A review by librarymouse
Once Upon a Thriller by Carolyn Keene

adventurous funny mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

I picked this book up on a whim, at Dollar Tree. I was honestly pleasantly surprised by it. I have a few critiques about the pacing and characterization, but overall, most of those critiques stem from me not being the book's target audience. Readers are told a lot more than they're shown and the characters ages feel inconsistent. It's like they grow to suit the needs of the scene. At the start of the book, I thought they were preteens, until Nancy started driving. Then I thought they were older teens until the young police intern, Ian, starts flirting with Bess. I think some of those expectations may have come from the meta knowledge that this is a middle grade novel and from how young Nancy looks in the book cover illustration, as opposed to how kids could/would come into it without preconceived notions. With the target age range of their audience, what I perceive as pacing issues and being told instead of shown is a fantastic stepping stone for kids as they age out of story books and into novels. Same thing goes for what I perceive to be inconsistent characterization, in terms of age.  Their lines of logic and conversation have to be both kid appropriate and fit within standard American English grammar conventions in ways that characters in novels written for older people do not. Overall, I'm looking forward to passing this along to some of the kids in my life.
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