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sammah's review against another edition
1.0
What the hell was this hot mess!? There wasn't even an attempt at one cohesive story, just a lot of wtf all all over the place.
I'm so glad I'm done with the mysteries.
I'm so glad I'm done with the mysteries.
audreykerr's review against another edition
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
smooth brain, fun read for the start of the year.
I really enjoyed this and visiting the BSC again.
I really enjoyed this and visiting the BSC again.
xtinamorse's review
Read my recap at A Year with the BSC via Stoneybrook Forever: www.livethemovies.com/bsc-blog/baby-sitters-christmas-chiller
nataliesboooks's review against another edition
3.0
Pretty far-fetched and not terribly Christmassy.
— Stacey’s mystery was very anticlimactic in its resolution, especially given how serious the situation was.
— the break-ins in Kristy’s neighborhood plotline was interesting and I liked the neighborhood watch idea. I also liked the inclusion of the Hanukkah party at Abby’s house. The motivation for the crime was a bit odd though. As was the “naughty” and “nice” signs left behind. I guess it was thrown in to make it seem Christmassy?
— Mal, Jessi, and Mary-Anne’s amnesiac woman story was okay, but I don’t think jewelers and shopkeepers would give out information about a customer over the phone like that. I really liked how the Pike family welcomed the woman into their home though. On a side note, calling her “Mary” and then having Mary-Anne be one of the characters involved in this storyline made it confusing, and several times I thought everyone had started calling Mary-Anne by the shortened version of her name.
— Stacey’s mystery was very anticlimactic in its resolution, especially given how serious the situation was.
— the break-ins in Kristy’s neighborhood plotline was interesting and I liked the neighborhood watch idea. I also liked the inclusion of the Hanukkah party at Abby’s house. The motivation for the crime was a bit odd though. As was the “naughty” and “nice” signs left behind. I guess it was thrown in to make it seem Christmassy?
— Mal, Jessi, and Mary-Anne’s amnesiac woman story was okay, but I don’t think jewelers and shopkeepers would give out information about a customer over the phone like that. I really liked how the Pike family welcomed the woman into their home though. On a side note, calling her “Mary” and then having Mary-Anne be one of the characters involved in this storyline made it confusing, and several times I thought everyone had started calling Mary-Anne by the shortened version of her name.
ssshira's review
1.0
in this extravagantly preposterous super mystery by ghostwriter [a:Nola Thacker|133114|Nola Thacker|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-6a03a5c12233c941481992b82eea8d23.png], the babysitters deal with three separate mysteries:
1. leaving her church christmas pageant play rehearsal, mal finds a 9 months pregnant woman with amnesia and tries to help her. she has two distinguishing items: a ring that looks handmade and a sweater from a small maternity boutique based in the san francisco bay area. mal tracks down the maternity boutique, who don’t know the woman. then mal asks if there are local jewelers nearby, and tracks down the jeweler that made the ring. turns out the woman is the wife of the jeweler, and he didn’t even know she was missing because he was on a trip in australia, and she was on a trip to boston visiting friends. we never find out how she got amnesia.
2. someone is breaking into houses in kristy and abby’s neighborhood and painting the word NAUGHTY on the walls. some houses instead get NICE notes and their stuff gets less trashed than the NAUGHTY houses. a lot of vague clues (muddy footprints, a rake, a workman’s truck that’s been seen in the neighborhood that is typically full of jags and porsches, etc) make it clear that it’s the disgruntled local gardener who has been fired by a lot of the neighborhood’s families since they’ve hired a larger, fancier company to do their gardening work.
3. the most interesting of the three plotlines, but also the most preposterous: stacey and claud are in nyc staying with stacey’s dad and spending a lot of time with stacey’s bf ethan (see [b:Stacey's Broken Heart|176729|Stacey's Broken Heart (The Baby-Sitters Club, #99)|Ann M. Martin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387742413s/176729.jpg|170751] and [b:BSC in the USA|290493|BSC in the USA (The Baby-Sitters Club Super Special, #14)|Ann M. Martin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387734751s/290493.jpg|281834] for more about him). he keeps staring at stacey when he thinks she’s not looking, and he seems to know stacey’s dad’s doorman even though he’s never been to visit stacey there. and a lot of creepy stuff happens in the building, like the control panel in the elevator and stacey’s floor being covered in what looks like blood, and someone leaves a jack in the box with stacey’s face pasted on it outside her dad’s door, etc. it turns out that ethan used to date a girl in stacey’s building, and she went crazy when he broke up with her. she thinks stacey is the reason they broke up, so she has been harassing stacey. the reason ethan’s been staring at her is he’s studying her to work on a statue of her.
no highlights. this book is just bad.
lowlights/nitpicks:
-they call the pregnant lady mary doe instead of jane doe. it’s annoying and christian-centric, just because it’s around christmas and she’s pregnant, to call her mary.
