Girl's Best Friend
Girl's Best Friend (A Maggie Brooklyn Mystery)by Leslie Margolis
Dogs are disappearing in her neighborhood, and Maggie Brooklyn Sinclair knows all about it. After all, she has a semi-secret after-school gig as a professional (ok, amateur) dog-walker. Maggie hates to see a pup in trouble, so she's even willing to help her ex-best friend Ivy recover her rescue-dog, Kermit. Kermit's being held for ransom, and Maggie has noticed some suspicious behavior lately. But she never suspected her crush Milo could be involved . . . (goodreads.com)
I got this book at BEA in May as a fluke. I had just come out of another line, or was about to wait in a new line (can't remember which) when a poster at the end of one of the lines caught my eye. The poster is what I believe the final cover for this book will be. The cover on the ARC is completely different and would not have caught my eye as much. When I got the signed book I also got a postcard-type promo thing with the final cover on it. I liked the cover it had what looked to be a Pug sort of dog on it (turns out it's a Puggle!). My husband and I think Pugs are awesome and so, since the line was short (it was the end of the session) I walked down and got myself a copy.At the time of writing this review (in July) neither cover seems to be anywhere on the internet so I don't even know now if that "final" cover IS the final cover.Enough about the cover! This book was a really fun and cute mystery for middle grade readers that reminded me a lot of the "Something Queer" mystery series from the 1980s (scroll down a little from that link). Maggie Brooklyn is a believable 11-year old. All the problems that a girl can face at that age are realistic, the sudden turning on of a best friend, the sudden interest in boys and the embarrassments that can accompany that, the hiding things from your parents because they don't think you're old enough (in this case it's a dog-walking job and not something nasty like drugs or alcohol, so all very innocent).Maggie was a great character and the secondary characters were also fun, like her twin brother, Finn. I also liked the high maintenance land-lady Isabelle and she became part of a secondary mystery throughout the story.The one oddity was the two page Prologue which I guess leads the readers to know there will be a dog-napping plot, but it didn't seem to come up at any point in the story. It had nothing to do with Maggie or her family, yes a dog was "napped" but we don't revisit that dog or its walker later in the story. Weird.I certainly enjoyed this book and if there are anymore to be released in this series I will pick them up. My one problem? This tiny book is due to publish in hard cover in October and will sell for $18.99 Canadian. I don't think that is worth it to be honest. If it came out in paperback at a lower price the first time around I think it would sell more. Just my opinion however. It appears Leslie Margolis is a well-known middle grade author, so maybe I am wrong.