By Mary McGarry Morris (Crown: 2011)

Poised on the brink between childhood and adolescence, 13 year old Nellie Peck sees the people and events around her with unusual clarity and honesty. Her “normal” family is filled with tensions: the family business is failing; older sister Ruth is intent on

contacting her birth father who hasn’t paid a lick of attention to her in her whole life; little brother Henry is fearful and fragile, and her parents seem on the edge of a breakup. Then their tenant, Dolly Bodelia, is murdered in her apartment and only Nellie knows who did it, but no one will believe her.
Thinking back on it, I doubt that anyone would select the age of 13 as one we’d want to relive, and Nellie’s skirting problems with her classmates rings all too true. She emerges as a wiser more realistic person, one we’re pretty sure will successfully surmount the troubles all teen agers go through.
No matter how many times I thought I’d quit reading this one, I couldn’t stop because I had to learn how things turned out for all the characters….and I’m glad Boone (the dog) got a good home.

--Reviewed by Carol Boston - © 2012