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A review by finesilkflower
Baby-sitters' Haunted House by Ann M. Martin, Jeanne Betancourt
3.0
Super Specials are bad, and Mysteries are bad, so I was not looking forward to this, but I found it ... not terrible? I'm grading on a curve, obviously.
The core sitters - Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, and Dawn (this takes place during Stacey's defection to the Bad Girls) - go with Karen and Andrew's "little house" family to Maine on one of their many nebulous part vacation/part sitting job trips. They stay with family friends the Menderses, who are trying to decide whether to move to the small town in Maine where they've inherited a mansion that is, according to Karen, even bigger than the Big House. Must be nice... The Menderses have 4 kids, and for some reason, it's the sitters' job to help them adjust to and like small-town living. Of course, while they're trying to do this, a mystery crops up: Spooky Doings in the creepy old mansion.
Of course the mystery itself is quite silly, and the book is plagued by the usual Super Special problems (too many storylines, unclear who's the narrator at any given time, overstays its welcome). Still, the enjoyable setting and side characters went a long way. I enjoyed the antics of the eldest Menders boy, a teenage Actor named Lionel, and the bad boy gardener Georgio, who as described is absolutely played by Gilmore Girls vintage Milo Ventimiglia. Granted, I may have enjoyed this book more than usual because this pandemic summer has been the least summery summer of my life and all I want is to go to small town Maine myself.
The core sitters - Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, and Dawn (this takes place during Stacey's defection to the Bad Girls) - go with Karen and Andrew's "little house" family to Maine on one of their many nebulous part vacation/part sitting job trips. They stay with family friends the Menderses, who are trying to decide whether to move to the small town in Maine where they've inherited a mansion that is, according to Karen, even bigger than the Big House. Must be nice... The Menderses have 4 kids, and for some reason, it's the sitters' job to help them adjust to and like small-town living. Of course, while they're trying to do this, a mystery crops up: Spooky Doings in the creepy old mansion.
Of course the mystery itself is quite silly, and the book is plagued by the usual Super Special problems (too many storylines, unclear who's the narrator at any given time, overstays its welcome). Still, the enjoyable setting and side characters went a long way. I enjoyed the antics of the eldest Menders boy, a teenage Actor named Lionel, and the bad boy gardener Georgio, who as described is absolutely played by Gilmore Girls vintage Milo Ventimiglia. Granted, I may have enjoyed this book more than usual because this pandemic summer has been the least summery summer of my life and all I want is to go to small town Maine myself.