PEN PALS 3

Annnnnnnd Palmer's up to her old tricks again.

Shocking.

This time though, she's a bit provoked, although she's still a total Jessica Wakefield.

Simmie sends her rather sappy letters, which Lisa dismisses as possibly just leading her on and not being letters as genuine as what she gets from Rob. Palmer is understandably angry.

Shanon's Mars mentions secret societies at the boys' school and Lisa's Rob says he won't be able to write to her because he'll be busy for a couple weeks.

Then right after that, Lisa gets another letter from Rob, this one typed and with a lot of misspellings. That should have been a red flag right there, but nope, Lisa still thinks it's him. She finds herself stood up twice and the recipient of an ugly sweater instead of Rob's class pin.

Shanon and Amy figure out that Palmer is behind some of this and they confront her and force her to tell Lisa. However, they figure this out too late to stop Lisa from sending Rob a nasty letter. You see, Rob's not even at the school and Palmer admits it's been Simmie who's been writing Lisa, as his secret society initiation is to embarrass a roommate. She had nothing to do with the first prank, but she was in on the second, as a bit of revenge for Lisa badmouthing Simmie. Although how she thought this was going to make Simmie look better is beyond me. They're really two of a kind, although I think Palmer's got more conscience than Simmie.

So naturally, Lisa's both furious and upset, because she can't unsend her nasty letter to Rob. Then she learns not only is he off campus, but he's in the hospital. She freaks out to the point of trying to sneak out in the middle of the night to ride her bike to the bus station and go to Boston to visit him in the hospital. Thankfully, two of her teachers are returning from a date and catch her.

Lisa ends up writing a nice letter to Rob in the hospital and then calling him at home. They work out their problems and eventually, she does get his pin and they're closer than ever.

For once, there's only one drama and that was it. Amy and Shanon are quite the background characters in this one. It's dominantly Lisa's story. And once again, we get Palmer maybe learning a lesson? We'll see. The next book is about her and problems with Simmie. Gee, no one could see that coming.