Status Updates From Get Well Soon, Mallory! (Th...

me 🤝 Mallory Pike
mono

Anyway, overall this was just a tedious book that I was wrong to feel vaguely nostalgic about. Hoping I never get the urge to read it again!

--The BSC barge into Mallory's house at Thanksgiving two days in a row, and the second time it's right when Dawn calls. (It's 70 degrees in Palo Alto, and Dawn says it feels more like the 4th of July. Been there.)

--Mallory does actually leave the club at the end for an unknown amount of time. No, seriously, I really don't remember when she gets better, despite reading #72 and #73 six billion times.

Jessi a chapter later basically goes, "You're my best friend. ...But don't pull that again," and Mallory's still like "TEEHEE I WON'T!" Kind of makes you wish the book was more her getting kicked out and regretting it.

--Logan skips a football practice for an emergency BSC meeting on a Sunday. Do... middle schools... practice football... on Sundays??

--Mallory feels bad about being absent but still a member of the club (because they don't feel they should replace her if she'll be back in three months), so she acts like a jerk and creates drama to get them to kick her out. Everyone figures out what she's doing, and she's just like "WHOOPS YOU GOT ME."

The BSC event meanwhile is fine but veers on overly precious. It's also weird that it's the focus of half the book, but we don't get a chapter actually showing it, just hearing about it from Mallory's siblings.

SOME BITS:
--Stacey sounds a little jealous that Mallory gets to watch the Macy's parade (before that goes south).
--Mallory's relatives aren't shown on camera, so no one cares they didn't go.

I read this hoping for Pike triplet interaction, and NOPE. Couple lines from Adam, couple lines from Jordan, nothing I can recall from Byron, no antics from the three of them. All the Pike siblings are really well-behaved throughout the book (even when their vacation gets canceled), and even the Pike parents are super caring and attentive. Which... is not particularly interesting.

I had little memories of this book past "Mallory ruins the Thanksgiving trip to New York thanks to catching mono," and as it turns out, that's because the book itself is so boring. The writing style just isn't for me. Mallory's sick the whole book, she can't leave her house, and the b-story is the BSC creating a fun Thanksgiving for a retirement home that we hear about secondhand.

I LOVE this book! If you haven't already, please read it! It might sound boring reading about someone sick, but if you're a huge BSC fan like me, you'll know that Ann M. Martin never fails to make her books a success!