Thoughts before reading:
I know I read this and liked it, but I didn't own it or re-read it enough times to remember much about it now. Nothing about it must have really stood out to me as a kid, although I liked every Stacey book I read just because I liked her so much. I'm pretty sure this was one I got from the school library, probably just once or twice.
This is a good cover too, one of my favorites. I like the ones most where the girls are just hanging out, being normal friends. Everyone looks really adorable, especially Mary Anne. As an added bonus, you can actually tell Dawn and Stacey apart too!
The basics:
Stacey notices that her mom has been tired and run down lately, seemingly from job hunting and being a single mom since the divorce. She's really worried, and starts stepping in to help more, urging her mom to relax and offering to make dinner when she can. On one such afternoon, Stacey's dad calls to announce he's finally gotten the big promotion he's been working toward, and is now the VP of his company. There's going to be a celebration dinner held in his honor, and he wants Stacey to come as his date, then spend a special weekend in the city with him. Excited, she agrees to both.
After telling her BSC friends the news, the girls plan a shopping trip on Saturday to celebrate and help her get ready. Stacey ends up putting together the perfect outfit at Zingy's (the "punk" store, as they always refer to it, haha...). When she gets home from the mall, her mom's laying on the couch. Stacey offers to make dinner again so she can take a nap.
During a math test that Monday, Stacey's called out of class and told her mom collapsed during a job interview. Mrs. Pike arrives at SMS to drive her to the hospital. It turns out that Maureen has pneumonia. She's released to recover and take it easy at home. Stacey stays home from the BSC meeting that afternoon to take care of her, and make dinner. She takes helping her mom really seriously, and hardly even gets any sleep that night because she's too busy worrying. Maureen's also up coughing most of the night, so Stacey decides to stay home from school the next day to take care of her. She starts worrying about leaving for NYC on the upcoming weekend, but her mom insists that she still go.
Despite what her mom says, Stacey can't stop worrying about it. She calls her dad to let him know what's going on. He's really excited about the dinner and offers to hire a nurse so that Stacey can still come. Hearing how excited he is just makes her feel more torn. In the meantime, she does decide that her mom should never be left alone, so she calls around the neighborhood to find people to stay with her during school hours, then cancels all her babysitting jobs. She also leaves detailed written instructions for her "mom sitters".
All day at school on Wednesday, she thinks about everything that could go wrong with her mom while she's not there. When the day is over, she rushes home, to find that everything is going perfectly smoothly. Still, she ends up deciding she can't abandon her mom for the whole weekend, so she calls her dad to cancel the trip. He gets choked up, and tells her she's all he has. Stacey finally lets her frustration at being torn in two out, retorting that if he wasn't a workaholic, he might have more people in his life. He gasps in shock, and she apologizes, immediately feeling terrible, and explains that she didn't mean it that way.
Stacey thinks about how she's now hurt her father, and decides to go to his dinner on Friday night, but then return to Stoneybrook right away on Saturday morning. That way her mom won't be alone too long, and everyone will be happy. In a turn of bad luck, Sam stops by SMS on Friday to walk Stacey home from school, but it happens to be the one day she isn't going home, so she has to say no. (Mrs. Pike is picking her up and taking her right to the station.) Stacey's really disappointed, and Sam looks crestfallen.
The dinner for her dad is very fancy, but Stacey is barely able to enjoy any of it. Instead she keeps slipping out to call home and check on her mom. Then she asks to leave early, before any of the dancing begins, because she will have to be up at 4:30 AM the next morning in order to catch her 6:30 AM train back to Stoneybrook. Her dad is less than thrilled by how things have turned out, and things are very frosty between them by the next morning. At the train station, Stacey starts worrying about the homeless people in the city and wondering whatever happened to Judy. (Remember her? She was mentioned in several books, including #18.) She ends up giving some money to a homeless man nearby. Her dad reminds her that it isn't her job to worry about everyone and everything.
When Stacey arrives back home, she finds her scheduling system has gone awry: she way overbooked. There's a nurse there that her dad hired, plus Mrs. Kishi and Mrs. Arnold. Maureen finally tells Stacey that she can't be everything to everyone (even though she's had no problem letting her do everything all week...).
Sam calls Stacey and they plan a real date to go to a movie. Maureen ends up getting a job she really wanted, as a buyer at Bellair's department store. Stacey plans a special evening to make things up to her dad, complete with a Fantastic Father award.