-why did the woman take a cross-country trip to visit her friends when she was 9 months pregnant? why did her husband go to australia when she was 9 months pregnant?
-the NICE notes the gardener leaves were made of letters cut out of a popular gardening magazine, which kristy notices when she sees watson and nannie’s copy of the magazine. I find it ridiculous that a. kristy would even notice that in the first place and b. that nola thacker thinks it’s appropriate to make a character be so one-dimensional: he’s a gardener, so obviously if he sends creepy notes with letters cut out from a magazine, you can be damn sure they’re from a GARDENING magazine.
-sgt johnson asks the people in kristy and abby’s neighborhood to keep an eye out for suspicious vehicles. someone mentions seeing a busted old truck, which OF COURSE must be suspicious because everyone in the neighborhood is richie mcrich. jerks.
-I don’t feel good about stacey dating ethan. first of all, I think a statue of your girlfriend is a creepy thing to make for her as a surprise present, and staring at her a lot is just icky. second, I don’t buy his story about his ex-girlfriend. how likely is it that this girl is totally unhinged and that he’s a complete victim in this story? no way. I’m sure he strung this girl along, treated her like crap, and made her crazy, and then tried to act to stacey like he did nothing wrong.
-why does the gardener break into the houses of the families he’s not mad at, just to leave NICE notes?
-giving birth makes mary doe remember who she is and junk. huh? how is that possible?
claud:
-"She had braided her long jet-black hair into a single braid with narrow red, blue, green, yellow, orange, and purple ribbons woven in. Her short red turtleneck dress had a braided yellow belt, and she was wearing purple tights, yellow scrunch socks, and black Docs. Her earrings were in the shape of Christmas trees, but they were painted in rainbow colors, instead of just green."
stacey:
-"That day, she was wearing a short dark blue skirt and a light blue and green patterned sweater that was cropped short in the front and hung long in the back. Her tights matched the skirt, and she wore navy ankle boots with pointed toes that looked like elf shoes. Gold star earrings dangled from each ear, and she'd twisted her hair into a sleek knot."
jackie disaster:
-wears his pageant costume too early for no reason and tries to fly because he's an angel, but his robe gets stuck and he is left dangling
no snacks in claudia's room
1. leaving her church christmas pageant play rehearsal, mal finds a 9 months pregnant woman with amnesia and tries to help her. she has two distinguishing items: a ring that looks handmade and a sweater from a small maternity boutique based in the san francisco bay area. mal tracks down the maternity boutique, who don’t know the woman. then mal asks if there are local jewelers nearby, and tracks down the jeweler that made the ring. turns out the woman is the wife of the jeweler, and he didn’t even know she was missing because he was on a trip in australia, and she was on a trip to boston visiting friends. we never find out how she got amnesia.
2. someone is breaking into houses in kristy and abby’s neighborhood and painting the word NAUGHTY on the walls. some houses instead get NICE notes and their stuff gets less trashed than the NAUGHTY houses. a lot of vague clues (muddy footprints, a rake, a workman’s truck that’s been seen in the neighborhood that is typically full of jags and porsches, etc) make it clear that it’s the disgruntled local gardener who has been fired by a lot of the neighborhood’s families since they’ve hired a larger, fancier company to do their gardening work.
3. the most interesting of the three plotlines, but also the most preposterous: stacey and claud are in nyc staying with stacey’s dad and spending a lot of time with stacey’s bf ethan (see [b:Stacey's Broken Heart|176729|Stacey's Broken Heart (The Baby-Sitters Club, #99)|Ann M. Martin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387742413s/176729.jpg|170751] and [b:BSC in the USA|290493|BSC in the USA (The Baby-Sitters Club Super Special, #14)|Ann M. Martin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387734751s/290493.jpg|281834] for more about him). he keeps staring at stacey when he thinks she’s not looking, and he seems to know stacey’s dad’s doorman even though he’s never been to visit stacey there. and a lot of creepy stuff happens in the building, like the control panel in the elevator and stacey’s floor being covered in what looks like blood, and someone leaves a jack in the box with stacey’s face pasted on it outside her dad’s door, etc. it turns out that ethan used to date a girl in stacey’s building, and she went crazy when he broke up with her. she thinks stacey is the reason they broke up, so she has been harassing stacey. the reason ethan’s been staring at her is he’s studying her to work on a statue of her.
no highlights. this book is just bad.
lowlights/nitpicks:
-they call the pregnant lady mary doe instead of jane doe. it’s annoying and christian-centric, just because it’s around christmas and she’s pregnant, to call her mary.
