Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this Advanced Readers Copy of Charlotte Illes is Not a Detective by Katie Siegel!

Did you read Nancy Drew growing up? If so, then this book is for you! Literally, because Charlotte was just like Nancy Drew as a child, and now is 25, grown up and unemployed! She's trying to shake her girl detective reputation - until - her brother's girlfriend asks Charlotte for help with some threatening notes she's been receiving. This hypothetical situation, turns into a real murder. Charlotte thus is on the case! I love cozy mysteries and this was another nice one!

The premise of this book is so much fun, and it is so well executed! Charlotte, when she was a little girl, became famous for solving mysteries with the help of her two best friends. Now, as an adult, she wants to put sleuthing behind her, and in the process, she's also semi-ghosted her two old friends and left them with hurt feelings. Naturally, she gets drawn into a mystery, and calls on her friends for help. This story has so many appealing elements, not the least of which is friendship and relationships. I think that makes for the best mystery novels -- you are there for the mystery, but it is the characters and their growth that make it memorable and keep you turning the pages. This book is the perfect example of that! I look forward to recommending this fantastic title.

This book soothed the itch I had for a quirky, low-stakes mystery. Charlotte is likeable front woman and her friends add different dynamics that amplify each others strength well. I ‘d be interested to see their pasts get more developed if the series continues.

I was so excited about the premise for this book. A former child detective trying to figure out her life as an adult. I found the story to drag quite a bit and this is one I had to force myself to return to more than I would have liked. I did think the book was funny, although it could have been a little more humorous. I did love Charlotte and her best friends. I didn’t think he mystery was so great, but the book overall was enjoyable. I think for the most part this book set the stage for a potential series and I am inclined to believe the rest of the series will be better than this one. Charlotte struggles to get past her child detective days, any prospective date looks her up and can’t focus on anything else. Charlotte is determined to put her detective days behind her but isn’t sure what else her future holds.

Young Lottie Illes achieved some minor fame as a girl detective, but now she is known as Charlotte, 25, newly unemployed, living with her mother, and trying to escape her old reputation. Until her brother's girlfriend asks for help and she grudgingly agrees to look into the threatening notes Olivia has been receiving. This manufactured case develops into a real one, when first a colleague of Olivia's is murdered and then another colleague goes missing. Charlotte assumes the murder and disappearance are related to the efforts of the employees to unionize. Engaging the assistance of two high school friends, Lucy and Gabe, Charlotte travels between New York City and the New Jersey suburbs, interviewing suspects, conducting surveillance, and making everyone around her nervous.

This book is an entertaining romp that is reminiscent of Nancy Drew grown up and not so conventional (or financed by her lawyer Daddy). Like many cozy mysteries, there is a preponderance of dialogue about the clues and suspects, but if that's your thing, you'll enjoy it. #CharlotteIllesIsNotaDetective #NetGalley

Wonderful book. I absolutely loved it and it was a fast fun read. Highly recommend. Perfect beach read.

I hope this is a series!! I love Charlotte and even though she’s no longer a detective she sure solved a mystery. I felt like there was just enough misdirection that I kept questioning who the bad guy was. Excellent read!,

It took me a while to get into this because the beginning was a little slow but once Charlotte starts investigating, I was drawn into the story and fell in love with the characters. Yes, they’re quirky and can be annoying at times but for the most part, they were a lot of fun. The mystery was interesting but while it was the focus of the story, it takes a backseat to the friendships between Charlotte, Lucy, and Gabe. There were investigative techniques that I hated: breaking in, etc., but it was all tongue-in-cheek (I hope it was meant to be because that’s how I took it) and I laughed a few times. I enjoyed this one enough to check out the next one.

Okay so the book isn't quite like an older Harriet the Spy since Harriet never solved any real high profile crimes. I would equate it more to a combination of Harriet the Spy and Artemis Fowl but for adults. I loved this read though. It was a great cozy mystery/cozy thriller? If cozy thrillers were a genre, I'd put this book in that category. Great read!

The characters all have a fun banter throughout and hearing their stories growing up are nice. I found this one a little hard to get into because it was slow moving and at times all over the place.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC of this title.

I really enjoyed this book. While the mystery itself didn't hold a lot of interest for me, the characters were wonderful, and I loved every moment spent with them, especially Charlotte and her best friends. What this book does best story-wise is explore early adulthood where you are anxiety filled thinking you have to be a fully realized and "together" adult. In fact, this book is basically if Harriet the spy grew up to be an anxious, and slightly aimless adult who felt plagued by her former success as a child detective. Highly recommend if you want something fun, quirky, but that is also a wonderful character study. Don't necessarily recommend if all you want is a good mystery story.

