The Baby-Sitters Club Mystery #33: Stacey and the Stolen Hearts

Pete Black comes up with a new fundraiser idea just in time for the 700 Valentine’s Day in the BSC world. They will sell valentine-grams that students can fill out and send to their classmates. For some reason, he thinks that Stacey is the best choice to help him. They set up every day in the cafeteria, make sales, and get ready.

Stacey sees a ton of people buy the grams. Ben and Mallory write them for each other, Claudia and Josh do, and so do Mary Anne and Logan. She also sees Rose (remember her?) writing a couple, but none are for her boyfriend Brian. Even Alan buys one, and she sees Cary holding one, but he disappears before buying one. Then there’s Cokie who buys a ton for her boyfriend, but he never buys one for her.

One day, the bag of grams goes missing and no one knows what happened. The next day, Cokie’s notes appear on the lockers. Before long, other grams are photocopied and passed around school. Stacey blames Cary, but he claims that he was at the dentist. She tries to trick him by bringing up his doctor’s appointment later, and he reminds her that it was the dentist and even tells her to call the dentist.

The entire BSC gets involved, stalking the various suspects. They even think it might be Pete because he keeps acting suspicious, but Mary Anne discovers that he had a crush on Emily and sent her one, so he’s worried that someone might see it. Rose was sending a bunch of messages to Clarence King as a joke and she’s acting weird because she thinks he might take it seriously.

Eventually, Stacey goes to Cary and he kind of tells her what happened. He says that “someone” was the brunt of a bunch of girls’ jokes. They sent him grams and he sent one to one of the girls because he thought she liked him. She realizes that it was Alan, so she goes to his house. She starts to confront him, but then decides that she will let him off easy. She basically tells him that whoever stole the bag should bring it back or she’ll go to the principal. The bag shows up the next day, though the ones for Alan have mysteriously disappeared. Everyone gets what they should and everything is fine.

There are two B-plots in the book. One is about Robert. Andi gets in touch with Stacey because they recently broke up and she’s worried about him. Stacey talks to him a few times and tries to make him feel better, though he still seems down in the dumps when the book ends.

The other B-plot is some lame valentine’s fair that the BSC helps the library hold. Matthew Hobart gets a crush on Mary Anne and eventually asks her to be his valentine. She agrees, but she lets him know that he has to share her with Logan, and he totally agrees.

*Where does this money go? It’s explained that it’s an eighth-grade fundraiser, but then why would so many other students buy them?

*Vanessa is selling poems in this one. I know she tries to do it when their dad loses their job, but didn’t she try that in another Valentine’s Day book?

*The outfit she’s wearing on the cover is the exact outfit that Stacey wears in the book for Valentine’s Day.

*They never bother telling us who Alan likes, which is kind of annoying.

*Andi sure has some balls on her! She’s making out with Robert all around town while he’s with Stacey, and then she runs to her with their problems.

*The library fair sounds really lame. It’s basically some cupcakes, Vanessa’s poem stand, and a few other random things.

*For some reason, the library has Romeo & Juliet in the kids’ section. I think I was a freshman in high school when I read that.