-why did the woman take a cross-country trip to visit her friends when she was 9 months pregnant? why did her husband go to australia when she was 9 months pregnant?
-the NICE notes the gardener leaves were made of letters cut out of a popular gardening magazine, which kristy notices when she sees watson and nannie’s copy of the magazine. I find it ridiculous that a. kristy would even notice that in the first place and b. that nola thacker thinks it’s appropriate to make a character be so one-dimensional: he’s a gardener, so obviously if he sends creepy notes with letters cut out from a magazine, you can be damn sure they’re from a GARDENING magazine.
-sgt johnson asks the people in kristy and abby’s neighborhood to keep an eye out for suspicious vehicles. someone mentions seeing a busted old truck, which OF COURSE must be suspicious because everyone in the neighborhood is richie mcrich. jerks.
-I don’t feel good about stacey dating ethan. first of all, I think a statue of your girlfriend is a creepy thing to make for her as a surprise present, and staring at her a lot is just icky. second, I don’t buy his story about his ex-girlfriend. how likely is it that this girl is totally unhinged and that he’s a complete victim in this story? no way. I’m sure he strung this girl along, treated her like crap, and made her crazy, and then tried to act to stacey like he did nothing wrong.
-why does the gardener break into the houses of the families he’s not mad at, just to leave NICE notes?
-giving birth makes mary doe remember who she is and junk. huh? how is that possible?
claud:
-"She had braided her long jet-black hair into a single braid with narrow red, blue, green, yellow, orange, and purple ribbons woven in. Her short red turtleneck dress had a braided yellow belt, and she was wearing purple tights, yellow scrunch socks, and black Docs. Her earrings were in the shape of Christmas trees, but they were painted in rainbow colors, instead of just green."
stacey:
-"That day, she was wearing a short dark blue skirt and a light blue and green patterned sweater that was cropped short in the front and hung long in the back. Her tights matched the skirt, and she wore navy ankle boots with pointed toes that looked like elf shoes. Gold star earrings dangled from each ear, and she'd twisted her hair into a sleek knot."
jackie disaster:
-wears his pageant costume too early for no reason and tries to fly because he's an angel, but his robe gets stuck and he is left dangling
no snacks in claudia's room
leighannsherwin's review
4.0
One thing about these books, they are quick to get through. I normally try to remember the first time I read whatever BSC or children's book I'm reading, but since this book was released when I was sixteen I'd pretty much outgrown the series by then. In fact I didn't even know Super Mysteries was a thing. Now I've read all four so go me I guess. So in the last of these so called super mysteries it's nearly Christmas time and even though it's supposed to be a peaceful time, the girls will find themselves dealing with a string of burglaries, a mysterious pregnant woman with amnesia, a weird boyfriend and a crazy ex girlfriend. Good times. It all begins when Kristy is woken up by Karen, who will no doubt be someone's crazy ex girlfriend herselfone day, to news that their neighbours had their house broken into and trashed. The worst part is the word naughty spray painted on a wall. It happens again soon after. To add to the fear in the neighbourhood, Abby's house has a note thrown through the window with the word nice on it, and Kristy finds a similar note in her mailbox. I figured out this mystery while the girls were puzzling over Abby's break in and was ready to yell don't you see? But they are only thirteen years old and fictional so it didn't matter. Mallory and Jessi find a young woman whose heavily pregnant outside the cemetery as they walk home from their church's Christmas pageant rehearsals. She has no idea who she is and is given the name Mary Doe, which gets confusing whenever she and Mary Anne are in the same chapters. The final mystery is Claudia and Stacey in New York. Stacey's new boyfriend is acting weird, and there are mysterious happens in her apartment building. Notes, fake blood in the elevator and the eerie feeling of being watched. The new boyfriend or his one time girlfriend could be involved either separately, or together or maybe it's all an elaborate prank. I liked this book. It wasn't quite as dark as the stalker one, a bit ridiculous at times, like the cops letting a bunch of teenagers solved crimes, but it's fiction. Kristy who usually is annoying and mean, was hilarious in this book and reminded me of my dad, always wondering what the neighbours are up to and nosing in any neighbourhood drama. Karen didn't show up much which was good, cell phones made an appearance, you can tell it's new because you can hear the novelty of it, like how they'll work in a blizzard when the landlines are down. They still use VCRs but I think DVDs were starting to be a thing by then, maybe not. It's fascinating to go back in time when all these technologies we either take for granted or that no longer exist were such novelties so exciting and new. It's part of the appeal of reading these old books again. This was a pretty good book, nice and quick and finally Kristy stopped being a bossy asshole and turned into a nosy old lady who spies on her neighbours even if it was for only one book.
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