Review Detail

Jess is staying in a hotel with her extremely dysfunctional family for her sister Whee's wedding. Her parents are divorced and at odds, her sister Teddy shoplifts so much that she's had to live in a home for troubled girls, and her brother Danny is a disorganized stay-at-home father to Ruby. When the babysitter for the rehearsal dinner falls through, Ruby is commanded to babysit. She's not happy about it, but she doesn't have a choice. While watching Ruby, she stays in the bathroom longer than she should, trying on Whee's wedding dress and makeup. When she comes out, the three month old Ruby is gone. Instead of immediately alerting authorities, she texts Teddy, and the two of them decide that they will start investigating on their own. Jess, who has an overly keen sense of smell, thinks that a woman she found crouched in a linen closet is probably the culprit, but when she goes in search of her, she gets dragged into a car and kidnapped herself. Eventually, she is tied up and abandoned on the side of the highway, but not before gathering a lot of clues as to the identity of the kidnappers. Will it be enough to find baby Ruby?

Jess is very typical of a middle grade girl—she wants to take care of the matter by herself but knows she needs some help. Her sister is a much better person to ask than her parents, because she knows that Teddy won’t be as angry or get her in trouble. In the course of the book, Jess begins to realize that seeking adult help is occasionally a better idea.

Middle grade readers are very fond of kidnapping stories like Peg Kehret's Abduction, Duffy's Missing, or Roberts' Hostage. The Search for Baby Ruby, however, is so vivid that it might not be the best choice to read when babysitting a small child at night!