Nancy and Bess are excited when they run into their old friend Maggie Rogers in River Heights. As little girls, Bess and Nancy were in dance classes with Maggie, until she moved away to attend a prestigious ballet academy. Now Maggie is part of a ballet company made up of the most promising young dancers in the state, and the company is in town to perform Sleeping Beauty. This performance is especially important because famous dance critic Oscar LaVigne will be in the audience. A good review could catapult Maggie’s career . . . but a bad one could ruin everything.
I am perplexed by the current preoccupation with sabotage (in its many, many forms) in the current Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books. Whether its sabotaging the opening of a museum exhibit, a community-supported agriculture organic farm or, in this case, a ballerina’s career, it seems like Nancy Drew finds sabotage everywhere. I miss the days of missing wills, secret rooms, and ghostly sightings.
That’s not to say that The Red Slippers is a bad book. It’s not. The best of Nancy is here: She’s helping a friend, gathering clues, reviewing her suspects’ motives, and working to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. Even as she finds herself in dangerous situations, she knows her friends Bess and George and boyfriend Ned have got her back.
And she always catches the culprit.
In some ways, The Red Slippers is exactly what readers will expect from a Nancy Drew book: Fast-paced action, twists, and the smart teen detective they know and love. In other ways, I feel like they are missing out on something that I can’t quite -- or maybe won't -- put my finger on. Regardless, this is yet another good entry to the Nancy Drew Diaries series.
Rating: 4 Stars
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