TANGLED UP IN MAYHEM

Our renowned middle school detectives, in need of new social media content, get hired for actual money.

Rising eighth graders Amelia and Sloane, fresh from solving the case of Ma Yaklin’s Missing Millions, are pleased with the success of their detective agency, Osburn and Miller-Poe Investigations, and its corresponding YouTube channel. Now Mr. Collymore, “some rich guy from Sandusky,” wants to hire them. He claims his ancestor was swindled out of the land that Cedar Point Amusement Park is built on, and he wants to hire the girls to find the proof. An all-expenses-paid trip to an amusement park to solve a historical mystery? This will make great content for their YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram! Once on site, the girls are quickly entangled in some Scooby-Doo–esque drama involving a team of archaeologists, amusement park management, and a children’s book–writing, history-reenacting, racist history professor. Amelia has told Mr. Collymore that BuzzFeed and Apple TV are interested in their YouTube channel, and now mean girl Mackenzie (who is besties with Mr. Collymore’s daughter, uh-oh) has been posting rude TikToks about Amelia’s and Sloane’s dreams. If they don’t solve Mr. Collymore’s mystery, they’ll be humiliated, but the park management has foiled them at every turn. Through sheer, ridiculous persistence, with a heartwarming assist from an unexpected quarter, the girls prevail once again. Main characters are white.

Sleuths skillfully, satisfyingly solve silly roller-coaster shenanigans.