Friends' Forever Special - Everything Changes

[greer]

no, you are not allowed to post ebooks on this board, unless you would like for this board to be shut down forever by proboards.

[Kylie90210]

I finished this book the other night. Really, it was kinda pointless, in that plot wise, it didn't really contribute much. Yes, it sets up storylines for Mary Anne and Stacey for the next few books, but other than that... Still a fun read though.

[anzuhana]

It's too bad that Abby dropped out of the club because I think it would interesting if she remained in the club. I would have liked to read about her thoughts about everything that's happened.

[sparklymouse]

This wasn’t really what I expected. I knew everyone except the originals had left the club somehow, but I thought it was stupid that it all broke down so cleanly. Everyone had the exact same issues at the exact same time when really, except for Jessi, they were all still doing the same activities as the past 20 8th grades. If only they had started high school and decided that they needed more flexibility in their schedules.

It was odd that only Kristy/Mary Anne and Claudia/Stacey wrote to each other and no other combination. Weren’t Claudia or Stacey the least bit interested in how Mary Anne was doing? Mary Anne would have loved to hear some NYC stories too.

Kristy: She sounded like she found a true best friend in Abby at the beginning of camp. They seemed more genuine than any Kristy/Mary Anne interactions in the entire series. Too bad Abby ruined it by having a mind of her own, lol. Kristy’s journal entries were annoying to read but also realistic and true to her character. I wrote in journals as a teen and was always all sentence fragmenty.

Mary Anne: OMG Mary Anne is so lame. She wanted to move to PA so she wouldn’t have to deal with confronting Logan. And she already broke up with him once for acting the same way he was in this one. Just do it again, seriously!

One thing I thought was very cute was Mary Anne remembering the flashlight code that she and Kristy used to talk with. She wondered if she and Claudia would try it, or if they were too grown up now. Um, Mary Anne? Perhaps you have noticed the telephone in Claudia’s bedroom? She has never needed to play flashlights with anyone.

Claudia: Lobster every day for a month? That’s gross. I can’t believe the Kishis would go anywhere for a whole month vacation. If Janine was using dial up internet for her laptop (did she now have a laptop and a desktop?) was she calling to her internet subscriber in Stoneybrook? Those were some long distance phone calls she was charging to the cabin! I love that Claudia always seems to have a good time by herself.

Stacey: I wanted to know more about Ethan and The Pony nightclub. What was he doing there? (The Pony is a stupid name for a club, but I guess The Stallion sounds too much like a gay bar.) I don’t care about her creepy stupid father or him shacking up with his girlfriend. I’m just surprised he even asked Stacey for her input.

[greer]

Dec 8, 2010 20:20:15 GMT -5 sparklymouse said:

Claudia: Lobster every day for a month? That’s gross. I can’t believe the Kishis would go anywhere for a whole month vacation. If Janine was using dial up internet for her laptop (did she now have a laptop and a desktop?) was she calling to her internet subscriber in Stoneybrook? Those were some long distance phone calls she was charging to the cabin! I love that Claudia always seems to have a good time by herself.

Stacey: I wanted to know more about Ethan and The Pony nightclub. What was he doing there? (The Pony is a stupid name for a club, but I guess The Stallion sounds too much like a gay bar.) I don’t care about her creepy stupid father or him shacking up with his girlfriend. I’m just surprised he even asked Stacey for her input.

Stacey's dad mentioned the limelight as well, which was a real club.

About the internet provider: I remember in the 90s when I had dialup, you looked around for local numbers. So I guess the Kishis had a national provider and Janine found a local dialup number in Maine.

[wiggir13]

I was so curious, I looked up the limelight club in NYC and it was shady!!! Recreational drugs etc and it was the scene of a murder! Oh Ethan, what were you doing there??? (PS if you look up NYC pony club, it's about horses sooooo...)

I think I am going to try reading these and separating them from the regular series. I liked this book, but what bothered me was the big differences from BSC to here. I did like that there were no babysitting chapters, but I guess like other I like to keep the girls the way that I remember them.

[zoar3]

I read it. I want to know what kind of shoes Claudia bought at the outlet store for under $4? She said "pair of shoes" so that leads me to believe they were something other than flip flops or cheapie house slippers. I wish we had seen the Kishi family at McDonalds! The rest of the book, was indeed boring and useless. Except, after probably close to 200 books, a parent, Ed McGill no less, acted like a parent in terms of telling Stacey he thought Ethan was too old for her. I'm not sure about his "14 hour a week" solution or allowing his 13 year old daughter to attend unsupervised parties at the homes of strange boys...but for BSC-Land this was a tiny step.

