Their Just Desserts

by Tracy Badua, Alechia Dow

Overview

Perfect for fans of The Great British Baking Show and Clue, this enchanting and rollicking follow-up to The Cookie Crumbles follows two best friends caught up in a twisty mystery when jewels go missing at a high-stakes baking competition.

Baker extraordinaire Laila Thomas and budding journalist Lucy Flores are living it up at the top of the junior high food chain as eighth graders. But between busy schedules and kinda-boyfriends, these two best friends haven’t gotten to hang out as much. So, when Jaden, an ex-competition rival, begs the duo to step back into the world of cooking competitions and crime—the answer is yes.

Jaden is desperate: His father is accused of stealing prized jewels on the set of an amateur kids’ holiday baking show. The plan is for Laila to smash the competition while Lucy investigates behind the scenes—but their half-baked plan gets turned totally upside down when Lucy ends up in front of the cameras instead.

As the investigation and competition heat up, Lucy and Laila’s bond is put to the ultimate test. Can they solve this bakeoff mystery, or will they—and their friendship—crack under pressure?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063254633
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/13/2025
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Tracy Badua is an award-winning Filipino American author of books about young people with sunny hearts in a sometimes stormy world. By day, she is an attorney who works in national housing policy, and by night, she squeezes in writing, family time, and bites of her secret candy stash. She lives in San Diego, California.

Alechia Dow is a former pastry chef, a librarian, and an award-winning author of acclaimed young adult sci-fi fantasies, several short anthology pieces, and magical (sometimes mysterious) middle grade stories. When not writing, you can find her having epic dance parties with her family, baking, reading, and exploring her local food scene.

Editorial Reviews

A lovely cozy mystery. — Kirkus Reviews

Delicious baking and sneaky thieves prove a perfect pairing in this cozy offering. — Booklist

From the Publisher

2025-03-08
Two “baking and busting” besties navigate their changing friendship as they attempt to solve another crime in this follow-up to 2024’sThe Cookie Crumbles.

Laila Thomas, who’s cued Black, is a 13-year-old budding chef. She’s looking forward to a slower pace after recently participating in a baking competition and solving a mystery with her best friend, Lucy Flores, who reads Filipino. But life feels frenzied as she’s featured in magazines, works on her cooking vlog, and starts the Bakers Gotta Bake club at school. Meanwhile, Lucy is now co-editor of the school newspaper and interning with Ariella Winborn, her investigative journalist hero. Laila loathes Ariella—even more so because Lucy’s time is consumed by the internship, leaving Laila missing her. And Lucy is disappointed that Ariella just seems to want her to fetch coffee and keep track of her phone. When Cal Parker, one of the fathers of their friend Jaden, is accused of stealing diamonds from the mansion where he’s filming a kids’ holiday baking show, Jaden asks the girls for help. They go undercover to solve the crime: Lucy fills in for a contestant who's dropped out, and Laila joins Jaden as co-host. The nuances of friendship dynamics are realistically portrayed, and the inclusion of confessionals in the narrative adds to the well-portrayed reality TV vibe. Readers will easily make themselves at home within Laila and Lucy’s relatable narrative arc.

A lovely cozy mystery.(Mystery. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews