I read a LOT when I was a child, still do; partly because I love it, partly because I was an only child and had no built-in playmates. Was completely fascinated by Nancy Drew, had every single one of the books. Nancy was an only child, too, but she didn’t have a mother; this was never explained to my satisfaction, but the poor woman probably ran off after her nerves were shattered by this weird child who went around spying on everyone. The most impressive thing about her is that she was a teenager, just a little older than me, and that no one batted an eye when she announced that she and her ‘chums’ were taking off in the “roadster” for a weekend to “solve a mystery”! Whoa!
I tried that once with Mom and Dad, that my chums and I were going off for the weekend to solve the mystery of “The Case of the Empty Beer Keg”, or something. 
It didn’t work out, as you can imagine.
She had a boyfriend, but he seemed pretty useless when it came to mystery-solving. And her “chums”, thinking back on it now, were a little odd. Bess giggled all the time, and couldn’t resist sweets; today she’d probably be represented as a bulimic. George (a girl) was always called a tomboy, who had no time for girlish silliness; I guess we all know that George would either be gay or maybe not even a biological female, now, who knows.
