Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to know which girl acted like a total bitch in this book. Because you know at least one of them did.
Tag Line: Jane is sixteen! (Wow, they put a lot of thought into that one.)From the Back of the Book: Who ever thought a birthday could be so much trouble? First the girls of 407 have to decide the best way to celebrate Jane's birthday. Should it be an evening at a French restaurant? An afternoon at a baseball game? A picnic? A sailing trip? Then they have to organize it, choose the right presents, and invite the right guests. And what about the cake and ice cream? But just when everything is working perfectly, something happens that makes Jane wish she'd never heard of special birthday celebrations Can Toby and Andy save Jane's birthday from disaster?
This book was published in 1988 and
it's my first time reading it. The ghost writer for this book is
Elizabeth Spurr who hasn't come up in this series before. A
Goodreads search of her name brought up mostly children's books.
The cover is pretty typical. There's
actually 16 candles on the cake, so good job, cover artist. Why is
Jane holding her necklace out like that though? It seems really
strange. And what happened to Toby? She looks like a different
person entirely. I would also like to point out that Andy is taller
than Toby here. Last book the ghostie told us that Andy barely came
up to Toby's chin. Maybe she's standing on Jane's ego here.
No......she'd be much taller if that was the case. P.S. Are those
deer hoof prints on the side of that cake???????????????
Canby Hall Catch-Up: You
guys know the basics. We have three protagonists (Jane
– high society princess, Andy
– urban ballerina and Toby
– small town ranch girl). Jane is dating Cary-the-rock-god
from the nearby boys' school Oakley Prep. Andy is dating a boy named
Matt
who is sometimes said to be from the public school in town and
sometimes said to be from Oakley Prep. Well, I should say she's
dating Matt when she's not dating Steve
who works in her family's rib shack. It mostly depends on her
geographic location at the time. Toby is dating the ultra-proper
Neal
from Boston (who happens to be Jane's ex),
and crushing on local rancher Randy
who has magical aging powers that allow him to be a different age in
every book. In the last book, Andy and Jane flew out to Texas for a
couple of weeks to visit Toby on her ranch. Andy was a great
houseguest and made the most of her time there but Jane was bored and
condescending. Jane met a cowboy named Beau
that made her tremble inside and she promptly forgot all about Cary.
Andy made an atrocious dinner and ran away when everyone decided to
eat PBJ instead. She got lost in the wilderness and almost eaten by
a snake but was saved just in the nick of time.
Those Who Shall Not Be Unnamed: Former
407 residents Dana-the-life-ruiner, Shelley-the-drama-llama
and Faith-the-sanctimonious
and former housemother-extraordinaire-Alison.
Hey, just because they've all moved on doesn't mean we can't worship
them at least once every book.
Missing, Presumed
Dead: Penny, y'all. She was completely missing from this book. As
was PA and RANDY. Yikes. These were heavy casualties.
Risen From the
Tulip Bed: Gigi has rejoined the land of the living. At least
that's what Toby would have us believe. She mentions beating Gigi at
tennis but we never actually see her, so it could be totally
fabricated to cast suspicion elsewhere.
We begin back in
room 407 at Canby Hall. Jane's woken up by the phone which only
works when it's convenient to the plot. Her 16th birthday
is coming up and her mom wants her to bring some friends to Boston
for the weekend to celebrate at the Country Club. Jane thinks the
Country Club is too proper and stuffy for most of her friends and she
tells her mother she'd rather celebrate at Canby instead. You
know.....because Canby is the greatest place on earth. #fuckDisney
Jane's mom is disappointed but offers to send Jane a $300 check so
Jane can throw the party of her choice. She's also sending an
“appropriate” gift. My prediction? That necklace she's cradling so oddly on the cover.
We get our basic
info about the girls and the room. You know.....Jane steals souls
from newborn babies, Andy hides the bodies of her rivals in the
meatloaf at the Rib Shack and Toby turns invisible whenever someone
tries to take a cover picture. As usual, the descriptions of Jane's
side of the room and Toby's side of the room are extremely
consistent (antique, rainbow). Andy's side is now described as having a diagonal
striped, earth-toned bedspread. For those keeping count, so far
Andy's bedspread has somehow been geometric-patterned, striped,
checked, diagonal striped and plaid. GET IT TOGETHER, GHOSTIES!
We hear from Toby
next. She's been out practicing tennis. She's hoping to
make the team this year. That was a nice bit of continuity. Someone
in the ghostie camp remembered Toby's failure to make the team the
year before. #goGhostie!
Jane asks Toby and
Andy for help planning her party. Thirty minutes pass with zero
ideas. Jane thinks an afternoon in New York would be fun. Andy
suggests Coney Island and Toby suggests the Bronx Zoo. Neither of
those are what Jane had in mind. {delicate sniff} She was thinking
museum and opera. Andy wonders how that would be less proper and
stuffy than the country club idea Jane's mom had. Jane says they
should go to the diner to ask Cary what he thinks.
Cary is in a good
mood because Ambulance was hired to play some school's homecoming.
