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A review by finesilkflower
Baby-sitters' Christmas Chiller by Nola Thacker, Ann M. Martin
3.0
If any Baby-sitters Club book could be described as Lynchian, it's this one. Dig beneath the surface of an ordinary suburban Christmas to find a mysterious woman with amnesia, a deranged gardener, a wall of blood, a man whose hair has suddenly turned white (really).
I'm not saying this is well-executed, with the suspense and originality and startling evocativeness of a Twin Peaks or a Mulholland Drive; it is still a Baby-sitters Club Super Mystery, the worst kind of Baby-sitters Club book, with all the faults of the super specials (frenetic switching between narrators, lack of characterization, too many plots with too little development) and all the faults of the mysteries (implausible, poorly constructed, clumsily telegraphed). And tonally, this is a terrible Christmas book. These are basically Halloween stories, only with a Nativity pageant instead of a costume party and "naughty or nice" instead of "trick or treat." But, grading admittedly on a curve, I actually kind of liked this one. There is an energy and a spark to it, especially the Stacey and Ethan storyline which casts suspicion on Ethan so effectively that I actually retroactively distrust him (even though I liked him in other books).
Lingering Questions: What was Mr. Nixon's plan, exactly? Even if he thought that his ex-clients having their places ransacked for using the wrong gardener would cause them to change gardeners instead of, you know, arrest him, there's no way it could influence their behavior, because nobody knew who did it or why until the BSC "solved" the mystery (and therefore identified the criminal.) If he meant to send a pointed message to his ex-clients, it was awfully poorly done.
Why did giving birth help Mary's memory return??
I'm not saying this is well-executed, with the suspense and originality and startling evocativeness of a Twin Peaks or a Mulholland Drive; it is still a Baby-sitters Club Super Mystery, the worst kind of Baby-sitters Club book, with all the faults of the super specials (frenetic switching between narrators, lack of characterization, too many plots with too little development) and all the faults of the mysteries (implausible, poorly constructed, clumsily telegraphed). And tonally, this is a terrible Christmas book. These are basically Halloween stories, only with a Nativity pageant instead of a costume party and "naughty or nice" instead of "trick or treat." But, grading admittedly on a curve, I actually kind of liked this one. There is an energy and a spark to it, especially the Stacey and Ethan storyline which casts suspicion on Ethan so effectively that I actually retroactively distrust him (even though I liked him in other books).
Lingering Questions: What was Mr. Nixon's plan, exactly? Even if he thought that his ex-clients having their places ransacked for using the wrong gardener would cause them to change gardeners instead of, you know, arrest him, there's no way it could influence their behavior, because nobody knew who did it or why until the BSC "solved" the mystery (and therefore identified the criminal.) If he meant to send a pointed message to his ex-clients, it was awfully poorly done.
Why did giving birth help Mary's memory return??