Young Adult Revisited

This is the one where we learn Jessica was a total bitch and sheep when she was a sixth grader. See, there’s this new girl who just moved to town, but she lives with the creepy people in the Mercandy house. Elizabeth and Jessica see her one day and do stupid pre-teen shit to hang around and watch her, like pretending to drop their books and tie their shoelaces. Elizabeth decides not to say a word, but Jessica runs off to tell everyone. Okay, so she really just calls Lila, who then decides that she should call Janet. Jessica caps off the day with a dip in the swimming pool, but oh noes! The pool heater was turned off. Jessica gets sick and has to skip school the next day. Elizabeth sees the same girl again because they’re in gym class together. Her name is Nora and she reveals that her parents both died so she has to live with her grandparents. She’s also super poor and can’t afford a gym uniform, but Elizabeth offers to give her one of the twins’ extra ones until she can get one. Th...

I originally started this blog to recap the horror stuff that I loved when I was younger, but I recently realized that I haven’t done any Christopher Pike stuff in years. This is one of those that came out after I stopped reading his stuff. In fact, this one came out when I was in college, which suddenly makes me feel old. Anyway, this book takes place in the not too distant future. The only difference is that fewer people drive non-electric cars, which is fine because it means that our main guy Mark can still buy gasoline. That’s good because he’s a huge pyromaniac. Basically whenever he gets upset, he sets something on fire. Since his mom is in the hospital dying of cancer, he always wants to set stuff on fire. He goes to the high school play, but only because he wants to watch this girl Jessa. He goes to her dressing room afterwards and she talks to him while half-dressed. He doesn’t think that she’ll even remember him, but she comes up to him in school the next day, smoking and ...

The Craine family randomly pops up when their daughters’ aunt/babysitter breaks her leg. Mallory takes on a sitting job for them, probably because she’s the only one available. The first day that she’s there, she hears a cat crying but the girls tell her that they don’t have a cat. Mallory mentions it to Mrs. Craine and gets the same response. After hearing the crying a second time, she decides to track down the noise. She and the girls find a white cat in the attic. Since the cat is so pale, they start calling it Ghost Cat. The family decides to keep him, but they put an ad in the newspaper first in case someone is missing him. The family keeps him locked in the laundry room because he keeps running away. When they open the door to show him to Mallory, he runs off. They search the entire house, and Mallory finds a stack of letters in the attic. She reads the letters from Kelsey Graham to the girls and learns that he had a cat that looked exactly like Ghost Cat. The cat died one day...

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 ...

Oh man, this book is so freaking long compared to the others on this blog. I have no idea if this will be a super long review or a short one, but let’s see what happens. The Sitter opens with this chick Ellie walking with two little kids. The little boy completely freaks out and starts digging a hole. Ellie sees bones inside and the little girl starts screaming about “mommy’s bones”. Suddenly, it’s a few weeks earlier and Ellie is at a bar with her friend Teresa. She meets this hot guy named Bernie who’s a surgeon and develops a crush on him. Before anything can happen, her ex-boyfriend Clay shows up. Ellie complains that he’s been stalking her, but she leaves the club with him and even has sex with him. She tells Teresa that he’s a stalker, but won’t admit that she slept with him. Teresa suggests that Ellie find a job in the Hamptons where she’ll be hanging out on the weekends. Ellie calls about one job and stops by to fill out an application, but the job is filled. A random wo...

Zach is pretty much a nerd in his school. Since he fools easily, everyone picks on him, especially around Halloween, which is on Friday. On the way to school, he runs into his friend Chris. Chris tells a long story about a ghostly dog before pointing out the dog to Zach. Just as he flips out, Chris laughingly reveals that it’s just his cousin’s dog. A few minutes later, they meet their new substitute teacher Mrs. Gaunt. She wears all white, is super skinny, and seems kind of creepy. She keeps calling him by his given name Zachariah and making a big deal about what a good student he is compared to his classmates. She even makes him stand at the chalkboard and divide decimals. He claims he can’t do it, but then his hand starts moving without him controlling it. Mrs. Gaunt winks at him and all of his classmates think he’s weird when he explains what happened. Naturally, Mrs. Gaunt is even weirder than they thought. Zach finds one of her white gloves inside his desk. When she asks for i...

While sitting for the Kuhn family, Patsy tells Kristy that she saw their daddy’s car the other day. The other kids roll their eyes and say that she’s imagining things because their dad lives in Texas now. Jake pouts a little because his dad wanted to take him to Europe and his mom said no, and his dad now can’t come to his birthday party. Kristy holds a practice for the Krushers that Patsy and Laurel skip because of a dentist appointment. Bart and his team show up, and they play a few innings. Bart walks them home and Jake starts off on his own, saying his mom told him that he could. It starts raining, so they rush home and hang out for awhile. Caroline Kuhn calls to ask if they’ve seen Jake because he’s missing. After calling the Barrett house, she decides that her evil ex-husband must have kidnapped him. Kristy calls an emergency meeting of the BSC to talk about the situation, and the cops show up because she was the last one who saw him. The meeting accomplishes nothing, and Mrs....