This one I read simply to read it, not necessarily for blogging purposes. I didn't look for continuity issues, although there were a few. Shall I list them? Of course I will, what are you thinking?
This is pretty much the same book as #8 Boy Crazy Stacey, except it's narrated by Mary Anne, of course. This book also says that school just let out (but don't get your hopes up), so that would mean it's sometime in June. Unless SMS goes till August? Otherwise, it means they're going in June, and then again in August (SS #10 Sea City, Here We Come!) with everyone else.
I was just skimming over my #8 post, when I realized that they totally recycled the plot for this book from that book. (Someone named Mary Lou Kennedy ghostwrote this one.) In #8, Dawn to Cali to see Dad and Jeff. She goes in this one too. Claudia and her family go to New Hampshire in #8, they go to Vermont now. Kristy goes nowhere, and so does Jessi. Same as #8, except Jessi was still in Oakley, so maybe she went to the beach too. Don't know, don't care.
And I was wrong about the Toby-Stacey breakup. He did dump her at the end of this one. Like he was waiting for her anyway! How many different boys did she go out with during eighth grade? Slut! And Tiff was right, whenever Stacey gets anywhere near the shore (or is on vacation, period), she goes into bitch mode. No sign of Scott the Lifeguard this year. Maybe he got kicked out of Princeton, or is going to summer school, or is in jail somewhere on statutory rape charges. Stacey does mention him, but no one sees him anywhere. Shucks.
Well, Mary Anne's big panic/guilt trip/disgust with boys comes from meeting up with Toby and Alex again. Plus the triplets and Nicky are being jerks, Mary Anne's guilty about "deceiving" Logan by casually dating Alex, and to top it off, all the kids for whom Toby and Alex are mother's helpers are boys. Mary Anne? If you're guilty about cheating on your boyfriend? DON'T GO OUT WITH OTHER GUYS. You know Logan's gonna get all "Me Tarzan, you Jane" and hide you under a rock and stand guard over ya. So she writes this lame postcard to Logan with like three sentences on it and hopes he doesn't read between the lines. In the end, Mary Anne and Alex decide they just want to be friends, because of course he has a girlfriend back home.
Best WTF Moment in this book? When Mary Anne tells Vanessa it's okay to deceive the boy at the ice cream parlor. See, Vanessa has decided that this 12 year old ice cream scooper at the Ice-Cream Palace is totally gorgeous. She starts writing him sappy poems, and he thinks it's Mallory writing them. When he tells Vanessa that he can go out with Mallory on Saturday night, she's crushed. Vanessa writes him one last poem saying "she" can't go out with him because they're going home, Mary Anne says, and I quote, "I was impressed with how grown-up she sounded. I had been thinking about the problem all day and didn't have a clue what to do." Then she says to Vanessa, "You're not going to tell him that you, and not Mallory were the one who fell in love with him and sent him those poems?" To which Vanessa replies, "What good would it do? Mallory is the one he likes. This way is much better. He'll never know the real story, and neither will Mallory." Mary Anne thinks, "It was pretty hard to believe that a nine-year-old kid could come up with such a great plan." Then she hugs Vanessa and tells her how proud of her she is.
After they get back to good old Stoneybrook, jet-lagged Dawn (you'd think she'd just flown in from Nepal instead of LA) is
Dear Mary Anne,
Love can hurt, love can sting,
a broken heart can never sing.
Boys will come, boys will go,
but a friend is forever, this I know.
A friend is rare and hard to find
everyone knows it's true.
You helped me through a very bad time
I'll always be grateful to you.
Thank you, Mary Anne. Love, Vanessa
Cheesy!
Also, I was going to do a combined post about this one and #89, Kristy and the Dirty Diapers, but my photo editing program is being wonky (and I'm not putting a ginormous picture on here) and I've already been dawdling over this post for like 3 hours. So when my husband gets it fixed, I'll get that post up.
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