What do you want to bet that it's the same day as Jane's birthday? I
guess we'll have to wait and see. The girls tell him about the $300
birthday party. He suggests they all go to a rock concert which Jane
promptly turns down.
Matt approaches the
table. They tell him about the $300 birthday party. He suggests renting a sail boat and packing a picnic lunch. To be honest, this
sounds awesome to me. On my 16th birthday I had a picnic
with my friends and we went to the zoo. They all like Matt's idea
but none of them know how to sail.
I bet Neal does.
Actually I know
Neal does. He was in some sailing competition early in the series,
right? Back when he was still dating Jane.
Jane wants a fancy
dinner which Matt, Andy and Toby veto. Jane gets pissed and says
it's her birthday and it should be her choice. That's valid. I hate it
when I have to admit Jane's being valid. Cary says they should all
pretend to love what she comes up with even if they hate it because
it's her day. #hearthands He's way too good for this evil bitch.
Finally they decide
to put their choices on slips of paper and draw from a hat. To
further cement my love for him, Cary writes down the name of Jane's
fancy restaurant as his choice. #swoon He just wants her to be
happy and he doesn't care what he has to do for that to happen.
#emancipateCary
Jane draws a slip.
It's “sailing”.
Neal, who does
indeed know how to sail, is promptly pressed into service. He has a
friend who rents out a yacht when he's not using it so they're all
set. Toby checks a book on sailing out of the library and gives
herself a crash course. I amuse myself by imagining a Gilligan's
Island moment.
There's about four
pages of sailing terms here. They're just throwing them around at
each other with no real purpose. I would recap it but I really don't
care. Toby's been envisioning herself impressing Neal by being a
sailing savant but I really don't see that happening.
Jane's present
arrives and it is, indeed, the pearl necklace seen on the front
cover. More or less. It had belonged to her great-grandmother and
Jane bursts into happy tears at the sight of it. It's one of those
rare moments where I don't hate Jane and those are very rare, my
friends. Jane puts on the necklace and and is surprised when it slides
right back off. It turns out there's a safety catch on the clasp
that she didn't fasten. I'm sure this won't turn out to be a plot
point or anything.
Neal arrives and
they go shopping for party food. The boat rental is $150 so they
have $150 to spend on food. Jane realizes she forgot to order a cake
but Andy says they can bake one on the boat in the galley. You
know......because they've proven themselves to be such great cooks in
previous books. They end up spending all but $25 of the food money.
When Jane gets back
home, she calls her mother to thank her for the pearls. Her mother
tells her to lock them in Merrie's safe and only wear them on special
occasions. Jane doesn't want to lock them away. No one in Baker
House would ever steal (except for all the times that someone already
HAS) and besides, her 16th birthday is the most special of
the special occasions. I'm sure nothing will go terribly, horribly
wrong here. You people are such cynics.
The day of the
party dawns. Jane is wearing her pearls. They've brought along a
ton of food, several coolers and different activities (baseball
things, a badminton set, fishing poles, music, guitars, volleyball
set, bbq, etc etc). They really have to squeeze to get all six of
them in the car. It's a three hour ride to where the boat is docked
and they're supposed to be there by 11:00.
They manage to
reach the boat without incident. It's a 36 footer and everyone
except Neal is a little nervous about handling a boat that size.
Unfortunately the kitchen is much smaller than they anticipated and
they brought so much food that they have to pile some of it on the
beds. Neal suggests they eat lunch before they set sail to free up a
little room.
After they eat,
they set sail. Neal is in charge and he does it well. When they get
out into open waters he lets Toby take a turn at the helm. She
thinks it's just like riding a horse and she hopes Neal will see how
competent she is. Andy goes below to make Jane's birthday cake and
Jane soon follows. She sees Andy putting in foil wrapped parcels and
asks what they are. Andy tells her they're special surprises. If
you get the the ring you'll soon be married. If you get the dime
you'll have fortune. Etc Etc. I'm just hoping the ring is heat
resistant. Are you really supposed to bake those things?
Andy is just
pouring the batter into the pan when Matt calls her upstairs to help
them adjust the sails. She asks Jane to smooth the batter out and
put the cake in the oven. Jane takes a minute to make sure the ring
is in the center of the cake. She wants Cary to get that piece so he
can give the ring to Jane and it will be super romantic. While she's
holding the cake pan, there's a shout from above. Cary has fallen
overboard. Then the boat lurches and Jane ends up face-planting in
the cake batter.
Hmmmmmmmm. Do you
think she just lost her pearls in the cake batter? Because I think
she did. There's going to be a huge panic over them being missing
and then someone will find them in their piece of cake. #prediction
By the time Jane
gets herself cleaned up and the cake in the oven, Cary has been
rescued and all is well. Toby is sitting to the side looking
embarrassed and tragic and Jane surmises that she had something to do
with Cary's little swim. Cary takes it all like a champ though. He
laughs at himself for getting dunked and makes it sound like it was
all his idea. He's so very, very sweet y'all.
Neal takes over
sailing again and soon they are all sorted out. Toby beats herself
up over losing control of the boat. She plays the “what if” game
for awhile. What if Cary had suffered a concussion? What if he'd
been knocked unconscious and drowned? I'll answer those for you,
Tobes. I WOULD END YOU. There. Now you know. It's always better
to know than to wonder.
