Thoughts before reading:
I've never read this before, but the title and cover remind me of a goosebumps book, The Phantom of the Auditorium, haha. Hopefully this will have the same little spooky, mystery vibe. It will probably be the last regular book with this type of storyline, because the mystery books are right around the corner.
Also wondering who that blond girl is with Jessi? It looks like Dawn, but as far as I know she's never been to Jessi's dance school before. Maybe she gets involved in the mystery, since she loves her ghost stories.
The basics:
Jessi's ballet class is doing auditions for Sleeping Beauty now, and Jessi gets the lead (as always...). She'll be dancing the part of Princess Aurora. Of course she's thrilled, and also surprised, thinking of all the other good dancers in her class. Some of the other girls are older than her, or under more pressure, so she worries about potential problems. There's a girl named Hilary who's mother gives her a hard time about being the best, and a girl named Carrie, who's the oldest and will soon be moving to another class, for example.
At the very next class, Jessi's toe shoes go missing from her gym bag. It's only after the teacher cancels practice that they suddenly turn up, back in her bag again. After class she finds a note saying 'Beware', also tucked into her bag. During the next class, Carrie keeps knocking Jessi over to make her look bad to the teacher. Her whole spare dance outfit also goes missing, and she finds another note: 'watch your step'.
The problems in ballet class continue, and even grow worse. By the third rehearsal, Jessi falls in a wet spot on the floor and hurts her ankle. It turns out to be sprained. Katie Beth (remember her from #16?) is given the role of Aurora temporarily, because now Jessi has to sit out some classes. She's upset, but has a good attitude, reminding herself it could be worse. She also wisely purchases a gym bag with a lock on it.
After finding a third threatening note, this time shoved into the padlock on her bag, Jessi finally wonders if someone deliberately caused her fall. She tells her friends, and the whole BSC (minus Mary Anne, who's babysitting) comes to watch the fifth rehearsal to see if they can help her. Of course nothing happens with them there, but they watch how the other girls in class are acting and decide the culprit must be either Carrie, Mary Beth, or Hilary.
Jessi keeps receiving notes threatening her, and one time she gets a thorny rose with them. Other girls keep pushing her during class, and once a back drop almost falls over on her. Claudia comes up with the idea to get Hilary to write something, so they can compare it to the notes and see if she's the culprit. (By then they've decided she's the most likely suspect.) Jessi gets her to write a caution sign, and finds out both the pen and handwriting match. She confronts her, and Hilary confesses, saying she couldn't take the pressure from her mom anymore. Jessi actually agrees not to tell on her, as long as she doesn't do anything else.
Opening night goes well, and the whole BSC comes to watch. Hilary apologizes again and tells Jessi she's quitting dance because she never really loved it.
There's also a side plot going on, where Kristy has decided they haven't done anything special for their charges in awhile, and so she comes up with the idea to have a pet show. The kids get really competitive over it though, so it quickly starts to seem like a bad idea. In the end though, the show turns out to be fun, just chaotic. Every pet gets a unique prize about what makes them special, so every kid ends up happy.
Timeline:
No clues, but it definitely spans over a month.
My thoughts:
This book was definitely a disappointment. It felt like a re-hashing of previous plots put together, with nothing new: other Jessi dance plots, plus some Cokie Mason style pranking called a "mystery". Just like the books where Cokie was up to something, and it was obvious from the start she was to blame, this one hits us repeatedly over the head with the solution. We're introduced to Hilary's character in chapter one, and then she's mentioned often during the book. We're even told more than once what her possible motives for harassing Jessi would be.
I did really like Jessi in here though. She was very persistent, tenacious, and hard working the whole time, while also staying positive. Even after all these bad things kept happening, she was eager to keep trying and improving. She was also still determined to think the best of her classmates, refusing to believe they would deliberately sabotage her. It's really naïve, for sure, but there was something sweet and innocent about her trust. Nothing that happens gets her down, even being hurt or having to replace her expensive items that are straight up stolen from her. She uses all of it as fuel to work harder and be better, which I found really admirable.
The other girls were so catty, and downright evil at times, which was a real contrast from Jessi's reaction. That set up with the water on the floor was really fucked up in particular. Jessi could have gotten seriously injured! Not only that, but afterwards she gets a note saying 'too bad it wasn't worse'! Damn, this Hilary girl needs some serious therapy ASAP. I was very disappointed that Jessi didn't turn her in, and I didn't find that part realistic at all. That was just too nice of her, to the point of just letting this mean girl walk all over her. It would be different if it was just pranks or hazing, but it wasn't. She caused Jessi to get injured, and stole her property repeatedly. I was very sorry to see Hilary get away with everything, and it gives the reader no pay off at the end.
Misc:
*Ghostwritten by Ellen Miles
*I'm very tired of having auditions in almost every Jessi book, and her always getting the lead role (or once, just a very good, big role). It didn't help this already lackluster story at all.
*I'm officially skimming the recaps now. I honestly had intended to read them fully this time around, but I just can't anymore.
*Jessi says a pair of toe shoes only last her a week? Can that really be right, since they are expensive and also need to be broken in? I looked into it and found that a pair lasts only 12-15 hours! Which is crazy, but I doubt this 11 year old dances that many hours in one week? A pair of pointe shoes costs about $80 now, in 2020. I don't know how anyone can afford that if they dance a lot, yikes...
*More mentions of plots from the Little Sister books in here, like Scott and Hannie getting "married". I totally remember that too.
*This book was long compared to most of the regular books, especially considering that not much happens.
*If I was in the BSC, I would have canceled the pet show, because every single client involved acts like a huge brat about it. They all get so competitive and crazy, even the normally too well behaved kids.
*I loved how the whole BSC rallied to help Jessi figure out who was harassing her. It was another great friendship moment for the girls.
Books mentioned:
None.
My rating:
2 stars. Boring and predictable, definitely one to skip over.
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