Prickly Pen Investigations

A little glue goes a long way. Or at least that’s what 35-year-old single mother Lina Rivera hopes for when she finds herself smack dab in the middle of an undercover operation as a high school senior.

Best-selling young adult crime novelist Lina Rivera is strikingly beautiful and can’t even purchase a scratch ticket without being carded. With her twins Luciana and Max beginning their freshman year of high school in the fall, she has never felt closer to understanding her target demographic: teenagers. But when the reviews of her newest release fall short and negative feedback taunts her from every angle, it becomes clear that teenage life in 2024 is nothing like her high school experience back in 1999—and people are starting to notice.

Despite that, Lina is desperate to continue writing young adult books. So when her ex-husband, Jon Cote, who is a private investigator, invites her to join an undercover operation at Emerson Academy, she can’t say no. She agrees to join “Operation Superglue”, and is shocked beyond belief to discover that Jon has been posing as the school’s substitute art teacher for months and without any leads in a case of several missing teens.

Now an undercover high school senior, Lina learns that today’s society is worlds away from anything remotely familiar. And, with her ex-husband back in her life in more ways than one, Lina soon realizes that the choices she made in the past may not be as permanently stuck as she had once assumed.