I needed a short book to fill some review space, so here's a Nancy Drew book review. This is the 175th Nancy Drew classic - Werewolf In A Winter Wonderland. I collect these books. It's about 150 pages long and should be an easy read to fill some review space. This will not be spoiler free. You've been warned.
The plot of this book is Nancy Drew and her friends working for a winter carnival where things are going horribly wrong (as usual, for a Nancy Drew mystery). There is allegedly a werewolf running around, two wolves missing from a wolf reserve, and the carnival is getting sabotaged in nasty ways. This is all par for the course for these small classics.
Nancy Drew is a teenage sleuth in the small town of River Heights. If you don't know who she is a quick Google search will clear up your confusion. She's been around since the 1930s, starting as books and branching into movies and TV shows. This doesn't feature The Hardy Boys, but that series does connect to Nancy Drew in the Supermysteries series (there are two series of those).
Overall Thoughts
This is something your child could pick up and enjoy. These are not hard to read, nor do they take a lot of time to read. I could read three of these books in one afternoon. All the same, an adult and a child can enjoy these. They are for all ages. That's something I love about Nancy Drew. Any parent can hand this to a child with confidence, knowing that they aren't getting inappropriate content, and any parent can read them with their child.
This was well written. The culprit was foreshadowed nicely, through dialogue and other subtle ways. They dropped that dialogue into the latter parts of the book. You had two mysteries in this - the carnival incidents and the WildWolf kidnappings. The culprit was part of both. He was subtly hidden and very well written into the plot. He was woven into the friend group in the beginning. I didn't suspect him at first. I had fallen for the red herring (false culprit) of the sheep farmer. When it turned out to be Willy, I had figured it out by then. There was enough evidence in dialogue to figure out Willy's background.
The werewolf was an actor. It was fun to see that Poodles McNulty, carnival director, embraced the chaos of the event to make a name for the carnival. That was a little detail I wasn't surprised by, but enjoyed a lot. That was another red herring that appeared.
What I loved, loved, loved was the way the detective (police detective) and Nancy worked together. Nancy used her friends for support and investigated without getting in the way of the trained police detective. The police detective investigated without restricting Nancy, keeping her in the loop so she wouldn't step in when it was too dangerous. There was mutual respect there. The police detective ended up defending her from the sheep farmer when she needed it. They were working the cases together, not stepping on each other's toes and making the investigation a mess. It made it more fun to read. Even the dialogue portrayed their respect toward each other.
Conclusion
From the respect between police and Nancy's crew to the foreshadowing and connecting cases, this was a fun one to read. Nothing had me saying "what? how?" or "wait, that isn't possible". Everything was possible in real life. Someone could have easily done all this, even to the nasty wolf-nappings that meant two wolves had been shipped out for money. That part of the plot was a bit sobering as to Willy's character, and terrifying. We don't get a for-sure on whether they find those alpha wolves. We only find the pups.
Fives stars, because there is nothing here to dislike. Short book, easy to read, plausible plot, and overall fun times. This one is worth your afternoon, and you can read it with your kids.
Cheers and God bless!
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Morrow is coming out before Christmas 2025. This novella is the story of two women writing a family history for the Morrow family. They find a nasty secret while researching. Will they survive their internship? Find out when the book releases this year.
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