This was a fun, modern take on Nancy Drew. The ending was extremely abrupt. This felt less like book 1 and more like part 1 of the first novel. ( )

Meh. It started out interesting and exciting, and then draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagged in the middle. Nancy the girls couldn’t make heads or tails of anything for chapters upon chapters, and then in the course of approximately 3 paragraphs the mystery was solved. Granted, this happens a lot in mystery books, but that doesn’t make it ok. I’m fairly certain I know who the overall culprit is in the second book, but with all the convolutions in the story line and the surprise revelations with little to no foreshadowing, who knows? ( )

There was a certain serendipity about my reading this book. After reading Rules for Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson, I had a discussion with a fellow reader about Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, which is mentioned several times in Swanson’s book. My friend very kindly tried to order a copy on Amazon, but, not paying sufficient attention, managed to order another book with the same title, which turned out to be the second instalment of the Nancy Drew Diary stories. Remembering how much I had enjoyed some of the Hardy Boys stories when I was younger, I decided to see what it was like, and whether my great nieces might like it. To do the job properly, I went back and read the first book in the series.

I was impressed by how enjoyable it was. The plot fizzes along pretty quickly, and Nancy and her friends are very engaging characters. It came as a welcome diversion from some of the rather gory detective novels I have found myself reading recently, and was far more enjoyable than the Patricia Highsmith book that I had been expecting. And yes, my great niece enjoyed it too. ( )

Good narration by Jorjeana Marie on an updated version with modern tech applied in the plotting of a Nancy Drew mystery, and it's a fitting intro to (this is the first of the ND diaries series) a classic young readers' favorite from a bygone era. ( )