However, I had a very difficult time making it through this book, because Leona was being a horrible selfish brat again.
I'm going to zip through things here pretty quickly. They used a lot of words when not all that much really happened.
So Adora's doing an experiment with sequins and her character is quickly presented as precise, methodical and rather unemotional. Her Starzap goes off and it's a group hololetter from Cassie, which was the prologue for this book and details all the recent SD issues. Basically, it explains why she, Scarlet and Tessa are in the caves and then says if the other SDs are getting the letter, they're probably trapped and need help, because Cassie set it to send 3 hours after they went down there. So the other 9 SDs meet in Leona and Scarlet's room to figure out a plan. Everyone's all yap yap yap and they don't really get anywhere. They figure that the girls found some way down into the caves other than the one in the office that they use before missions, but not knowing where that entrance is, they have no choice but to break into the office and use the way they know. The girls vote on a leader for this mission and Adora is chosen, which is a little surprising, because she's not exactly close to any of the girls. She voted for herself, but at least one other person must have, too. I suppose it's because she made a lot of good points in the meeting so far. Anyway, they vote to all go on the rescue mission together, then decide to split up and locate Lady Stella to make sure she's not in the office. Adora, Gemma and Libby end up in the faculty housing and there's another sign that Adora is more of a loner, because she's a third year and by then, most of them have been invited to tea at a professor's house. Adora has not and she figures it's because the art teachers think she's too serious and the science teachers think she's too frivolous with her interest in fashion. Anyway, this whole section goes on for way too long, but they find Lady Stella gardening and head to the hedge maze, which was the meeting point. After everyone gets there and learns that it's safe to head to the office, they split up and all go there sort of separately. The bot-bots prove annoying and there's a moment where Leona uses her dramatic skills to get them all safely to the office without nosy guards hanging around. And I thought I kinda liked her a little more, but then she went and ruined it.
You see, the office door is locked. They try energy manipulation as a group, but that fails. Astra says that when she and Libby were on Wishworld, Libby's crystal unlocked a door so they decide to try that. Sage, Libby, Vega, Piper and Astra take out their crystals and what does Leona say? Miss Bitch says "Show offs."
Adora has a fabulous inner monologue here. "Get over it! So your Wish Pendant burned to a crisp while you were coming home after your mission. So you didn't bring back wish energy or receive your Power Crystal. Figure out what you can do now!" But unfortunately, she doesn't say it aloud. Piper says something about Leona contributing positive energy and everyone just goes with that. But the power crystals don't work and Leona says, "Well, guess those little old Power Crystals aren't as powerful as you thought."
I was already angry about the show offs line, but that last scene REALLY made me mad. Cassie is supposed to be one of Leona's FRIENDS. Obviously, she doesn't care for Scarlet and I'm not sure how she feels about Tessa exactly, but Cassie is her friend and the other two are her teammates. Yet she is so incredibly goddamn selfish that she would rather see the power crystals fail and them have to take even longer to rescue the three girls than for the crystals to work. Just because she does not have one.
Then of course not only does she act like a selfish egotistical brat and not one other girl calls her on it, but she leans on the door and it opens. (Likely because one of the saboteurs LET it open, but still.)
So the go in the office and Leona opens the secret drawer containing the button to open the entrance to the caves. She sees something in the drawer that upsets her, but she lies about it.
The girls go into the caves and Adora says they need to keep the door open so they can get back out. Astra offers to do it, but methodical (and seemingly untrusting) Adora has to do it herself. Then she and Astra hear voices, and it's Lady Stella and someone else. More stuff to fuel the conspiracy blah blah blah. The important thing is that Lady Stella sees the door open and closes it, so they can't get out that way.
The girls wander around the caves until Scarlet's bitbat friend finds them and leads them to the secret door to where the other three are trapped. It even traces the shape of the door in the air so they get it. Libby suggests using the crystals and Leona bitches "Yes, they were such a startacular success before" At least this time Adora tells her not to be sarcastic.
