ALA Booklist (Mon Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2021)

The bad news: Rosie and Baker are orphans. The good news: they live with wacky Great Grammy and not grandma Grim Hesper, a cut-throat attorney. The worst news: in spite of her best efforts to keep the kids safe, Great Grammy is now dead! If Grim Hesper finds out, she'll claim guardianship, pack the kids off to boarding schools, and sell the family home for her personal gain. To forestall this evil outcome, Baker and Rosie freeze Great Grammy in the basement and keep her demise hushed up, hoping against hope that they can figure out how to stop Grim Hesper before it's too late. As the story unfolds, the siblings learn who their true friends are and become supersleuths, all while living on Grammy's stockpiled rations. Rosie and Baker are well-developed and likable, and secondary characters and subplots bring an added level of fun to the proceedings. It's a wild ride brimming with family feeling and adventure in the vein of Lemony Snicket. As a bonus, Great Grammy's survival recipes are included.

Kirkus Reviews

Juggling a misplaced will, a missing aunt, and an unscrupulous grandma-not to mention a sick puppy and, hidden in a basement freezer, a beloved caregiver's corpse-keeps two young orphans on the hop.Devastating as it is to come home from school to find Great-Grammy, their guardian, dead, 12-year-old Rosie and her younger brother, Baker, have no time to nurse their grief if they want to stay out of the clutches of her daughter, "Grim" Gram Hesper, who has been campaigning to ship her octogenarian mother off to a senior condo and the children to separate boarding schools and sell the house and property to a developer. Fortunately, canny Great-Grammy made elaborate preparations to keep her expected demise a secret long enough for the children to track down both the errant will and a far-traveling favorite aunt. Unfortunately, carrying out her plan turns into a nonstop whirl of complications as the doorbell and phone never seem to stop ringing, it gets harder for Rosie to keep friendly new neighbor Karleen at arm's length, and Grim Hesper sweeps in to show prospective buyers around. Chucking in a red herring to spice up the frantic search, a budding friendship to add warmth, and even a set of recipes, Jones dishes up a delicious denouement on the way to a resolution rich in just deserts. Karleen has brown skin; other main characters present White.A delightful, briskly paced caper. (Fiction. 10-12)

School Library Journal (Thu Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2021)

Gr 4-7 When their parents died in a car accident three years ago, 12-year-old Rosie and her brother Baker were sent to live with their Great Grammy, who lived in an old house on ten acres of land. Great Grammy had always been strange, especially once she started doing things like ordering a deep freezer and enough food to prepare for an apocalypse. The book opens with Rosie and Baker coming home from school to find Great Grammy dead in her chair with a note requesting to be put into the freezer until their Aunt Tilly, who is researching a book in Iceland and unreachable, returns. Soon the siblings' lives turn into a charade of keeping their great-grandmother's death a secret, especially from their grandmother Grim Hesper, who wants to sell the land, pocket the money, and send them to separate boarding schools. Suspension of disbelief is required on the readers' part as the siblings keep their Great Grammy's death a secret from the next-door neighbors, the police, teachers, and their own grandmother. Unexpected close calls (a visitor from the National Association of Graveyard Preservation, and a tree falling on the roof) add some humor and keep the plot moving. Rosie, Baker, and Rosie's best friend Karleen are well-developed characters, but Aunt Tilly is absent aside from saving the day, and Grim Hesper's only motive throughout the story is getting money. The subplots, including Rosie and Karleen saving a runt puppy, are compelling and leave audiences wanting to know how each thread wraps up. Readers will ultimately find humor in the series of unfortunate events Rosie and Baker encounter, and become invested in their determination to continue living in Great Grammy's house. VERDICT Jones' novel isn't perfect, but its shortcomings are mild enough that this quirky title is still a good fit for medium to large collections. Liz Anderson, DC P.L.