D. J.’s old­er and absolute­ly cool cousin, Rachel, has died. The police and the fam­i­ly are con­vinced it was sui­cide, but D. J. is cer­tain that Rachel, who seemed to have it all togeth­er, has been mur­dered — and she sets out to prove it in spite of evi­dence to the contrary. 

D. J. and her moth­er have recent­ly moved to Bri­ar, the town where Rachel’s fam­i­ly lives in order to pro­vide sup­port for her griev­ing aunt and uncle. At her new school, D. J. fol­lows every rumor, every seem­ing fact, and every sus­pi­cion relat­ing to Rachel and her untime­ly death, but she isn’t sure what to believe. When her fam­i­ly receives Rachel’s per­son­al effects from the police, DJ notices that the small sil­ver goat neck­lace she gave Rachel for her bat mitz­vah, the one sym­bol­iz­ing that she was the ​“Great­est of All Time,” is miss­ing. D. J. knows that Rachel wore this neck­lace day and night, nev­er remov­ing it. Is the miss­ing neck­lace a clue? D. J. hopes to find out.

Mean­while, D. J. pre­pares for her own bat mitz­vah with the aid of a friend­ly young rab­bi and a bat mitz­vah tutor who is the cutest boy she has ever seen. But her per­son­al tur­moil gets in the way of learn­ing her par­sha and of prop­er­ly prepar­ing the dvar Torah she is sup­posed to deliv­er to the entire con­gre­ga­tion. She obtains a posi­tion on the school news­pa­per, hop­ing it will help her inves­ti­gate the cause of Rachel’s death but it only leads to more con­fu­sion and uncertainty.

To D. J.’s great sur­prise, her Juda­ic stud­ies help her under­stand a great deal about life and help her put all her tur­bu­lent emo­tions into a man­age­able con­text. Good friend­ships and lov­ing fam­i­ly help, as well. She begins to accept that per­haps Rachel was in great emo­tion­al pain and that the world is a far more com­plex place than she had ever imag­ined. She learns that grief can pre­vent you from see­ing hard truths and that peo­ple are mul­ti­fac­eted and hard to under­stand. But she also learns that the love she shows her fam­i­ly is help­ful and great­ly appre­ci­at­ed. D. J. and her fam­i­ly begin to heal from the trau­ma of Rachel’s death and from the wake it left behind.

A sen­si­tive­ly writ­ten sto­ry on a dif­fi­cult and painful top­ic, there is much to learn from spend­ing time with D. J. and her friends. This is a sto­ry which begs to be dis­cussed with teach­ers, par­ents, and friends and would be an excel­lent, although chal­leng­ing choice for a book club or a guid­ed read­ing group. D. J. and her world will stay with read­ers and give them much food for thought.