Young Adult Revisited

Janine is helping Claudia study for her next math test and surprisingly enough, she’s doing really well. Her regular math teacher is out of town or sick or something, so she has this substitute named Mr. Zorzi. Check out that pic of him on the cover. He reminds me of a teacher from a bad 80’s sitcom, but I can’t quite think who. Anyway, everyone tells her that she’s going to do great on the test and she starts to feel more confident. A few days later, they get their test results back and she totally nailed it! A- suckers. The teacher calls her and Shawna Riverson to the front of the room after class and points out that not only did they get the same grade and miss the same questions, but they answered every single question in the same way. Shawna instantly does the “I’d never cheat”, while Claudia twiddles her thumbs. By the time she gets around to defending herself, the teacher has already made up his mind. He thinks she cheated, so she’ll get a failing grade on the test. The pri

For some reason, I really like this book and I remembered way too much about it! The book opens with this buy John Marin, who’s stuck in prison. He cuts a bunch of photos of the twins from local newspapers and sticks them up in his cell. He talks about using Liz’s love of books and Jessica’s love of the spotlight against them both. Then the books jump to the Wakefield house, where the twins are getting ready to start their 700th summer jobs. This time they’re working at the Marina Café and I’m summer, but I can’t see Jess voluntarily working as a waitress. Steve is home for the summer too (big surprise) and working at the law office. Ned nearly chokes to death when he reads in the paper that John Marin was paroled. We get the backstory of how Marin killed a woman and her teenage daughter, after kidnapping them from Secca Lake. He threatened the twins when he was being lead out of the court. This brings up two questions. First of all, how the hell do you get paroled after ten y

Ann M. Martin apparently decided that no one realizes Jessi is black, so she had this book done just to remind us. I think the whole book is about how she’s black and no one understands what that means for her. When the book starts, she’s all excited about Kwanzaa and gives us a long (I mean pages and pages long) description of the holidays. Apparently she’s the only one in the family who cares because Becca is making a list for Santa and talking about everything she wants for Christmas. At a BSC meeting, Kristy points out that Kwanzaa is only for African-American people and Jessi gets kind of pissed off. She thinks that other people might feel this way, when it’s actually about bringing people together. Yet five pages before, she actually said it’s only for black people. Make up your mind Jessi! So she comes up with this “brilliant” idea to host a festival and invite people of all colors. Aunt Cecilia is living with the family and acting as bitchy as ever. She keeps lecturing t

Adam and his girlfriend Mitzi (what a name) are out on the water, tooting around on a water scooter. Anyone know what that is? Anyway, they’re goofing around and she accidentally falls overboard. When he turns around to save her, he accidentally hits her in the head with the scooter and she starts bleeding. He falls off and tries to save her again, but the scooter goes crazy and starts chasing them both. Suddenly he wakes up in his own bed, with his roommate Ian staring at him. It turns out that his girlfriend Mitzi died the previous summer when they snuck out on a scooter. Ever since then, he’s been having bad dreams. He looks down at his legs and starts screaming because his legs are missing. Cut to Adam sitting with his psychiatrist Dr. Thall and telling him about his hallucination. The doctor’s worried because Adam had hallucinations before, but he got passed them. Adam then goes off to his job as a lifeguard…seriously? Would anyone want a guy who’s girlfriend drowned and has

So Stacey is now living in New York, since her dad got transferred back to town and her parents are still together. The people in her building decide that they need to get together and figure out what to do about the homeless in their neighborhood. But what will they do with all their kids? It’s the BSC to the rescue when Stacey invites the elder members to stay with them for a weekend. The girls take the train to NYC and agree to meet at the information desk. Stacey ends up waiting around for like 20 minutes, freaking out that their train was delayed or they somehow ended up lost. Turns out that they followed everyone else off the train and got a little lost. She gets all annoyed because they walked right past the desk and didn’t see her, even though she didn’t see them either. She also gets annoyed because Mary Anne won’t shut the fuck up about the town and Claudia brought some huge ass suitcase that looks more like a trunk. After dropping their bags off at the apartment, they t

Oh dear lord, do you guys have any idea how long it’s been since I picked up a Sweet Valley Twins book? I stopped reading these way before I gave up the BSC. For some reason, when I hit 12 or so, I became obsessed with SVH and BSC. I *may* have even stopped reading these by the time I was the same age as the twins. This was a total trip for me! So Jessica has this friend Mary, who’s in the Unicorn club, but doesn’t seem nearly as snotty/bitchy as the girls in that group. OMG, the Unicorn club, I love it! Sorry LOL. The club all meets because they want to throw a dance (this is Sweet Valley after all), but the club treasury is way low. They decide to write celebrities and ask for their favorite recipe, then make a book and sell it. Really? Does the ghost writer think celebrities write back in a few days? I’m still waiting for Christian Slater to respond to the letter I wrote him when I was 12. Do you think it’s time to give up on that dream? Jessica volunteers to type everything

I promised you wouldn’t get an onslaught of BSC books, but would could be better for Halloween than a mystery book? Granted it does take place at the mall and no one wears any costumes…What can I say? I always liked Stacey. Stoneybrook Middle School is hosting a new program called Short Takes, where the students have a week-long class in a different area. They just finished up one on buying stocks and since it involved math, Stacey naturally nailed it. The next program forces the kids to get a job in the neighborhood and I find it completely ridiculous. First of all, it’s a week long program and they get out of school for like three full days because of it. Second, it’s illegal for 11-13 year olds to work (even Mal and Jessi are part of it). Plus they somehow got enough shop keepers to agree to this program that every kid in school can take part. How big is this freaking mall? Of course all the girls get to do something they like, except for poor Jessi. She’s stuck working as an