Size 12 is Not Fat

Size 12 is Not Fat and Size 14 is Not Fat Either by Meg Cabot are light entertaining mysteries. They are nicely written and keep you guessing until the end, when the main character, Heather, eventually solves the case. The author does a nice job of involving you in Heather’s personal life, so much so, that on a few occasions you forget that there are murders to be solved.  But you are quickly brought back to the crime at hand as Heather’s inquisitive mind is always on the case.

I loved reading Nancy Drew mysteries as a child and this series feels like Nancy Drew for the adult girl. 

In Size 12 is Not Fat, Heather is perfectly happy with her new size 12 shape and her new job as an assistant dorm director at one of New York’s top colleges. That is, until the dead body of a female student from Heather’s residence hall is discovered at the bottom of an elevator shaft. The cops and the college president are ready to write the death off as an accident, the result of reckless youthful mischief. But Heather knows teenage girls and girls do not elevator surf. Yet no one wants to listen, not the police, her colleagues, or the P.I. who owns the brownstone where she lives, even when more students start turning up dead in equally ordinary and subtly sinister ways. So Heather makes the decision to take on yet another new career: as spunky girl detective.

In Size 14 is Not Fat Either, Heather has settled nicely into her new life as assistant dorm director and can even cope with her rocker ex-boyfriend’s upcoming nuptials, dubbed The Celebrity Wedding of the Decade by the press. But she’s definitely having a hard time dealing with the situation in the dorm kitchen, where a cheerleader has lost her head on the first day of the semester. Actually, her head is accounted for—it’s her torso that’s missing. Surrounded by hysterical students, her ex-con father, and her bothersome ex-boyfriend, Heather welcomes the opportunity to play detective again. If it gets her mind off her personal problems and teams her up again with the gorgeous P.I. who owns the brownstone where she lives, it’s all good. But the murder trail leads her into a shadowy world. If she doesn’t watch her step, Heather will soon be singing her last song.