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Sidekick Super Review: Looking for Smoke (2024) by K. A. Cobell
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
The Basics
Page Length: 416
Audiobook Length: ~11 hours
Grade Reading Level: 7+
Target Audience Age: 12-18
Goodreads Score: 3.95 out of 5
Setting: Contemporary Montana on the Blackfeet Reservation
Genre: Young Adult Mystery Thriller
Topics: Native American Life and Culture, Murder Mystery, Cultural Identity, Secrets, Teen Sleuths, Justice, High School, Family, Friendship, Romance
Plot: Something sinister is happening on the Blackfeet Reservation. Girls are going missing, and others are turning up dead.
Loren Arnoux’s sister has been missing for three months. She and her grandmother have nearly given up hope, their faith in the reservation police long gone. But Loren needs to know what happened to her sister—and why the girls closest to her keep ending up hurt.
Mara Racette is the new girl in town. She and her family moved to the reservation only a few months ago, but the other girls at school have not made her feel welcome. Already struggling to find where she belongs, Mara finds it even harder to embrace her new home and identity while girls like her continue to disappear.
Eli First Kill knows all about complications. His life is full of them. With addict parents absent from his life, Eli is left to care for his little sister on his own. He works hard to keep up appearances, pretending everything is normal--while his family’s secrets become tangled in the growing mysteries surrounding the reservation.
Brody Clark is the jokester of the group, always smiling on the surface. But he has struggles of his own. After his mother leaves to start a new family nearby, Brody’s older brother gives up his college and career plans to stay on the reservation and take care of him. Beneath Brody’s carefree attitude lies pain he tries hard to hide.
Together, these teens work to uncover the truth. Told through their alternating points of view, the secrets of the reservation—and the truth about the missing and the dead—slowly come to light.
Themes: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), family responsibility, coping with grief and loss, embracing cultural identity, surviving trauma, friendship/community and connection, systemic justice failure
You might like this book if you like:
True crime podcasts/documentaries
Learning about indigenous cultures and history
Social justice work and advocacy
Books like: Firekeeper's Daughter, Elatsoe, The Marrow Thieves, Trail of Lightning, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Hearts Unbroken, The Naturals, Promise Boys, Where Sleeping Girls Lie
Shows like: Reservation Dogs, Dark Winds, Echo, Three Pines, Trickster (based on the book Son of a Trickster), Cruel Summer, One of Us is Lying (also a book), A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (also a book)
Movies like: Wind River, Smoke Signals, Fancy Dance, The Fallout, Bones of Crows, Before I Fall
Other books written by this author: Legendary Frybread Drive-In
Teaching Looking For Smoke in Class
Content
Language: Very little and mild
Sex/Romance: A little. There are romances between the narrators of the story. There are a few kissing scenes. No graphic details. There are references/illusions/jokes between characters about sex, but not much.
Violence/Scariness: This book contains quite a bit of violence and mature/scary themes. Teen girls go missing on the reservation. Strangled bodies are discovered and described to the reader. There is a scene of attempted drunken sexual assault between teenagers. There is discussion of hunting and "mercy" killing animals. The books story about the assault and murder of teen girls in Native communities is fictional, but it is a real and current issue. All of these things could be potentially triggering for some readers.
Drinking/Smoking/Drugs: There is a lot in this book. Several of the characters parents are alcohol and drug addicts. Some adult family members are involved in the selling of drugs. The discussion of drugs and their effect on Native communities is present. Some of the teen characters in the story actively stand/against drug use.
Class Novel-ability:
Because of the mature content, I’m not sure this would be the best choice for a whole class read. However, I do think students would enjoy the storyline and gain valuable insight into the Native American community through reading it.
For older high school students, though, I think this would be an excellent option for book clubs or literature circles. I personally loved it and would definitely recommend it to my older students, even if only as independent reading. It’s one of those rare books that can truly engage that age group while also teaching them about an important current issue.