I looooved Harriet the spy, Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew, all the kid detectives, so I figured this book would be right up my alley! And.... it was fine. Not offensive, not engaging, just...fine.

The main character is a little lost and doesn't know what she wants in life. She's a good detective but she wasn't very interesting. She's whiny and is not a good friend or sister, but the book is about her growth and learning to accept who she is so we're supposed to be patient with that. (Lucy and Gabe are awesome though!) The mystery itself was ok, a little guessable, didn't necessarily engage my interest, and had a somewhat anticlimactic ending.

I loved the diversity of the book - you name it, you got it as far as everyone getting some representation - but I didn't care for how it was presented. I don't think it's necessary to describe every single character we meet so.... formulaically: Jane, White, 25, queer, wearing a white shirt and jean shorts (or whatever). If someone is described as blonde, can we not infer that they're White? Or if they have a Japanese last name, that they're Japanese? There are a lot of ways to describe characters - hairstyle, nuanced skin color, language - besides just announcing it. It felt a little performative to me and like it was trying too hard.

My thanks to the publisher for providing an ARC via netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

Charlotte Illes is 25 years-old, single and living with her mother in her childhood home. While she’s fine with both her age and her living arrangements, her dating situation is a nightmare, and not just for the reasons usually encountered by 20-somethings in the 21st century. With Googling dates before meeting becoming a de rigeur precaution, Charlotte finds herself inescapably reminded every time she meets someone new of whom she used to be: a celebrated child sleuth who was Frencham, New Jersey’s very own answer to Nancy Drew or Encyclopedia Brown. She even had her own phone line in the garage to take calls from the many people wanting help solving the PG-rated mysteries that plagued them.

In this she was ably assisted by her two best friends, Lucy Ortega and Gabe Reyes, with the occasional helping hand from her older brother Landon. But as she grew older herself, she turned her back on investigating, for reasons still never fully clear to the people who love her. A far more hurtful decision, albeit unintentionally so, was when she started distancing herself from this circle as well. She doesn’t really know how to explain why, or how to get past the fact that she never has a second date after spending her first dates refusing to talk about her storied past.

Part of her reasoning for shutting people out, she reluctantly concedes, is the fact that her present is just wildly unexciting:

QUOTE
What else <i>was</i> there to talk about? How she was recently unemployed? How she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life? How she invented a snack that involved coring an apple and stuffing peanut butter inside, but then stopped making it because the apple corer broke and she didn’t feel like trying to replicate it with a knife? She had spent so much time lamenting that people only seemed to want to talk about her girl detective days and never considered that maybe that was all there was to talk about.
END QUOTE

A phone call from Landon jolts her out of her existential ennui. His girlfriend Olivia Kimura has been getting some really weird messages posted to the front door of their apartment. The notes are all romantic and seemingly harmless, but are still borderline stalker material. Charlotte agrees to come visit Landon and Olivia at their Highview apartment, an easy commute away from New York City, where the couple are both ostensibly employed. She’s not going back to being a detective per se, but she is going to look into the matter.

It doesn’t take the skills of a girl genius for Charlotte to quickly figure out who’s been sending the notes. But her presence in Olivia’s life seems to have kicked over a can of worms, as a masked assailant threatens her one night, telling her to go home and keep her nose out of other people’s business. Charlotte quickly deduces that this has something to do with the recent murder of one of Olivia’s co-workers, and that Olivia herself might be at risk if Charlotte doesn’t get to the bottom of things, and quickly. With Landon, Lucy and Gabe once again by her side, Charlotte starts poking around – not detecting, as she’s quick to tell anyone who’ll listen. But she’s not fooling anyone, least of all a person who’s already killed before.

This was an adorable and entirely plausible story of what happens when a child sleuth grows up and decides they want to be anything besides what defined their childhood. Charlotte’s crisis of confidence is familiar to anyone ever deemed a prodigy, even as her self-inflicted estrangement from people she truly cares about rings true to anyone who’s ever suffered from low self-esteem, however temporary. It’s so lovely to see her reunite with her friends and family over the course of her investigations, even when she’s throwing them into the deep end of her probably less than legal efforts at snooping:

QUOTE
“Who am I keeping a lookout for?” Lucy asked, trying to make her voice carry while keeping it at a low volume.

“Um, um um um…” Charlotte quickly pulled out her phone and found the text Olivia had sent her with Annette’s description. “‘Curly brown hair, five-foot-five, poor listening and communication skills.’” She paused, looking back down at Lucy. “At least two of those things should be helpful.”

“Sure, I’m very familiar with poor listeners.”

