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A review by ssshira
Baby-sitters' Christmas Chiller by Nola Thacker, Ann M. Martin
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