Nancy Drew Diaries #11 The Red Slippers

In Nancy Drew Diaries #11, The Red Slippers, Maggie Rogers returns to River Heights to perform in Sleeping Beauty.  A famous producer will be watching the performance, and Maggie is concerned because someone is trying to sabotage her career.

I struggled with the previous four Nancy Drew Diaries titles because each was read right after extremely good books.  As a result, the flaws were very obvious to me.  This time was different.  I just read a bunch of truly awful books in the Hardy Boys Undercover Brothers series, so I knew that I would like this book even if flawed.

I was incredibly relieved as I began reading this book.  I was finally free of the Hardy Boys Undercover Brothers series, which had gotten on my last nerve.  This story reads like a normal book; the Undercover Brothers books do not read like normal books.

This book is written in a way that makes the reader care about Maggie.  Since the reader cares, the mystery is interesting, even though the mystery is sabotage as usual.

The number of characters is not too many, and I was never confused.  For instance, quite a few dancers perform in the production.  We are told none of their names.  After all, we don't need their names.  Authors of other books have made the mistake of naming too many characters, thereby confusing readers.

I am glad that Bess and George don't "smirk" when Nancy decides to start the investigation.  The girls want to help and are supportive and interested, which is as it should be.

Nothing is mentioned about George and food.  She is a tech genius, but that's fine. George uses the computer, but we are spared from stupid text messages.  Nancy isn't forgetful.

Almost every complaint I had about Nancy Drew Diaries #7 through 10 were fixed for this book.  The only one not fixed is the endless sabotage, but at least the book is written well enough to make up for the sabotage.

I did guess the culprit fairly early in the book, but I wasn't absolutely certain.  The author does a good job of leading the reader to see a few others as possible culprits. In fact, more than one person is responsible for the threats.  One person does a few threats for a certain reason, and then the real culprit does the rest.

This book reads like a Nancy Drew Digest book.  Nancy, Bess, and George's behavior is quite similar to the Digest series, and nothing is wrong with their characterization.

This is a very good book and an improvement over the previous several books.