“Sorry, did you say something?”

“Ha. Go.”
END QUOTE

The humor throughout made me laugh out loud so many times, especially in the lively banter between Charlotte and her friends. The conversations feel very real, as the friends navigate not just a murder mystery but also the more mundane conundrums of modern life, whether it be dating or roommates or career issues. The main characters all feel like people I want to spend more time with, as I look forward to reading more wildly entertaining installments of this wonderful, queer-friendly series.

⭐⭐⭐⭐
🕵🏻‍♀️📱🔫🏳️‍🌈

Charlotte Illes Is Not A Detective by Katie Siegel is about a 25-year-old woman, Charlotte (Lottie) who was once a child detective and is now currently in runt her life where she wants to figure out who she is other than being a former child detective. She hardly talks to her friends, never goes on second dates, and she over people trying to make her be a detective again, because she is *not* a detective.

This is until her brother, Landon, convinces her to come and stay with him to help solve a mystery of stalkerish love notes being left behind for his girlfriend, Olivia. When there she finds out a local murder is connected to Olivia's work, Scoop (a kind of pick up, drop off service kind of like Uber Eats, but not just food) then someone she meets goes missing. One of Charlotte's best friends, Lucy, (who she's been avoiding talking to) lives in NJ near Landon, so they catch up, do a bit of digging about the stalkerish notes, and then convinces her to solve the mystery of the missing person.

Katie Siegal did well to keep me interested in the storyline. The private detective work Charlotte was really well executed, and I loved seeing how her brain worked to solve the mysteries. I loved how we also saw the side of Charlotte that made it obvious that she had anxiety, as well as a fear of disappointing people considering they had high expectations of her. I loved the characters, and the queer representation, with Charlotte and Olivia being Bisexual, and her other best friend Gabe being a Bisexual Transgender man. It was also quite referencing to see a cast of queer characters, and not actually having a romance in the story.

Thank you to Netgalley, Katie Siegel, and Kensington Books for a copy of the eArc. This review is left voluntarily.

A former famous child detective is now a directionless twenty-something with loads of first dates but next to no second dates and even fewer job prospects. She avoids discussing her past, insisting she is not a detective, but when her brother's girlfriend begins receiving stalkerish notes, she heads his way to see if she can deduce who is sending them. In the process, she stumbles into a bigger crime--this one involving more than sticky notes left on apartment doors. But now that she's an adult, her mom's "no murder cases" rule shouldn't apply, right?

This was the book I was missing in my life. An amazing premise and great execution. We need more millennial and Gen Z detectives. Charlotte was such a fun character, and I absolutely loved her two best friends and brother making up her squad. The friend group, age, and city setting really bring a fresh take on the mystery genre. So many books involving crime and younger protagonists veer so far into thriller or suspense, and seeing a classic, almost old school style mystery, is a nice change of pace. I'm assuming (hoping?) this is part of a series and will certainly tune in for the next installment.

Thanks to Kensington Books for my ARC and finished copy! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

5 stars - 10/10

2.5 stars
This is a cute story about a girl who was a detective as a child and now is in her mid-20s and is a bit directionless. She gets pulled into a new mystery and together with some friends and family begins to investigate again.

I liked this book but didn't love it. Mostly because I wasn't a fan of the whole union organizing plot point that drove the mystery. There were too many people involved and their connections with supporting/helping out with the union organizing was a snooze fest for me. I had to force myself to stay invested to finish the story. I see that the author is writing another book in the series, I hope the mystery is more compelling and interesting in the next one.

What I did like was the friendship storyline and the humor throughout, as well as the various snooping investigative techniques that Charlotte and her friends used. Once Charlotte got over the "I'm not a detective anymore" (which took WAY too long and got too repetitive) the pacing improved. But again, in the next book we need a better mystery to move things along.

If you like cozy mysteries, this one might appeal.

Though I enjoyed the main characters and their dynamic, I was not drawn into the story as I expected to be. There were scenes and conversations that I truly enjoyed, but over all this wasn’t for me.

This was delightful. If you enjoyed Harriet the Spy and Nancy Drew as a child, this would be a fun book to pick up to see what has happened to a favorite child detective. I laughed out loud at several places– Charlotte and her friends are both hilarious and heart-warming and I loved seeing each of them make their way. I did guess the who-dunnit but that didn’t make it less enjoyable. For fans of The Spellman Files and Finlay Donovan–give this one a go. I am going to check out the TikTok series for sure.

This book didn’t work for me. I failed to connect with any of the characters.
Charlotte was not a convincing sleuth.
Like the author, I grew up reading Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, but this adult version of a kid detective didn’t resonate.