I'm going to stop here a moment to finish complaining about Leona. I cannot stand her. I seriously cannot think of another character that is supposed to be good that I have ever hated so much because she was such a horrible person. There are even BAD characters that act better than Leona does. Like Vidia. Vidia who plucked Mother Dove is actually less selfish than Leona. Pizzazz who tried repeatedly to off Jem is less selfish than Leona. While I don't mind flawed characters, what bothers me is that Leona's actions are so infrequently presented as flawed. Kids are going to think the way she acts is a good thing. To put your ego in front of your friends. To deliberately ignore people trying to help you. To disregard your roommate's wishes about her possessions and disrespect the dead on top of that. I really want her to get what's coming to her. I want someone to blow up at her and tell her something like what Adora almost did. If only one of them had told her to stop putting her ego in front of her friends, maybe she'd actually stop and think about her behavior for a moment. Ophelia was a better Star Darling. And she was an unskilled fake. I'm just really tired of her ruining books for me. I like all the other characters, but I hate her I think more than any other supposedly good character ever written.
Anyway, the girls realize the door is password-protected and Adora accidentally discovers the password. The door opens and Tessa wonders if they brought any food. (Sigh.) Cassie tells the girls about a book they found with a prophecy about twelve Star-Charmed Starlings that save Starland. The girls realize it's them and there's a whole bunch of speculation. Then the door slams and they're all locked in this time. Cassie muses that in one of her uncle's books there's a trick bookcase. Adora says that's just a literary device, but sees a book on the shelf called The Great Escape and pulls it off. Nothing happens to the shelf, but there's a hole behind the book. Vega pulls more books off the shelf and sees a door. Leona makes yet another crack about the power crystals and I almost put the book down when I read that last night. But the door opens randomly and the girls go into the Wish Cavern, where Lady Stella suddenly is. They fudge their way through an explanation of how they got there so fast and Adora is chosen for the next mission. Later, the girls tell her they don't want her to go because it's too dangerous, but she decides it's worth the risk.
I was so sick of Leona at this point that I had to put the book down for over a day just to get away from her.
Adora's Wishworld mission may be the shortest and simplest. The majority of the book is spent on freeing the 3 girls and learning about the prophecy so there's not much space left for a mission. She lands at a camp and identifies her wisher who wants to have the confidence to make friends. The two friends she's usually there with aren't there this year. Adora, not really having the most experience with sensitivity and emotional responses, fails in helping her. She does discover that she has a healing power though, which is cool. She goes to the bathroom and says her mantra, only to have her wisher walk in and see her in her Starland form! Somehow the mantra turned her back into her blue sparkly self. Adora tells the wisher, Hannah, the whole story and Hannah agrees to help her. She even gets to go into Adora's pop-up star tent thingy. Adora is exhausted and falls asleep and Cassie wakes her up. Adora is put out at first that she's been sent help so quickly, but apparently her energy is rapidly draining, possibly because she's in her Starland form. The two realize that none of their wishers have been good fits for the Starland girls' strengths, so they wonder if they were mixed up on purpose. Hannah comes in and the trio work on different methods to get Adora back to Wishworld normal. It eventually does work and Cassie helps the girls realize that Adora granted Hannah's wish by being her friend and helping her and vice versa. But that wasn't enough to grant the wish, so they make it so that she makes two more camper friends, then head back to Starland.
Adora gets her crystal and then Leona summons everyone to her room, where she reveals the secret she's been hiding. Inside the drawer in the office, she found her burnt wish pendant, meaning Lady Stella never sent it off to be analyzed like she said she would. This is the proof that even the ones holding out thinking Lady Stella was innocent have to accept. She's guilty and they have to turn her in.
So we've inched a bit farther in the conspiracy plot and that was the main point of this book. I don't like Adora as much as I thought I would unfortunately. She was better on Wishworld, but she really is a little too unemotional and coldly analytical for me. And I hate Leona. I really hope she's not up to her crap in Clover's book, because I don't want her to ruin the entire series for me. She's just so hard to read.
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