Until Logan called MA "6 times a day" I didn't see how he was smothering her. I think MA should have been upfront and told him, she needed to deal with the Fire in her own way/time and was doing that. Thank him for his concern and try to move on. If he still didn't back down, then, take longer term action.

Other than that, Sparklymouse summed it up in her first paragraph. A let down and something that would have worked so much better during their first year of high school.

[helsieboo]

Aug 18, 2008 22:54:33 GMT -5 @anothergirl said:

You know what always annoyed me the most about this? When Claudia is emailing Stacey about going to Monhegan(?) Island, she actually says,

"Help! I've never been stranded on a desert island before!

Really Claudia?! Never? Not even in Island Adventure??

Lordy!

I'm re-reading this, just read this very line and had the same thought, hence why I came straight on here! ;D

[virgoscorpio]

Like starrynight, this book left sort of a bad taste in my mouth. I couldn't get passed the cover and how HORRIBLE the girls looked to me - well most of them. What's up with MA's bad teeth? Ugh! Can't stand it! And then the way it was written... When I was a kid, I totally could tell they were trying to transform the books into something pre-teens in the new millennium would like. It was too choppy for me. I don't mind the Friends Forever series but this book was especially bad for me.

Verdict ~ Everything DOES change (but not always for the better) Boo!

[celaeno]

I just read this one. I'm surprised how much I liked it! I've always enjoyed books written in letter or journal format, especially when I was younger, so it was easy to breeze through this one.

I'm glad they created transitions from the BSC series to FF (eg, Abby starting to feel overwhelmed at the end of the regular series), but they didn't do the transition with Mary Anne and Logan well. In #131, Mary Anne and Logan are getting along as well as ever, with no hint of Mary Anne being unhappy with Logan, but this book starts out with her already being unhappy with him. It was too abrupt.

I liked Mary Anne's grandmother coming to Stoneybrook; it was nice reading about the two of them.

I really liked reading about Monhegan Island. Man, I would LOVE to be able to take a month long trip to an island in Maine and spend all my days hiking and cooking and drawing and meditating. But when you're an adult, you can't exactly just take a month off of work. Claudia's lobster eating was funny too. I was hoping for an ending where she was starting to get sick of lobster but forces herself to keep eating it daily to keep up her track record, and then throwing up.

Hearing that Ethan is hanging around a club named Pony makes me think of Ginuwine's Pony, which is really funny because now it does sound like a questionable place that would make Mr. McGill uncomfortable.

[virgoscorpio]

I re-read this one tonight and liked it more than usual. But like I said in my post a couple of posts up, Mary Anne's teeth on the cover BOTHER ME SO BAD, everyone! I can't get over it. And her long hair. I am having a mini breakdown in my head directed to Scholastic's art department. I don't like how the girls are actualized, like actual humans on the cover, because they did a horrible job. Kristy and Stacey are okay.

I really enjoyed Abby and Kristy's friendship in this one.

I wonder what classes Sharon was taking? If it mentions it in the later books, I forgot (or maybe it's in one I haven't read yet).

Stacey has a bit of Daddy issues.

I loved Claudia's growing love for Monhegan. I did some research on it after reading and looked at some pictures.

The final scene was sad. I awed when Stacey wipes away Kristy's tear and when Claudia agrees that one or two meetings a week was perfect. But some real realities set in when they all finally realized that they had no lives and babysitting was taking over! Interesting how, at the end, Kristy wonders who she would be if she wasn't a babysitter, since that takes up the majority of her identity (in her eyes).

[mallorypike]

I love this book. I agree FF isn't the same as BSC. But as a separate series rather than a spin-off, it's good. I'm glad there isn't as much babysitting. I just like the drama and more details of the girls' lives rather than Jamie being scared of riding a bike and the Pikes' talent shows.

I loved the Kristy and Abby plot and the Claudia plot the best. At the beginning of camp, Kristy's and Abby's friendship was strong and genuine. Then Abby dropped out of the BSC and Kristy acted like a total jerk. The pranks Kristy played on Abby were mean and stupid but age-appropriate and a little funny. It was so cute and sweet how the campers got Kristy and Abby to make up. And at the end, I'm glad Kristy got to understand Abby and that they remained friends.

