andrei_moldovan

in the final BSC regular series book, mary anne's house burnt down in a fire. her parents decide to re-construct the barn as a house & have spent the entire "friends forever" series working on this project, & now the house is finally done & everyone moves in, just in time for dawn & jeff (mary anne's stepmother's kids form her previous marriage) to come visit for the summer. dawn is bringing along her friend sunny, whose mom just died of lung cancer (as chronicled in the "california diaries" series). the whole book is all about how sunny is a big ball of energy who just wants to hang out & have fun all the time, & how she exhausts everyone with her zany projects. she wants to go to the town pool everyday & flirts with dudes in an effort to find a replacement boyfriend for mary anne, since mary anne has split up with her long-time boyfriend, logan. she drinks fruit smoothies for breakfast & always wants to hit the mall & even go to museums & stuff. she even talks mary anne & dawn into sneaking out of the house & taking the train to new york city for the day, without permission for richard & sharon (the parents). that was a little shocking to me. i didn't really go to new york city for the first time until i was 24, & i was freaked out a little bit even then. i guess these kids are made of sterner stuff...as evidenced by the fact they haven't lost their minds yet, after being in middle school for eighteen years straight. magically, they get away with the new york sojourn, but it forces mary anne to realize that this is sunny's way of acting out in the wake of her mother's death. she wants to run around & be crazy all the time so she can constantly be distracted from having to think about her mother dying. once mary anne realizes this, she has a heart-to-heart with sunny, & sunny cries it out, & then packs her bags to go home & spend some quality time with her dad. o...kay? the subplot is that jeff is freaking out about the new house. he misses the old house that burnt down & is pissed that he has to live in a barn now, even though the reconstruction makes the house sound like it is AWESOME--a million times better than some dreary cramped colonial farmhouse that may or may not be haunted by an angry widower. he cries & acts angry & refuses to decorate his new room, until mary anne convinces him that the pike triplets really want to help him. & weirdly, they do. because 10-year-old boys can't get enough "trading spaces," amirite? sunny pitches in with a bevy of ideas as well, before she goes back to california, & jeff adjusts to the new home, & everyone lives happily ever after. i would have liked this book better if it was just a blueprint of the new house & a list of all the furniture & home furnishings in it, without all the ridiculous california drama. if i wanted to read "california diaries" & catch up on sunny sneaking out of the house to hobknob with creepy older boys who undoubtedly know that she is 13 & wants to bone her anyway, i'd read "california diaries". i read "friends forever" for awesome fights & discussion of mary anne & her family choosing curtains. hook me up, ann m.

2023-06-02 20:52