Adventures of a New Year's Kiss: A Holiday Romantic Mystery (Funeral Crashing Young Adult Mystery Books) by Milda Harris

New Year's kiss ever. Okay. I was definitely in.

    Kait and I had almost a week to plan everything. Ethan was out of town until New Year's Eve with his family, so I think Kait was bored. We saw each other every day of winter break except for Christmas and talked about our investigation plans. Then we usually did something fun like go to the mall or the movies unless Kait or I had to work or I had plans with Kyle. Of course, Christmas happened too and that took up a whole day. I didn't even get to see Kyle on Christmas because of the two family parties that I had to attend. That was a bummer, but I was now really looking forward to spending New Year's Eve with him.
    The most important part of our plan was to get everyone to the festival. Kait was absolutely sure that Ariel was going. That almost assuredly meant that Sarah and Megan were going too. In case they weren't, we had a plan. Of course it was a little tricky for Kait to do what she had to do.
    The problem was that I swore her to secrecy about the stolen necklace. I didn't want her to tell Ethan. I had two reasons. One, I didn't want to get Kait and Ethan into a fight. I also didn't want Ethan to accidentally mention it to Kyle. I still hadn't told Kyle that I was looking for the necklace. It wasn't a lie technically, but I didn't want to get his hopes up. I wanted to find it and surprise him with it instead. It would be the perfect New Year's present if I could pull it off.
    Back to our plan: Kait convinced Ethan to suggest to his friend, Mike that he should ask Sarah to go with him to the festival. Mike and Sarah had gone to Homecoming together. The problem was that they were only casually dating and they weren't officially going out. Still, Mike thought it was a great idea and agreed to ask her. That meant that we'd definitely be seeing Sarah at the festival.
    The last one of the trio was Megan. Although it was possible that Megan might not show up to the festival, it was doubtful. With both of her besties in attendance it was almost a sure thing that she'd be there hanging out with them.
    Ethan's other good friend, Dave, could have asked Megan to make it a sure thing that she'd be there, but we needed him to ask Claire. Kait talked to Dave about this herself since she wasn't sure that she could convince Ethan to tell Dave to ask Claire to the festival out of nowhere. Dave was a little reluctant about asking Claire, though, because she wasn't his type.
    So, Kait talked to Dave and he finally agreed after she told him why he was really asking Claire. I was okay with him knowing my situation as long as he could keep it a secret. Dave was amused and said he'd help us out. He had nothing else going on and it would be an exciting New Year's Eve if he were going undercover. I just hoped he didn't hurt Claire in the process. If she didn't steal my necklace, then we were setting her up on a very exciting Cinderella fairytale date with a popular guy. Her heart might just get broken if she learned that he wasn't into it.
    After that, our plans got vague. We'd need to run into everyone. Running into Dave and Mike would be easy and thus, we'd definitely run into Claire and Sarah. Hopefully, running into Sarah meant that we'd also see Megan and Ariel. Then if someone had the necklace on, we had him or her. Kait thought the culprit might wear the necklace. It was a new necklace and a big occasion. None of the girls had any idea that they'd see me at the festival since the odds that I'd be there were pretty small. I wasn't so sure that our mystery would be solved so easily, though. If I stole something like that, I wouldn't wear it out.
    Assuming that our luck wasn't that good and that the necklace wouldn't just land in our laps, we had to be prepared to talk to each of our suspects. Maybe they would let something slip. I was letting Kait take point on that. As evidenced by my results so far, I wasn't so great at the whole interrogating thing. I preferred to listen.
    The day finally