Ghosts Don't Use Blueprints: A Jenna McGregor Origin Story
by Willow Thorne
Published: April 18, 2026
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Mystery, Suspense, Amateur Sleuth Mysteries
Blurb:
Before
the café.
Before the mysteries.
Before Jenna McGregor knew
Maple Grove was built on secrets.
Sixteen-year-old Jenna McGregor never meant to start a mystery.
All she did was bump into the school trophy case.
But the next morning… it had moved.
At Maple Grove High, the trophy case has been bolted to the wall for decades. Everyone knows that. Teachers say it’s always been there. The janitor insists nothing changed.
But Jenna knows what she saw.
When the case shifts again—and a championship trophy disappears—Jenna and her best friend Lisa begin asking questions the town would rather leave alone.
What starts as a hallway accident quickly spirals into something much bigger:
Hidden seams in the walls.
Late-night break-ins.
Rumors
of secret corridors beneath the school.
And a mysterious figure
in a letterman jacket who appears… and vanishes.
With the help of future football captain Joe Carter and the observant Dan Harper, Jenna begins uncovering a secret Maple Grove has spent years carefully hiding.
Because some things aren’t lost.
They’re buried.
And someone will do anything to keep them that way.
The mystery that started everything.
This suspenseful prequel novella reveals the first case that set Jenna McGregor on the path to becoming Maple Grove’s most unlikely amateur sleuth.
Perfect for readers who love:
✔ Cozy mysteries
✔ Small-town secrets
✔ Amateur
detectives
✔ Hidden passageways and buried history
✔
Found-family sleuthing teams
✔ A touch of nostalgic
Scooby-Doo-style adventure
New to the Jenna McGregor Mysteries? Start here.
This prequel can be enjoyed before or after the main series and reveals the moment Jenna first learns that Maple Grove doesn’t just keep secrets…
It builds them into the walls.
Continue Jenna’s story in the Jenna McGregor Mystery
Series.
After this first mystery, Jenna grows up to open Brewed Awakenings Café, where trouble has a way of showing up with the morning coffee.
My Review:
Ghosts Don't Use Blueprints may not be the first book in Willow Thorne’s Jenna McGregor Cozy Mystery Series, but it marks Jenna’s initial investigation. Ghosts Don't Use Blueprints reveals how Jenna embarked on her journey as an amateur detective.
It all commenced when Jenna accidentally collided with a trophy case in the corridor of her high school. The case shifted, an action it should never have done since it was securely fastened to the wall. This unexpected movement of the trophy case sparked a wave of curse tales among the students. The entire school buzzed about Jenna and her encounter with the case.
Day after day, Jenna and the whole school engaged in discussions about the supposed curse placed on the school’s football team after someone collided with the trophy case. The pressing question now is, is the school haunted or cursed? Or could it simply be a coincidence that the school began losing football games after that incident?
Ghosts Don't Use Blueprints is a truly captivating tale that leaves you with an unsettling sensation. It brought to mind the Nancy Drew mysteries I enjoyed as a child. Throughout my reading of Ghosts Don't Use Blueprints, I found myself thinking that if it were a Nancy Drew mystery, the title might have been something like “The Mystery of the Shifting Trophy Case.”
The descriptions were so vividly crafted that I had no difficulty visualizing everything I read in my mind as if I were a student observing it all. I was utterly engrossed in Jenna’s origin story from the very first moment I began reading; once I started, I couldn’t put it down until I reached the final page.
I wholeheartedly suggest you pick up a copy of Ghosts Don't Use Blueprints today to discover how it all began.
Check out all the books in the Jenna McGregor Cozy Mystery Series I’ve read.
Murder on The Menu
Scones, Secrets & Sabotage #1
Hotter than Coffee and a Killer Brew #2
Burnt Beginnings & Deadly Secrets
Harvest of Shadows and Dark Brews #3
Parade of Peril #4
Ghosts Don't Use Blueprints
