One thing I really liked about the og series was how Johnson gave enough details with some context (the back and forth timelines) that readers could connect some dots on their own but they were so seemingly random that it was impressive when Stevie uncovered the case at the end. I was rooting for her! But in this one, the lack of context hurt the impressiveness of this case. It was cool that she solved it, but it felt distanced. I didn’t really care too much. There were no personal stakes. This comes with the territory since Stevie wants to be a detective and she’ll have to work on cases she’s doesn’t have an attachment to like Ellingham, but some of the charm was lost.

Also, David showed up so little in this one. Are we supposed to be endeared by him giving Stevie nothing? Man’s has so little character development after 4 books. Big fan of the Nate content tho.