Penny Lane
Sitting For The Arnolds
The Girl With Colitis Goes By
Posts: 2,888
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Post by Penny Lane on Dec 23, 2008 13:22:57 GMT -5
Read this this morning at about 4 a.m. local time... I'm surprised there isn't a thread for most of the California Diaries.
Anyway, I liked it as much as I liked it before, I thought it was interesting how freaked out Dawn was about Carol keeping the pregnancy a secret. Carol sounds a little immature, especially when she was giggling about Dawn asking her what "sterile" meant. I'm not sure Carol is ready to be a stepmother/mother. How old is she supposed to be, anyway? 29?
I also liked how annoyed everyone was with Jill, I can totally see that. Everyone is growing up, and embracing this High School thing, and she's still stuck in her zone of "i like middle school" and "I want to hang out at the teddy bear factory and have a sleepover" when everyone else was clearly past that.
I kind of want to write a fan fiction where jeff/jill hook up.
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Post by booboobrewer on Dec 23, 2008 16:22:17 GMT -5
I think I read in BSC that Carol is supposed to be 32, 33?
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Post by otempora541 on Dec 24, 2008 16:56:06 GMT -5
Carol is supposed to be in her early 30s?
Didn't you get the impression that Gracie was an oops?
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Penny Lane
Sitting For The Arnolds
The Girl With Colitis Goes By
Posts: 2,888
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Post by Penny Lane on Dec 24, 2008 17:05:50 GMT -5
^ I totally did. I thought that Carol wasn't even sure if they were going to keep the baby, which is why she wanted it secret. And I totally understand why she wanted to tell Mr Schafer in person, as opposed to over the phone. Dawn probably didn't know this or really understand any of it, however, Carol probably could have done a better job of explaining things to Dawn. I don't know if I really like Carol very much. She seems like the younger trophy wife at times.
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Post by otempora541 on Jan 2, 2009 18:22:52 GMT -5
Makes you wonder if there were plans to abort if Dawn hadn't found out.
Carol and Jack's relationship is probably the most mysterious ones of all. Is she a midlife crisis? How did she get into the picture? Is she the cause of the divorce? Would there be a sibling to Gracie? Makes some great fanfiction.
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Post by booboobrewer on Jan 2, 2009 19:31:17 GMT -5
Yeah, the relationship was pretty mysterious. No mention of how the two met.
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Post by greer on Jan 4, 2009 1:52:48 GMT -5
I feel like we heard about Carol too late for her to be the cause of the breakup, unless they concealed it from the kids really well and Mr. Schafer introduced her to the kids a few months later to keep it that way.
I think Mr. Schafer just met her in a bar or something. It seemed from Dawn's chapter about it that he was going out fairly frequently toward the end of the marriage.
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Lila
Sitter-In-Training
Posts: 293
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Post by Lila on Jan 27, 2009 20:41:43 GMT -5
Dawn on the cover of this looks scary! I have the US series. I know in some other country the covers are better. i haven't read this yet! I will soon
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Post by booboobrewer on May 21, 2009 20:39:30 GMT -5
I wish Mandy Richards had shown up again in another book. She doesn't, right? She was an interesting villian and I would have loved a reappearance to see her reactions towards Dawn, Maggie, etc. And some of the older kids that Dawn was scared/in awe of, like Dex, the guy in the fatigues who made out with different girls in study hall.
I really feel bad for Jill in this one. I didn't so much when I was reading this as a teen. But now, I think it's very sad that her friends left her behind so quickly. She really cared about their safety the night they hiked around in the dark. She covered for everyone, yet was still considered a bothersome baby. I really didn't like when Dawn berated her about letting the pregnancy news slip to Carol. Carol should have also been the adult and talked to Jill while she waited for her mother to pick her up...let her know that it wasn't her fault. But no, Carol stalked off like Dawn did, leaving Jill alone, crying. The question "Is Carol upset that she's pregnant, does she not want the baby?" hangs over this book and I think it's a really interesting change from BSC where everyone is over the moon about new babies.
Also, there is a little indication of do-gooderness at the end, where Dawn says she might organize groups of kids to clean up Ms. Krueger's place and plant things, that's never talked about again (I'm pretty sure.) I'm actually glad it wasn't...too reminiscent of BSC.
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Post by rainbowgirl28 on Aug 23, 2009 10:16:19 GMT -5
I thought it was hilarious that Dawn was pretty much like, "yeah, I don't miss my Stoneybrook friends at all."
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msstock87
Sitting For The Braddocks
Here Comes The Bride!
Created by Rie.
Posts: 3,618
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Post by msstock87 on Aug 23, 2009 16:40:31 GMT -5
^ I remember when I was younger thinking that was so shocking.
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Post by laylaandmixup13 on Feb 24, 2010 7:10:43 GMT -5
I found it depressing she did not miss her Stoneybrook friends. I also find it annoying how concerned Jill was for friends that did not care for her. Poor Jill! Also the Carol thing.... UGH I can empathize with her because I have a stepmum 21 years younger then my dad who can be a teen at times. What Dawn should do is stop trying to accept her as an adult and start accepting her as a teen. I think that it is a little young to get drunk though. I am there age and I would not even think of doing half the stuff they do. Does that make me a baby? NO!
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Post by booboobrewer on Feb 24, 2010 17:14:01 GMT -5
Accept her as a teen? Huh? Carol is 32 or 33, plenty old enough.
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Post by rainbowgirl28 on Feb 25, 2010 13:06:11 GMT -5
Dawn on the cover of this looks scary! I have the US series. I know in some other country the covers are better. i haven't read this yet! I will soon I think the only other editions of CD were UK and German. The UK covers didn't have pictures of the girls/Ducky, they're just a collage of different things. I think the German editions do (different models though).
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Post by anzuhana on Apr 10, 2010 14:24:18 GMT -5
It wouldn't have surprised me since the series was supposed to be darker and more mature than the BSC series.
I agree with the points you made here. I felt bad for Jill as well. I understand why her friends were annoyed and embarrassed by her but I don't like how they stopped their friendship with her so quickly. I would have liked to read a Jill diary to see what she thought about everything that's happened.
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