Emma has to endure yet another Mean Girl, Tristan and Simon's "distant cousin" Annabelle, who calls herself Tinkerbell. Emma dubs her Stinkerbelle. After one particularly bad incident, the MDBC daughters decide to band together and earn money to fly her home for spring break, so they start a baking business, dubbed Pies & Prejudice. (You can guess what book the club is reading this time.)
In one of the series' most poignant moments, Mrs. Bergstrom passes away suddenly and leaves quite a bit of money to cover several things. She funds Cassidy's hockey club for younger girls, provides for her dog's care, and gives money to Megan's grandmother for her to start her own business. Most importantly though, she gives funds to the book club, allowing them all to join the Hawthornes in England in an amusing, but also somewhat dull for me trip. I've never read Jane Austen. I never will. So going to all these themed places was dull for me.
It's a decent book, but I really didn't think we needed a THIRD Mean Girl. Two was enough.
The fifth book adds point of view chapters for Becca for the first time. This book is mostly fueled by the failed Secret Santa exchange between the girls, muddled up by Jess's younger brothers, who don't get nearly enough punishment for this.
Becca's father has lost his job. Cassidy may or may not like Zach Norton. Megan gets dumped via email.
The families visit different places for Christmas. Megan and Becca's families go on a cruise. Emma goes with Jess's family to New Hampshire. Cassidy's off to California.
There's a lot of typical drama, but thankfully no real Mean Girl incidents.
The highlight of this book for me is that they're reading the Betsy-Tacy series, which I adore. I loved all the references and it inspired me to reread the series myself.
The Betsy-Tacy series was written by Maud Hart Lovelace and tells about Betsy Ray and her friends, growing up in Deep Valley, Minnesota between 1897 and 1917. Betsy is based on Lovelace herself and most of the characters have real life counterparts and many incidents actually happened in the real town of Mankato.
The first four books are when the girls were younger. Betsy-Tacy has Betsy and Tacy at 5 when they meet, and Tib joins them at the end. The fourth book, which is the best of the initial four, has them at 12.
I always read Winona's Pony Cart in between books 3 and 4, because that's about the right age placement to insert it. It stars Winona Root, a character you see more often in Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, the fourth book.
The adventures in these books are mostly younger girls' games and fancies, although Downtown broadens the horizons. But it's important to read them, as Emma points out in MDBC, because you can't ignore "half the body of work." Heh. The first four books, while a little more childish, are important to establish the background of the girls you watch go through high school and beyond in the rest of the series.
If you haven't read these, read them. They're up there with Anne of Green Gables for me and edge out the Little House series even on my list of favorites in that genre.
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