13 year old Sherry Holmes Baldwin is back (reluctantly) for another detective ad
venture with her ghostly mother and best friend Junie. Turns out someone is stalking her stepmother, Paula (The Ruler) and the Academy of Spirits has assigned Sherry and her mom the case. It’s a bad time for Sherry, though, because she’s totally in love with her boyfriend, Josh, and is worried about an 8th grade girl who’s trying to steal Josh away and Junie is starting to show an interest in fashion, make-up and guys. To top it off, her mom is competing the Ghostlympics, where the first prize is five minutes of “Real Time”, and both Sherry and her mom want that time together more than anything. So, Sherry really has no choice but to dive into detective mode and solve this uber-personal mystery as soon as she can!
I So Don’t Do Spooky is Barrie Summy’s second installment in the Sherry Holmes Baldwin series and it has the same vibrant, fashion-conscious, bubbly first person narration, and screwball-comedy/mystery feel. Upper elementary and middle grade girl readers will appreciate Sherry’s daily struggles and frustrations with her friends, stepmom, little brother, and boyfriend as much as they’ll enjoy her plucky sense of humor. The mystery itself isn’t all that compelling and in the end discovering the identity of the stalker it doesn’t seem to amount to much, but what’s nice is that Sherry grows up a little bit along the way and her bubbly, quirky personality shines through to the end.
- Posted by Cori