Club-Read: The Baby-Sitters Club #17: Mary Anne's Bad Luck Mystery

After a really solid introduction to Jessi last book, it's Mary Anne's third turn as narrator. We've had two really solid books with her so far. Which is why I worry about this one, because this one feels more like a sitcom plot than a book. A story about chain letters and bad luck. I mean, it doesn't sound like the worst book ever, and more often than not these books have surprised me, but I'm not going into this one with the gust I probably should have. Prove me wrong book. It's time to find out about Mary Anne's Bad Luck Mystery.

Covers this time are actually quite varied. Each feeling like a different element to the plot. The original art features Mary Anne tending to a wound, which I guess can be construed more as Mary Anne's bad luck, but really it just seems like the kid is more accident prone. Not really feeling like it's so much her bad luck that's a mystery. The reprint cover I actually like more because it feels like the focus is on Mary Anne's bad luck, while focusing on the chain letter, which is integral to the plot of the book. And while the graphic novel cover is great, even if it feels more like a generic mystery story than anything else. Of the three my favorite is the reprint yet again. I do like the original covers, and the reprints more often than not just feel like the original artwork, but when they do it right, it's usually good stuff. But you can't go wrong with any of them.

After the normal preamble on who the characters are, Mary Anne, along with Kristy, Dawn, Claudia and Logan, are talking about the upcoming Halloween Hop at school. Mary Anne and Logan are going together, since they're still in a relationship. Mary Anne then notices two mean girls, Grace Blume and Marguerite "Cokie" Mason, pointing and laughing at them, perhaps for Logan being there? The girls and Logan shrug it off for now and mention the club meeting after school. Mary Anne returns home and finds a letter in the mail addressed to her. After another preamble about the club's operations, she heads to the club meeting and opens the letter, only to see that it's a chain letter. Before the age of email, this was the original form of spam. Letters sent anonymously to people who then have to send more chain letters to other people lest they be cursed by bad luck. There's no name, and it's typed, not written, so Mary Anne has no clue who sent it, though methinks that first chapter lacked much in terms of subtlety to this mystery. Kristy simply says it's just superstition, so Mary Anne throws it in the wastebasket for now.

The next morning, Mary Anne wakes up after falling out of bed, slips and hits her chair, spills juice over her dress and everywhere and has trouble finding her shoes. She can't open her locker and spills macaroni and cheese on the floor, so in other words if there is a bad omen on her, it works quick. She is then also late for her baby-sitting job at the Newton's. But instead, we get a baby-sitting chapter from Dawn who baby-sits the Rodowskys, meaning we deal with another kid with bad luck around him, the accident-prone Jackie. He wants to be a robot for Halloween and asks Dawn to help him with his costume. This sees him make a mess of a bunch of cartons, then spills a bunch of sewing supplies, then cuts his finger, then his whole costume collapses. Dawn at first thinks she may have gotten some of the bad luck from the chain letter, but she also realizes that this is Jackie Rodowsky, a kid who ain't making it to twenty at this rate.

The next day, Mary Anne gets a package in the mail. This time, with a note with cut-up magazine words, addressed to the entire club. Inside is a strange looking necklace with another note saying that Mary Anne has to wear this necklace on Halloween to ward off the evil forces, or else. The entire club decide that Mary Anne's going to have to wear it and that maybe the effects of the chain letter are rubbing off on them. From Claudia failing a spelling test to Jessi falling in ballet class, they all suddenly feel as it there's something strange going on. Mary Anne then baby-sits for the Newtons, where Jamie falls and skins his knee, giving us the original cover. Then at school there's a fire in a trashcan, an explosion in the science lab and a kid hurts her ankle in gym class. So if there is a supernatural force involved here, it's out to kill some kids. So the girls now think that the necklace really must be a bad luck charm and they need to find a way to ward off the evil forces. 

The girls head to the library to try to find some books about witchcraft, which contains the girls having a hard time finding anything due to the antiquated even for the 80s way of searching for books. They find some books about witchcraft and spells, and decide they need to read up as much as they can. Though Kristy makes sure to not tell Karen given, you know, she already accuses everyone of being witches anyway, this would just make things worse. Jessi babysits Jamie Newton who is scared of Halloween coming up what with all the monsters and ghosts all keeping their evil in check. Jessi decides to bring him to her place to look at the books about Georgie the ghost which I think I remember but it's like a super vague memory if I did read these. After that is Claudia and Mallory sitting for the Pikes, which is considered perhaps their worst baby-sitting experience yet. Worst than the almost-kidnapping that does get mentioned here so I'm not the only one harping on it. The family is having a casserole with hot dogs in it called Daddy Stew for some reason, when Byron sets the burner up higher, burning the food which, okay who's just letting the kids screw around with the stove? Then a bird flies in through the chimney causing a racket, then Vanessa pike loses a baby tooth, So in other words, yeah, kind of a screwed up day that may or may not be the result of a bad luck necklace and chain letter. 

With now multiple incidents of bad luck upon them, the girls hit the books to see if they can find anything to counteract all of this. However, they can't find much of anything and they're getting scared by the convenient storm. Mary Anne says they should find out who sent the necklace. Too bad she threw out the package and the notes. They then talk about the Halloween Hop and how Mary Anne will be going with Logan, which makes Grace Blume jealous. We still have about 50 pages or so to get to the fireworks factory, folks. The hop arrives and both Mary Anne and Logan go as cats from the musical Cats not the movie Cats which came out decades after the musical Cats which are the cats from Cats that Mary Anne and Logan are going as. Yes, that was an intentionally frustrating sentence, hope you liked it. It goes without much incident, though the girls all notice Grace and Cokie dressed as punk rockers. Cokie even noting Mary Anne's necklace as a bad luck charm. Mary Anne returns home to find yet another note saying the club have to go to Old Man Hickory's headstone in the cemetery at midnight on Halloween night or face the consequences. 

