I'm a softie for a mystery, but this is an extra fun series opener with wide appeal. Kazu's go-get-em attitude will have you turning those pages at lightning speed.

Mysteries for middle grade readers are tricky territory. These are kids old enough to handle a mystery about actual crime, elements of real danger. At the same time it has to be handled carefully. You don't want to glamorize risky behavior. You want the reader to question the kid's involvement when real crime is involved. Holyoak tries to do that. Kazu gets in trouble every time she investigates. When she puts herself and her friends in real danger they get in trouble with parents and police. That's commendable but Kazu is undeterred. She ends the book still running investigations, implying that she could get involved in another crime in future. The actual mystery is thinly evidenced and without enough reasonable suspects.

This was a cute, fun, quick read about a little Japanese American girl named Kazuko or Kazu for short. She is her neighborhood paper girl. She is also an up and coming detective which gets her into a lot of trouble with her mom and a nuisance to the police and neighbors. Her latest case is about dogs going missing and being dog-napped. She enlists the help of her best friend March who is a 10 year old hacker thanks to his college bound sister. They find a suspect and that's not the hardest thing in her life at the moment. she has to sing a duet about friendship with a girl she does not get along with. Talk about middle school torture!!

I connected with this book in a way I was not expecting. The title is pretty obvious but I figured that would be a kind of small part or some kind of prank. I connected with the character of Mrs. Tanner. She is a pregnant woman who has a dog named Barkley. She lets Kazu walk her dog for money and Kazu lets Barkley off the leash. She gets stolen and Mrs. Tanner is devestated.

I connected with this character because when I was pregnant with my last kid, we had a black lab named Shoka and he was my buddy. We moved into a new house before my daughter was born because we needed more space and Shoka had a big back yard. Three days before Christmas, Shoka and out other dog who we had just adopted went missing. The day after Christmas, we got a visit from a man who owned the field behind our house and said that our dogs were ruining his grass and eating the quail and birds. Then he told us that our dogs went to his house and ate his chickens. His house was a good 3 miles away from our house and on the other side of the high way. He took us to court and we were sued for his chickens that our dogs "ate". He had killed our dogs and took pictures of them and showed them to my husband. His grandson eventually came to our house after the court meeting and told us how his grandfather was bragging about taking two dogs and blackmailing the new people in the neighborhood. Long story short, my two dogs were stolen and planted in a yard full of cock fighting chickens and then were killed.

This was definitely a five star read, I read about half of it out loud with my daughter, and we'll continue to read it but I had to steam on ahead to finish for the review. She's patiently waiting to find out just exactly was the Denver Dognapper! Truthfully Shauna gave us a great diverse cast of characters, not just in a beautiful blend of different backgrounds but each character stood on their own. Kazu Jones is our spunky fifth-grade detective with her dog Genki and her best friend March who is a meticulous academic and lover of technology to Madeleine Brown who Kazu has never gotten along with and Cindyrae who along with her love of musicals, loves her dog Lobster just as much. The kids have taken over, in a thread of The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew comes Kazuko Jones, written with an ease and a way that will entice children to pick it up and not put it down. Now there are actions that the children take, and much like Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys, it's not an action a parent would like their kids to make in real life, but this is written for a child's enjoyment and even I loved it Kazu makes some decisions and they may not be good ones but the author has Kazu grow during the book and her actions have consequences but you can't keep a natural detective down for long. There is something just really promising about Kazuko Jones and the adventures that could lay in store for her past the case of the Denver Dognappers. I would say that this is a series to keep an eye out for because I feel this and a couple of others I have spotted lately are really going to be at the forefront of pushing the mystery genre into the modern day for children.

Honestly, I could gush on and on about this but at the end of the day this was a new favorite for my daughter and I and we hope to read more about Kazuko, her group of friends, and her Sleuth Chronicle adventures.

When I was a young girl, I loved the Cam Jansen and Jigsaw Jones series. I always wanted to solve my own mysteries, just like these two characters. Now, I am in college, and my mystery-solving days are over for the most part. This book took me back to the days of sitting in my dad’s giant recliner chair with a pile of chapter books next to me, dreaming of being able to run around town and solve mysteries with my friends. Kazu was such an amazing character, she almost leapt off the page!

Kazu was determined to figure out who was kidnapping dogs from her neighborhood. She has a dog of her own, and one of her classmates dogs was taken, so she knows that she has to act quickly. The only problem is that the police, her parents, and even her friends aren’t really taking her seriously. She has overexaggerated previously about solving a case, and she calls the police on a false alarm at the start of the book, so no one is going to think she is telling the truth once the evidence starts to build up. Soon her parents find out that she is up to her mystery solving shenanigans again, and they try to do everything to stop her. Kazu doesn’t want to make her family sadder, but she knows that the police aren’t taking the dognapping seriously.

My favorite part about this story was seeing how Kazu’s relationship with her mother changed. Kazu and her mother are going through a strange stage where Kazu’s mother still thinks of Kazu as her little girl but Kazu is determined to break out of that shell. They argue a lot in this book, but they love each other in the end. Kazu’s mother has to realize that her daughter is growing into a young woman with her own feelings, and Kazu has to realize that she can’t do everything by herself yet.

My least favorite part about this story was seeing Kazu repeatedly putting herself in danger. Even though I would have loved reading this at 11, even probably cheering Kazu on, I can’t COMPLETELY support this at almost 19. She could have really gotten hurt! As long as your kid knows the difference between real life and fiction, they probably wouldn’t try to copy Kazu. And she does learn her lesson by the end of the story. But if you are worried about your kid trying to sneak around solving mysteries, then maybeeee just have a little convo with them before they read this book. Kazu is an amazingly independent girl, but some scenes I was honestly really scared for her. The suspense was intense!

Overall, this was a very sweet middle grade fiction-mystery novel, and I would recommend it to any middle grade or lower YA reader looking for a fun book about family, friendship, and mystery solving.

I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.

I really wanted to like this mystery, but I found myself getting more and more frustrated with Kazu and her poor choices. And while the lack of graphic violence makes this very appropriate for an elementary grade mystery, I felt like the fear of the dog-napping villains became overwrought. Still, this is an adequate option for students in grades 3-5 who devour mysteries. Review based on an ARC received through NetGalley.