Meanwhile, the Pike kids have taken to ordering cheap samples of products from the backs of magazines. (Mail order! I remember this relic of the 90s...) The craze spreads to a lot of the kids in Stoneybrook, until the kids begin to realize their stuff doesn't work, or is an outright scam.
Timeline:
It's autumn again.
Misc. thoughts:
*Maureen and Mrs. Pike (I can't remember her name!) have gotten really close. It's nice to have an adult friendship mentioned. Plus I know I'm getting old, because now I'm interested in it. I wouldn't have cared less as a kid.
*Stacey mentions early on that her and Sam are still dating, but it's too early to call him her boyfriend. Continuity! I didn't remember it being mentioned that they ever dated after Shadow Lake, so this is much better than I expected.
*The more I read, the more Stacey impresses me. My childhood favorites weren't too far off from my current adult opinions, surprisingly. She basically runs her household in here, juggles the feelings of both her parents, and steps up to help out whenever she can, even if she's giving up something she wants to do. Very mature for thirteen. I'm not sure I would've been able to do any of these things back then.
*One of the things Vanessa Pike mail orders is bust developer, LOL. A rare mention of such things for this series.
*Speaking of, I'm surprised all these parents were fine with letting their kids order so much junk. I guess it's a good lesson to let them learn, but I never would have been allowed to do it.
*Stacey's math class is studying pre-algebra.
*Poor Stacey puts WAY too much pressure on herself in here. I actually had pneumonia last February, and I took care of myself and my animals just fine, still walked my dogs, and only missed a few days of work. Her mom can't be very old at all, she should be able to handle all the basics of her own care. After all, she is a single mom now. What if she had young children to care for? Usually she's one of my favorite BSC parents, but I found it ridiculous that she let Stacey do every little thing for her while she acted so helpless.
*I also think Stacey's been forced to make way too many adult decisions since her parents got divorced. As a result, she now views herself as basically an adult, which leads her to take on way too much responsibility. She also feels responsible for her mom, since she's watched how the divorce affected her and how she's struggled through that, the move, and being basically a single parent. It's sad that she feels like she has to make all these hard choices. Childhood is short enough, and being thirteen is already confusing. Plus, since all these changes have flipped the parent-child dynamic, it's Maureen's job to take charge of being the parent and flip them back, which she isn't doing.
*The other problem at play here is that Stacey's had a lot of health problems in her short life, and since her mom has always cared for her, I think she feels guilty not doing the same.
*I thought it was really unfair how her dad guilted her into doing what he wanted, yet again. Talk about not acting like the parent in the relationship...
*I think when Stacey lashed out at her dad and called him a workaholic, she was just parroting something she's heard her mom say a lot. She said it without even thinking about it, and not even in a bratty way. More like it was just a statement of fact.
*Maureen is such a baby when she's sick. As if Stacey wasn't already doing enough, she interrupts her doing homework and packing to ask for things like kleenex or the tv remote. Obviously she gets out of bed to use the bathroom, so she could easily just get these things herself. She also doesn't protest having people come over and stay with her all the time, Stacey cutting her special weekend short, or any of the insanity in here. Stacey is 1000x more patient than I would be in her place.
*With all the worrying, obsessing, and ruminating Stacey does in this book, I feel like she's destined for an anxiety disorder when she's older. I have anxiety, and she really reminded me of me in here. Poor kid.
*There's a huge typo/error too. This book says Mary Anne's mom had also arrived at Stacey's house, Friday at midnight. That's a terrifying thought! Maybe they meant Sharon, but she's never referred to that way, so I don't really think so.
*Why didn't Stacey's dad tell her he sent a nurse, especially since he wanted her to stay longer?
*I always picture Zingy's as being like Hot Topic, and I really can't picture Stacey shopping there!
Books mentioned:
*Babar's Little Girl, by Laurent de Brunhoff
*Good Dog, Carl, by Alexandra Day
My rating:
3 stars, this was entertaining, and I like the family drama books usually. I rated down a bit though because there wasn't much resolution. Ultimately no one learned anything or came to any conclusions about their problems. I really would have liked to see a conversation between Maureen and Stacey about their new family dynamics, and how she doesn't need to parent her mom.
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