Thoughts before reading:
When I was a kid, I had a real grudge against Abby for replacing Dawn. I never read any of her books, so they will all be completely new, as will her POV and family. By this point in the series, I was still reading, and some of my favorite books are actually still to come, so I knew the basics about her character from those.
The basics:
Abby's sitting for the Papadakis kids one day, when she has an asthma attack. Hannie runs out into the street on her way to Kristy's to get help, which panics Abby further and sends the attack out of control. Kristy rushes over to watch the kids, and Abby's taken to the hospital in an ambulance. She recovers quickly, but afterwards Kristy starts to worry that she can't handle jobs. The next time one comes up that Abby's available to take, Kristy presses Mary Anne to take it instead.
During this time, the girls hear that all the art and music programs in the Stoneybrook public schools might be cut back, due to lack of funding. The schools are having a carnival to raise money. Of course, the BSC also wants to help. Abby's booth idea is to sell cakes shaped like musical instruments. She really wants to do it as a family, with her mom and sister, but they're both busy the first night. She's running it alone when the BSC finds out, and they come and take turns helping her.
On the second day of the carnival, Abby and Anna are working the booth together when they hear on the radio that a train from NYC derailed: the same one their mom was taking, in order to return from work early for the carnival. An anxious afternoon with no updates follows, until their mom turns up at the carnival at last. She's perfectly fine; as it turns out, her train just got stuck behind the accident. (Abby didn't realize there were two different trains with the same departure time.) For the time that's left, they run the booth together, then go home and finally talk as a family about their father's death. (Abby had been feeling frustrated for awhile that the topic of him seemed off limits.)
The carnival raises enough to fund the arts program for a full year.
Despite the fact that Kristy's been apprehensive about Abby taking jobs since the incident with the Papadakis kids, and had been giving her the third degree about her medical issues, she loosens up and starts letting Abby take jobs again by the end.
Timeline:
It's autumn again. Probably still September, since not much time has passed since the last book.
Misc. thoughts:
*Ghostwritten by Nola Thacker.
*Abby says Kristy is polite?? Haha, since when?!
*Even Abby's narration is full of "jokes", and they are all terrible. I was looking forward to her POV for something different, but it's really just annoying.
*Abby's family, the Stevensons, are from Long Island. Her father died in a car accident when the twins were 9. Both girls were really close to him, as he was kind, funny, and loved to laugh.
*Abby likes soccer.
*Fun fact: Yiddish is an old Germanic language, spoken mainly by Jews in Eastern Europe.
*Before the car accident, Mrs. Stevenson was training to be a chef. After, she stopped cooking, got her editor job, and became a workaholic.
*Abby calls Claudia and Stacey babes: is this why people think she's gay? I've been wondering...
*I'm getting so irritated with every chapter 2 recap saying Stacey "came to her senses and is now back with the BSC", like that's the only right choice there was for her to make, and she just went bad for awhile.
*I guess they didn't have epi pens yet at this time?
*Mal says that everyone loves a clown?? No Mal, they really don't.
*The Stevensons are Jewish.
*Page 50 error: Mrs. Stevenson responds to Abby making her case about them having a carnival booth by saying, "I see your point, Anna."
*Druscilla helps the Korman kids with their fortune telling booth for the carnival.
*If Mrs. S works in Manhattan, why move from Long Island to Stoneybrook? We aren't told a reason. Is it actually closer, and I just don't know much about NYC? That's definitely possible, haha.
*Anna and Shannon hit it off.
*Another error on page 109: the train times are wrong, but literally only one sentence apart! The radio says 11:45, and in the very next line Abby asks "12:45 from where?". Way to confuse little kids...
Books mentioned:
None
My rating:
2 stars. Slow, boring, and very thin on plot. I still don't really like Abby either, so this was an all around letdown.
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