The Star Qualities
It’s a thriller that draws attention to the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). This was an issue I was, admittedly, unaware of before reading this book—and it is a HUGE problem. The author highlights this in her excellent author’s note, which includes staggering and alarming statistics and facts about MMIW. I love books that fully engage me, but I especially love books that teach me something new. It's a book that give me a window into a life unfamiliar to mine. It's one that made me feel the "magic" of reading. Of course, this a book that could act as a mirror for some students--one they could relate to and see themselves in--but it also has the power to teach them something new! This is the kind of book that can spark students’ interest in reading while educating them at the same time. If you’d like to learn more about MMIW, as I did after finishing this book, click here.
The story is told through multiple points of view—two girls and two boys—which I absolutely live for as a teacher. Having both male and female narrators opens the door for so many different readers to connect with the story. Recommending this book to students feels like a win because it has such broad appeal across a classroom.
This book has also been widely recognized in the literary world. It was one of Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club picks for 2025, won the Washington State Book Award, and was a finalist for the Edgar Award. It has also appeared on countless “Best Books of 2024” lists.
Book Talk Read Aloud Section
If you have the physical book, read pages 1- bottom of page 2 (through "Maybe that's how it'll always be.")
*If you have time, I suggest reading the four full pages included in the reading sample. It's longer but sets up the story a bit better.
If you don't, read the same pages in the reading sample here.
"Reading Like a Writer" Mentor Texts
I think this passage is a great example of imagery and sensory detail. The author describes how the scene looks, sounds, and feels. You can hear the heavy silence, see the shadows and moonlight, and feel the narrator’s chill and fear. There’s also excellent use of pacing, dramatic sentence fragments, and paragraph breaks. It creates such a strong sense of dread. It’s powerful, and the reader can really feel it.
I think the star of this passage is the personification of the narrator’s rage. Her feelings are also emphasized through strong imagery throughout the scene—you can really see it all unfolding. The author also uses similes and metaphors to describe the narrator’s anger: it’s a fire, a string, shrapnel. Not to mention this passage includes effective use of repetition, pacing shifts, and sentence fragments. There is a lot here you could analyze with your students and have them imitate.
This passage has so many little craft moves within it: similes, repetition, imagery, foreshadowing, dramatic sentence fragments. All of it works together to create a tone that feels sad, anxious, and foreboding. Plenty here for students to notice, pull apart, and try out in their own writing.
I mainly like this last one because of how the author writes text messages. I’ve seen these structured in a ton of different ways. A lot of the time, it’s much more complicated—pictures of text bubbles, spacing, crazy fonts. Sometimes students think that in order to include text messages in their narratives, they have to do something special. THEY DON’T. This author just bolds the texts. That’s it. Boom. That’s all there is to it. I love this simplistic and effective example.
Sentences for Combining and Imitation
Sentence sets for combining:
"Loren gathers an armful of Pendleton wool blankets, and for a strange beat, I see her years into the future, walking toward me with freshly folded laundry, kids hanging on her legs with her same mud-brown hair." (Looking for Smoke, p. 9)
Loren gathers an armful of Pendleton wool blankets.
For a strange beat, I see her years into the future.
She's walking towards me with freshly folded laundry.
Kids are hanging on her legs.
She has the same mud-brown hair.
"There are stands filled with turquoise jewelry, intricate dream catchers, and purses and bags with patterned beadwork." (p. 25)
There are stands filled with turquoise jewelry.
There are stands filled with intricate dream catchers.
There are stands filled with purses and bags.
The purses and bags had patterned beadwork.
"I stare at the screen one last time, ready to hand it over, but I bring up Safari in a last-ditch effort." (p. 147)
I stare at the screen one last time.
I'm ready to hand it over.
I bring up Safari.
It's a last-ditch effort.
Sentences for Imitation:
This author is really good at the things these sentences display. She uses a lot of ellipses, rhetorical questions, and figurative language. All three strategies are used frequently and very effectively, and all three are easy for students to imitate. Get them practicing by showing them these!
"I was bitter about being here and nervous about fitting in. But it seems like it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway . . . they decided I was an outsider without even giving me a chance." (p. 22)
"My gut is telling me I’m right, just like it told me to trust Eli. At what point do you know if your gut is just full of crap?" (p. 261)
"The emptiness in my core cracks like glass, and anger and sadness seep through the fissures, swirling and bubbling together like acid." (p. 275)
Used this book in your classroom? Tell us how in the comments!
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