"A Spy on the Home Front" by Alison Hart

My kids love the American Girl books, just like I did as a kid.  I've bought them a lot of the tie-in mysteries over the years, mostly at the second-hand bookstore, but I've never read any of them myself, until now.

A Spy on the Home Front is a fast read with a pretty serious topic: anti-American spying during WWII.  Molly McIntire spends every summer with her grandparents, and she's good friends with Anna Schulz, a girl her age who lives on a nearby farm.  Anna's parents immigrated to America before Anna was ever born, but now the FBI is investigating the family because they came from Germany.  They suspect Anna's older brother is trying to distribute anti-American propaganda, and Molly and Anna uncover evidence that points to someone else entirely.

Mysteries where kids find things adults can't are often kind of contrived, but this one does a good job of showing that kids sometimes are more observant than adults, but not necessarily smarter.  I had fun reading it, even if the ending was more melancholy than I had anticipated.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for discussions of American concentration/containment camps for Japanese-Americans and German-Americans.

This is the third book I read for the #AMonthOfMystery challenge on Instagram.