As for the Claudia plot, the island vacation sounds wonderful! But when Claud says she's never been stuck on an island before, ummm, an obvious inconsistency. Remember Island Adventure?? Anyway, I can see why Claud loves that place. It was funny how all the Kishis except Claudia broke the rules! I hope she used the points she scored.

Kristy's fragmented journal entries were a tad annoying, but it's realistic for a teenage girl to be lazy and abbreviate everything.

And Claudia's letters and emails. Ugh. Those were awful. Her spelling and grammar was annoying.

Mary Anne's plot was interesting and emotional. I didn't really like the Logan parts, but when her grandmother visited, I loved that part. And I liked seeing Mary Anne dealing with trauma from the fire.

Stacey's my least favorite. I like Stacey and Ethan as a couple. But Ed was an A-hole.

At the end of the book, I teared up a little when the BSC returned to the original four members. It was all so nostalgic.

[andrew]

I just read the first 35 pages and skimmed some of the rest, it felt a little too jarringly different from The Fire at Mary Anne's House (though there was a little OK follow-up) and a pretty bad idea for the next book to be a special and try to cover a lot rather than be from just one character's perspective. It being from Kristy's perspective but her not going to camp would probably be a lot better.

It was too sudden and hard to relate to and unlikeable for Mary Anne to be so hostile to Logan, especially when in what we were actually shown he seemed pretty just supportive rather than assuming or disrespectful. It was also a bit unfair for her to complain that he was being too much a part of her life and also dislike that he decided to quit the club on his own, seemingly want him to keep her as a big part of his (although that he wouldn't discuss it with her did feel pretty forced and out-of-character). Both Abby and Logan quitting suddenly and for reasons that weren't new, just want to focus more on sports, felt too underwhelming, forced, underdeveloped for them having been in the club for, respectively, 40 books and over 100. I also couldn't get much into Kristy's excitement for camp (I hadn't read the prior camp counselor stories but I shouldn't have had to).

I remember liking some of the other FF books though.

[eternalstudent]

I recently read somewhere (sorry, I forget if it was Reddit or the BSC wiki page) that a Graduation Day-like book should have immediately followed The Fire at Mary Anne's House. That way, Everything Changes and the rest of the Friends Forever series would have taken place during their 9th grade year in SHS. If this was the case, the series would have made much more sense, since they would be dealing with friendship/romantic break-ups, growing apart as friends, etc. That, in addition to more schoolwork and less time for baby-sitting (as is apparent in the series) would have made them decide to disband the club at the end of 9th grade year.

To be honest, it never made sense to me that they would disband the club right before summer. Surely they would have wanted a source of income and would have had the time?

[oldmeanie]

Jul 7, 2019 19:47:13 GMT -5 eternalstudent said:

I recently read somewhere (sorry, I forget if it was Reddit or the BSC wiki page) that a Graduation Day-like book should have immediately followed The Fire at Mary Anne's House. That way, Everything Changes and the rest of the Friends Forever series would have taken place during their 9th grade year in SHS. If this was the case, the series would have made much more sense, since they would be dealing with friendship/romantic break-ups, growing apart as friends, etc. That, in addition to more schoolwork and less time for baby-sitting (as is apparent in the series) would have made them decide to disband the club at the end of 9th grade year.

To be honest, it never made sense to me that they would disband the club right before summer. Surely they would have wanted a source of income and would have had the time?

ITA. That bugged me when I first read this book. Abby especially bugged me because of her reaction in Kristy's Worst Idea. She was bored stiff! Why is she all the sudden so busy?

I think I read this one twice, and it made me very... upset. The title alone was upsetting (I don't deal well with change). The girls didn't seem nearly as close. I got the sense throughout early BSC (I guess pre Dawn's Big Move) that they were a very close-knit group of friends who did in fact have fights (which added a touch of realism) but always made up. I'm not sure which book it was (I don't think it was this one, I think it was a later Mal or Jessi book on the 100s), but I think Mal or Jessi said that they weren't very close with the older members. WHAT?! That isn't the BSC I grew up with! I know that's technically more realistic, but I read for escapism lol.

If it was in 9th grade, I actually don't think I would've been as upset. It would've made more sense and I could've accepted it a bit easier.

I will say I did like Kristy and Abby's friendship in this book. I definitely think they grow up to be best friends. Maybe Kristy is now the one with two best friends. I didn't read many other FFs (I didn't like them much honestly... the quality just wasn't great), so I'm not sure if their friendship continues to develop. I hope so.