BSC #46: Mary Anne Misses Logan

Tagline: Nothing beats your friends. But even so...

It was good for Mary Anne and Logan to break up for awhile. Mary Anne has had some time to herself, and she's been having lots of fun with her friends. But now Mary Anne can't help it. She misses Logan.

When she and Logan are both assigned to study their favorite author, Mary Anne thinks this is the perfect, most romantic way for them to get back together again. Until Cokie Mason, Mary Anne's mortal enemy, decides to steal Logan from her.

Mary Anne vs Cokie: Who will Logan choose?

It's Thursday afternoon, and Mary Anne misses Logan. She spends the whole afternoon recapping her life and summarizing her break up with Logan, before moving on to more pressing matters: a grade-wide group project about authors. MA doesn't particularly like group projects, and she's even more stressed since she could be paired up with anyone from the eighth grade. All in all, MA is pretty miserable.

The day comes to find out their groups and who they're studying. At first, MA is delighted to see that she'll be studying Megan Rinehart, her favourite author. She gets excited for the project, but is soon crushed to see that her group is Miranda Shillaber, Pete Black... and Logan Bruno! She likes Miranda and Pete, but MA isn't sure she can work with Logan. Things get worse though, when it soon becomes evident that Miranda can't stand Pete. Upon meeting, the group is silent and awkward. They're soon rescued by Cokie Mason, who manages to convince her English teacher that she really wants to study Megan Rinehart, which leads Miranda to switch out. Poor MA now has to deal with Cokie and Logan, with only Pete as support.

Things go from bad to worse, as it quickly becomes evident that Cokie only wanted to switch to the group because she wants to hit on Logan. She doesn't know anything about Megan Rinehart, doesn't care to do any of the work, and spends all of their group meetings flirting with Logan. MA misses Logan fiercely, and is all awkward around him. Soon, Cokie starts derailing things further, constantly bragging about going out with Logan every night. It's apparent that neither her nor Logan are doing any work, although Logan has at least read most of the books already.

So Pete and MA take charge. The group had decided that they were going to read 4 contrasting books by Rinehart (a serious, a comedy, a mystery and a collection of short stories), then each were going to take a book and see how it relates to Rinehart's personal life and biography. When it becomes clearer and clearer that Logan and Cokie aren't working, Pete and MA decide to do their sections for them. Things come to a head though when their principal has an announcement for the school: the day the projects are due, three of the authors studied were coming to school and the groups who studied them would be presenting in front of everyone. One of the authors? Megan Rinehart, of course!

Logan quickly goes into panic mode, and realizes he's effed up. He's done his part, but he knows that it needs work, so he calls up MA to get her help. At first MA is incredulous, thinking that he wants her to do it for him (which she already did), but soon realizes that he wants to make sure it matches what she and Pete did. Over the next couple of days, they work really hard and pull through together. MA is exhausted, but happy.

It's the day of the assembly, and MA is nervous. But Logan squeezes her hand, and reassures her that everything will be okay. They get called to the podium, and one by one, they present their assignment to the school. It quickly becomes apparent that Cokie didn't do any work. Her section consists of reading the dust jacket cover of the book she was supposed to cover. Cokie makes a fool of herself and runs off, Pete, MA and Logan get signed copies of Rinehart's latest book, and everyone's happy.

As thanks for the last minute help, Logan takes MA out for dinner. There, they discuss their feelings and their break-up. MA asks about Cokie, and Logan admits that while it was nice going out to sports games and concerts (stuff that MA doesn't typically do), he overdid things with Cokie, and his grades and life started to suffer. He didn't really like her, and was just using her to get over MA. MA admits that she misses Logan, and they decide to get back together again. Yay!

The subplot in this one involved the Kormans. They recently moved across town, into the Delaney's old house. The older children, Bill and Melody, aren't used to living in such a huge house. They're frightened by the sheer size of it and all the hiding places there are. Eventually, their imagination runs away with them, and they end up inventing a Toilet Monster, who they subsequently become afraid of. Over the course of the book, the girls take turns baby-sitting them, trying to get them to overcome their fear of the Toilet Monster. In the end, it seems to work.

Random Thoughts:

• I definitely didn't own this one as a child, but I did own #41, which was one of my favourites, so this one was always one that I longed for. I did end up reading it, having borrowed it from my friend, but I think I only got to read it once or twice. Not nearly as often as I would have liked. I'm very excited to be reading this now, because although I remember the overall plot, I don't remember the details.
• Huh. Turns out there really isn't much to this one. And even before re-reading this one, I already knew that the cover did not happen in the book
• And again, I don't read the synopsis on the back of these books before doing my re-read. This synopsis is highly inaccurate. Although she misses him, MA doesn't try to get back together with Logan, and she dreads having to work with him.  
• I somewhat vaguely remember the Kormans, but I totes forgot that they had moved into the Delaney's old house. When the fuck did that happen??
• Alright, a bit of research tells me that it happened in Little Sister #19, Karen's Good-Bye, which came out a couple of months before this one.
• I like the continuity that Miranda doesn't like Pete. I think the bra-snapping incident happened when they were in grade 7 still.
• Also: for some reason, I always picture the Shillaber twins as looking like Sherri and Terri from The Simpsons, only older and not dressing identically anymore. On that note, I always picture Sherri and Terri as not having purple hair, but that it being stylized/representative of them being half-East Indian or some other Middle Eastern ethnicity. Thus, I always picture the Shillaber twins as slightly brown (but not too brown, since if they were full Middle Eastern, you know that would've been a big deal for white bread Stoneybrook haha)
• You can tell that AMM wrote this one, because Jessi's love for telling jokes is back.
• I find it funny that of all the girls, Claudia is the one who thinks of adult authors, naming Danielle Steel and Stephen King. Again, you can tell that AMM wrote this one because Claudia's actually fairly bright in this one.
• Also: for all the famous authors referenced in this one, it's weird that the one that MA is studying is a fictional one.
• AMM makes it a point to note that Mallory was not sitting anywhere near Jessi at the Author Day assembly. Wtf does it mean?? WHY DOES THIS GO NOWHERE? WHY DON'T WE SEE MORE OF JESSI AND MALLORY AT SCHOOL???
• As someone who is highly academic and hates having to pull dead weight on group projects, it pleases me to see that Cokie's manipulations and schemes didn't pan out.
• ...the nerd in me also really likes this project and wants to do it myself.
• I kinda ship MA and Pete after this book, but I ship her with Cary Retlin more haha
• I like that Logan has obviously changed and has improved since their break-up. During that book, he tried getting back together again with her, without even considering her feelings. In this one, Logan asks MA what she wants to do.