So Old Man Hickory was the richest man in Stoneybrook. He was a stingy and mean man. When he died, he didn't want a funeral or fancy headstone, so his nephew just did it anyway, and it's since been believed that Old Man Hickory still haunts the graveyard, angry over how he was buried. So the girls decide to go through with it, having Kristy's brother Charlie drive them at night. Other than that, they're all mums about it. But before we get to that, we have Kristy taking Andrew, David Michael and the agent of chaos trick-or-treating. Andrew is a cartoon moose while Karen is, to no surprise, a witch. Which again begs the question of why she gives Mrs. Porter a hard time if Karen is so into witches herself? They trick or treat at every door, ending at Mrs. Porter's house as she gives them apples which I mean doesn't quite help the whole "not a witch but maybe she is" accusations.

The night approaches and the girls begin their sneak-out to head to Old Man Hickory's grave. Mary Anne's dad looks at the bad luck necklace and notes that it's not bad luck, just a mustard seed on a necklace, which is seen as a symbol of faith. It's then that Mary Anne finally clues in about everything. The notes, the necklace, Cokie saying it's a bad luck charm. So the girls realize who they might be meeting at the cemetery. They arrive, flashlights in tow, giving us the graphic novel cover. But now they brought some prop ghosts to set up in the trees for a counter-scare. It works, scaring Grace, Cokie and their friends who had planned to scare them first. Then Charlie and Logan show up. Logan had been given a call to come to the cemetery as well. Mary Anne and the others have Grace and Cokie admit to sending the letters and the necklace. Grace reveals that this was all to make the girls look like jerks since she was jealous of Mary Anne being with Logan. The Baby-Sitters club make their leave promising not to tell anyone of Grace and Cokie's little scheme. 

The girls head to Kristy's and laugh over the whole situation, though note some things don't add up fully. Like the other note sent after the Halloween Hop, though it could have been one of Grace and Cokie's friends. They note that maybe this wouldn't have happened if Mary Anne had have acquiesced to sending the chain letters. They all note that their luck's gotten better lately, so maybe the spell is broken. So all goes well, until Mary Anne breaks a mirror and now has seven years bad luck, but now she has the necklace and faith that she'll have no more bad luck.

This book was better than I was expecting going in. It's absolute filler with nothing really mattering that much, but it's still good filler, with the book never truly feeling like it's a time waster. There's a fun mystery, some solid moments of pure bad luck for the girls, and for a Halloween book, it does its job quite well in feeling like Halloween. Costumes, being scared of ghosts and monsters, trick or treating, even a big moment in a cemetery for adding creepiness. What I've really liked out of these books since I started covering them for the blog is that I do find that the books do a really good job in giving the stories a feel of certain specific times of the year. From the summer months, to spring, to holidays like Halloween. And it could have easily just felt like a story set in Halloween that doesn't do much with it, but I'm glad effort was made. 

It's a decent Mary Anne book and she's a solid lead as usual, but I will say this doesn't really feel much like her story. And I think that has to do with spreading the bad luck around to the other girls. If it stuck with Mary Anne as the one suffering from rotten luck, then I think it would have been better, but instead we have the others deal with setbacks, namely Claudia, Mallory and Dawn, so it doesn't feel as special. But it does give us some fun moments with the entire club collaborating to try to counteract the bad luck spell. Which, even for this book series to this point, doesn't feel as often as it should be. The book's pacing is also decent, never really forgetting about the general plot of the bad luck, and makes sure to even use the baby-sitting segments to either continue on it, or add to the theme of the book being around Halloween. Probably the best use of the baby-sitting side chapters in a while. 

But, if there's one issue I have with the book, it's the mystery itself. There's definitely something here that could make for a great mystery adventure, but when the book introduces two brand new characters in the first chapter before the events begin, it becomes pretty obvious what's going on. So that means the reader has to wait just around 100 pages or so for Mary Anne and the girls come to what is otherwise a rather obvious conclusion. Though I do like the general motivations of Grace and Cokie. That they really did it out of jealousy over Mary Anne and Logan's relationship. I even like the addition of Logan in the story overall, giving him the most content since the last Mary Anne book conveniently enough. He's a fun side character. And I even like the little side wrinkle of the girls being concerned as to why Logan was at the cemetery that night, fearing something nefarious. Just a shame there's like no time to do anything with that. I said the book was well paced, but the ending does feel a tad rushed.

So overall, this is an easy book to recommend. Is it integral to the worldbuilding of BSC? Not really. Is it the deepest, most compelling mystery ever? Again, not really. But the mystery is still fun and the book nails a Halloween aesthetic. Mary Anne is three for three when it comes to books in the series and given she's sort of an Ann M. Martin self-insert, as she based Mary Anne a lot on herself and Kristy on her childhood friend, I can definitely see why Martin would try to make her books work so well. Hopefully that trend continues when we cover her next time, which won't be until Book #25 so it'll be a while. Mary Anne's Bad Luck Mystery gets an A-. 

Next time, start spreading the news. We're heading to New York to see what Stacey's been up to. 

Little Women

Slinky

Nancy Drew

The Mystery of the Ivory Charm

Superman

Georgie books
Tootsie Roll

Cats

Raggedy Ann

Snoopy

Hershey

Snickers

Butterfinger

M&Ms

Raisinettes

Stephen King

Night of the Living Dead

Halloween

Halloween II