn and hurtful.

This one goes in the short pile of Three Times Lucky and Dead End in Norvelt read-alikes - honorable company, in my opinion. ( )

RGG: The mystery is a bit simplistic but the real problems faced by the characters--parental mental health, child abuse--who are smart, funny, and engaging makes this a very good read. Reading Interest: 10-12.

This realistic fiction novel has a mystery to solve.

Footer Davis’s mom has to be on medication or she can’t function in society; she is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. At the beginning of the novel, Footer’s mom is taken to a facility to get back on her medicine. A few nights previously, nearby neighbors’ house burned down, the grandfather was murdered, and the two grandkids are missing. Footer is having flashbacks like she was there, but her mother told her that she slept through it. Footer, however, is worried that she’s going crazy like her mom. Her mother says if she isn’t hearing voices, she’s fine. This is not convincing.

Footer’s best friend is Peavine, who has cerebral palsy and is smart. He wants to be a detective, and Footer wants to be a reporter. They decide they will investigate. They decide everyone's a suspect, so they are interviewing everybody. This endeavor creates problems for Footer’s father. Footer is reluctant to tell her father about her flashbacks. She’s also woken up in the kitchen with a mess, apparently having eaten food in her sleep.

You’ll figure out what happened before Footer and Peavine do. It’s fairly obvious. It’s a nice afternoon reading experience if you don’t want to think. Honestly, there are better books. ( )