Review: "Dawn's Wicked Stepsister: The Baby-Sitters Club #31"

Dawn's Wicked Stepsister: The Baby-Sitters Club #31 by Ann M Martin
3 out of 5 stars

This is the second part to Mary Anne & Dawn's Big Day, AKA when they become siiiiisters foreeeeeever. This cover really bugs me, just like the last one. Mary Anne has weird puffy hair and is wearing mom jeans. And Dawn looks nothing like her usual description: extra long, extra blonde hair (it's almost white), and very pale blue eyes....dress the way I want - a style my friends call California casual. I guess that style falls somewhere between Stacey's and Kristy's. First of all, her hair looks shorter than Mary Anne's and is more of a dirty blonde. And why are all 3 of them wearing stripey shirts? Was there a rugby sale at Bloomingdale's?

Okay, whatever. We open back up at the wedding and Mrs. Schafer-Spier tossing the wedding bouquet...which Mary Anne catches! Dawn is kind of pissed, because she thinks it should have been her, but she covers it up pretty well and hugs her new sis. And Mary Anne starts the crying that lasts approximately 4 chapters ugh. After the wedding, all the BSCers + Logan go back to MA's old house to dish about the wedding. "Dish" means "gossip", just an FYI. ;) MA & Dawn spend the night in MA's old room alone while their parents are on their pathetic honeymoon at the Strathmoore Inn (seriously, they didn't even sleep in the next day) and the next day is Moving Day.

MA cries over everything that comes out of the house and Dawn is getting pretty annoyed with her, which I totally get. It just gets worse once they get to Dawn's house...nothing fits in their room (they decided that sharing a room would make the sister bonding work even better...let me tell you first hand, it doesn't), poor little Tiggy-poo is scared and confused and won't stop meowing, and MA turns into Little Miss CrankyPants. Dawn's "real" brother, Jeff, is more than ready to get out of town on Sunday night and even tells Dawn that he thinks the new family is going to have some trouble. Way to be astute, kid.

The new sibs decide to make things better by sharing clothes on Monday and all is good until the BSC meeting later, when they get in a tiff over a sitting job and MA tells Dawn that her skirt looks a little "tight" on her, basically calling her fat. Hah! Way to step it up MA! Claudia, on the other hand, looks pretty dang hawt, if I do say so myself. (When do they invent "dibbly" as a word? I keep wanting to use it.) Here's a What Claudia Should Have Been Wearing for you...

Claudia was wearing black stonewashed skinny jeans with a black cropped sweater over a bright pink tank-top. Her hair was piled up in a faux-hawk and cascaded down her back. She had about 30 brightly colored plastic bangles on one wrist and 6 or 7 black rings on her fingers. In her left ear she had a long, dangly bright blue feather earring and in the other, bright yellow studs. Her platform heals were an amazing thrift-store find that she had to sneak out of the house in her backpack, but they were totally worth it, and she had paired them with black fishnet stockings under her jeans. She looked at least 17 today.


So after that little tiff, it all goes downhill. MA & Dawn argue over having the radio on or not while doing homework (I vote on), how to do chores, who's parent is better, etc etc....It culminates with MA moving into the guest room for the week and the two not talking to each other. It gets so bad that Dawn even asks KRISTY for advice. I know right?!

Let's leave the stepsister feud for a minute and talk about the Pike Family Plague. It all starts with Mallory and trickles down the line until every last kid and adult is sick or injured. We've got chicken pox, bronchitis, pneumonia, colds, sprained ankle, strained back, burned hands and probably something else I'm missing. I bet even the family hamster is sick. So they need extra help from the BSC and Mal is kinda cranky about it at first, because she wants to be an adult like right this minute, but she gets over it. And I'm sorry, I find it incredibly hard to believe that Stacey's over-protective, "be safe and be careful" mom would let her baby-sit at the quarantined house, even with a mask on.

Okay, back to SSWWI (StepSister World War I)...Dawn finally realizes that maybe sharing rooms wasn't the best idea ever. (Duh, didn't you learn anything from Mar-Car in Mary Anne's last book??) But she doesn't want to kick MA out, because she doesn't want to seem like the bad guy. So what does she do? Comes up with a plan to scare the crap out of MA with her secret, haunted passage. Yes, really. She even sets it up so she has an alibi for that time. Wow. Dawn makes all kinds of scary noises in the passage when MA is home alone one night, throws stuff at the walls, makes the door creak open and when MA runs screaming from the room, leaves creepy stuff like a finger-shaped bone and a rose on her desk. Who does that kind of stuff to someone they supposedly love and are BFF's with?? Well, as you can imagine, MA hightails it out of there and moves all her stuff to the guest room. Of course, she may have to have therapy now, but it's cool...she probably already was with her dad's strict rules and such. NO WIRE HANGERS!! ;) Dawn and Mary Anne are BFF's again and that's the most important thing.