Alexis thinks the Cupcake Club feels incomplete—until she discovers that friendship comes in many flavors. Alexis feels lonely and left out when Emma goes away on a family trip. Sure, Mia and Katie are her friends too, but without her BFF Emma to round out the group, Alexis feels like a third wheel. Then when Ava comes to visit Mia, Katie is the one who feels like she just lost her best friend. Eventually all the girls realize friends are like cupcakes—you can never have too many! It looks like a long, boring weekend for Alexis—until best friends Mia and Katie invite her to join them for a jaunt to New York City, where Mia used to live. It’s fun, though Alexis occasionally feels like an outsider. Still, that makes her sensitive to Katie’s feelings when Ava, Mia’s NYC best friend, joins the group. Narrated by analytical Alexis, the story further illuminates her character as she navigates the troubled waters of group friendships, a topic of interest to many girls. As always, the sixteenth volume in the Cupcake Club series offers readers many engaging scenes. Grades 3-5. --Carolyn Phelan From cupcakes to ice cream and donuts! When she’s not daydreaming about yummy snacks, Coco Simon edits children’s books and has written close to one hundred books for children, tweens, and young adults, which is a lot less than the number of cupcakes, ice cream cones, and donuts she’s eaten. She is the author of the Cupcake Diaries, the Sprinkle Sundays, and the Donut Dreams series. Her newest series is Cupcake Diaries: The New Batch. Alexis and the Missing Ingredient CHAPTER 1 The Best-Laid Plans Most people would be thrilled to have off a couple of random days from school in the middle of the term, but me—not so much. I hate to lose momentum. I also dislike it when my schedule is disrupted. I know it sounds nuts, but I’m the kid who listens to the radio on snow days hoping they don’t say my school’s name. So all this is why I was just a little bit bummed out that it was Teacher Development Week at my school, and we’d have off Thursday and Friday. I know, I know, it’s crazy, but like I said, I’m a creature of habit and I like structure. I also do not really like making social plans. I am happy to go to most things that other people plan, but thinking up activities and getting everyone on board isn’t my favorite thing to do. Don’t get me wrong; I love planning most everything else. I plan almost all our budgets and projects, but something like what we’re going to do on a Saturday afternoon . . . not so much. I leave that to my friends in the Cupcake Club: Emma, Mia, and Katie. In fact, I mostly just count on Emma, who has been my best friend since we were little. We like to do the same stuff, and I always include her if I want to do something, like go to the movies, and vice versa. Somehow it just always works out that there’s something to do. Mia, on the other hand, is great at coming up with fun ideas, like, “Hey, let’s all go to the mall and get our nails painted neon” or “Let’s go to the department store and try on one of every kind of accessory” or “Let’s do a time capsule!” Katie, too, comes up with clever plans, like making a gingerbread mansion or building a haunted house for Emma’s little brother and his friends. I do admit I had a fun plan one year, when I convinced us all to go to the homecoming parade and game in costumes—with boys!—but that was an exception since it came from my desperate need to spend time with my crush, Matt Taylor. So now I’m faced with four empty days in a row and no plans, and Emma has the nerve to be going away! Sure, she gave me plenty of advance warning, but her saying she’s going camping with her family and my realizing I need to dream up some plans were not connected in my mind until the last minute. (For me, the last minute means the weekend before.) Emma and I were lying on the floor in my room, watching cute animals on YouTube, and she was counting out the reasons on her fingers of why she was dreading camping. “Bugs, cold, uncomfortable, no bathrooms, bad food . . .” “No me!” “Right! No you, only boys except my parents . . .” Emma has three brothers. That’s a lot of brothers. “Wait! When are you gone from?” I asked. Emma sighed. “We leave Wednesday, right after school. In fact, from school, I think. And then we don’t get back until Sunday morning!” “OMG. Four nights. That is long. And meanwhile, I’ll be—Wait! What will I be doing?” I’d suddenly realized I had ignored my number-one motto (Failing to plan is planning to fail) and had not made one plan for the weekend. I sat upright in shock. “So, wait. Wednesday night, I’ll . . . do homework. Thursday day I can . . . do a little more, like, extra-credit homework and tie up any loose ends with Cupcake Club business. Maybe work on my speech for the Future Business Leaders of America summit.” I relaxed a little, realizing I could fill the days with getting ahead on my work. I took a deep breath. “But Thursda