So I actually loved this book. It’s not as good as The Secret History, but I like it more than the Goldfinch.

To me this felt like a more adult version of those books I read growing up about kids who foray into the world of adults to solve mysteries. Harriet the Spy, Encyclopedia Brown, Boxcar Children, Sammy Keyes, Chasing Vermeer, From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I’m sure I’m forgetting a ton. In those books the kid is always very clever. Maybe the adults don’t believe them or think that the mystery is worth trying to solve or think the kids are capable. But they know they’re right, they go for it, and the always solve it in the end thought clever plans and deduction.

The Little Friend hit a lot of those nostalgic elements for me but kept the story more grounded. First of all the mystery here so much more brutal than the ones in the kids stories. Harriet throws herself at it like she’s in a kids book, but the reality is that she really shouldn’t be doing any of this and there might be serious consequences.

Anyway, it just hit me in the right way because I read it at a time when I was transitioning towards more adult books, but I still had great memories of reading those books as a kid. I can see how if you don’t have that really particular association this would be sort of just a dull mystery.