THE COOKIE CRUMBLES

Best friends combine their baking and sleuthing strengths to try to solve a baking competition mystery.

Middle school students Laila and Lucy are inseparable, but thanks to the school district lines, they’ll be attending different high schools unless they can achieve their dream of getting scholarships to exclusive Sunderland Prep. Ever since her father’s death, Laila and her mother have been struggling to make ends meet, and Lucy’s parents can’t afford the tuition, either. Aspiring “cookie tycoon” Laila enters the Golden Cookie baking contest—the winner gets a full ride to Sunderland—while Lucy, “journalist extraordinaire in training,” is hoping her article about the competition will win her Sunderland’s journalism scholarship. Laila is competing against kids from wealthier backgrounds, as the show’s coordinator points out at the start, shaking Laila’s confidence slightly. But the tension among the contestants quickly escalates and accusations start flying once a celebrity chef judge collapses after eating one of Laila’s cookies. A storm that isolates the competitors rachets up the tension even more. The girls’ journal entries are interspersed between chapters told from their alternating perspectives, providing texture to the story. Readers will resonate with the relationship dynamics between the two friends, who seem to see the best in each other despite various points of interpersonal tension throughout the story. Laila is Black; Lucy has black hair, brown skin, and the surname Flores.

A lighthearted read that effectively combines reality television drama with a page-turning mystery.