Cary gets out his
guitar and starts to tune it. Toby thinks maybe she should take a
few pictures to preserve the moment....and to distract herself from
wondering if some middle-aged suburban recap blogger is going to
sneak up behind her with a pipe wrench. When she searches for the
camera, it's missing. Jane says she set it on the deck earlier and
Toby is terrified that it might have slid off into the water when she
had her little “incident”.
They make it to the
campground where they plan to dock for awhile only to find out that
they aren't allowed to dock there at all. Neal decides to anchor the
boat on the other side of the river and swim back across to the
shore. For reasons that elude me, everyone else decides to do this
too. They unload all the things they need to eat and play and then
sail back across the river to anchor. They discover they forgot to
unload the cake so Neal ends up swimming one handed across the river
while holding the cake up about his head with the other arm.
#bullshit
That cake would
definitely be soggy if this was the real world.
They eat (catfish
and steaks and salad and potatoes and corn and mushrooms and bread
and frozen pizzas and pasta salad and antipasta salad and fruit salad
and on and on and on) and them make some s'mores around the campfire.
The 407 girls decide to put together s'mores to take back to the
rest of Baker House. They figure the girls can heat them up with
their hair dryers.
I......I guess this
would work......theoretically. Now I'll have to try it sometime.
Thanks, ghostie.
After eating enough
to kill them all, they bring out gifts. Cary recorded his infamous
song that he serenaded Jane with in the early days of the series.
Matt and Andy give her a journal. Neal gives her a picture frame and
Toby gives her a cactus. Jane says she loves them all. I don't
believe her. They all decide to lay down and have a nap before
heading back.
It's not until they
are back on the boat later that Jane notices her pearls are gone.
They do a thorough
search while Jane sobs in a bunk. No pearls. Jane decides that
someone stole them off her neck while she was sleeping because that's
better than her losing them. How did someone steal pearls from
around her fucking neck without waking her up? Your guess is as good
as mine.
To further add to
the drama, the wind goes away completely and the battery on the ship
is dead. All they can do is drift with the current. Neal says they
have two choices: try to drift out into the ocean and hope they catch
wind there or try to drift toward the shore where hopefully they can
get help. I think they pick the shore but the ghostie doesn't come
right out and say.
Drifting is slow
and since the battery is dead, they have no power. They play
Scrabble by candlelight. Everyone but Neal is worried about making
it back to the dorms in time. The girls have to be in by midnight
and the boys have to be back by 2:00am. If Cary is late, he'll be
restricted to campus the following weekend and unable to play his big
Homecoming gig. Oh yeah. I guess I was wrong about the timing of
that one. One failed prediction but I stand by the pearls in the
cake.
Eventually the
Coast Guard rescues them by jumping the battery and they all safely
return to their respective schools. Well....I don't really know
where Neal is staying. A hotel maybe? Ghostie never said.
The next morning
Jane's mother calls. They're going to be in town earlier than
expected and she wants to have lunch with Jane at the diner and then
spend the afternoon with her before having supper and heading home.
Jane is determined to hide the fact that the pearls are missing. She
calls Cary because he'll be working at the diner and she wants to
make sure he won't rat her out. Cary doesn't think lying to her
parents is a very good idea and he encourages her to tell them the
truth. Jane flippantly says the pearls will turn up and she doesn't
want to worry her parents over nothing. She begs Cary to play along
and he finally says he will but he doesn't like it. Before they hang
up, he tells her that he hopes she'll never lie to him just to keep
him from worrying.
Oh, snap.
Did a ghostie just
set up a future book? Has that ever happened before?
Go, Elizabeth
Spurr!
Jane goes back to
the room and bitches about Cary not falling all over himself to lie
to her parents. Andy isn't very sympathetic. She doesn't think Jane
should be lying to her parents either. Jane repeats that the
necklace will turn up because she “wished very hard” on
her 16th birthday which fell on the 16th of
September. Andy is doubtful. Jane wants Andy to join her for lunch
to lend moral support but Andy doesn't want to be part of all this
and refuses. Jane has a fit but Andy puts on a leotard and leaves
the room.
Suck on that, Jane.
Jane goes sobbing
to Dee that all of her friends have deserted her and don't
care about her at all.
I hate Jane.
Dee and Maggie
both offer to let her borrow a strand of pearls to try to fool her
parents with. Jane picks Dee's because she's afraid Maggie's might
be poisoned (#oneeyeonMaggieatALLtimes). Actually, she picks Dees
because they're graduated like the real pearls were. I think this is
a really stupid plan. Those pearls have been in her family for
generations. Her parents aren't going to be fooled by $6 pearls from
a swap meet.
Jane's plan is to
wear Dee's pearls with a button-up shirt at lunch. The pearls will
mostly be hidden by the neckline. She's banking on the fact that her
mother won't want to look too closely which seems dumb to me. Then
she's going to claim that Merrie was gone before dinner and she
couldn't get them back out of the safe to wear again.
That afternoon,
Toby touches base with Jane and asks her how lunch went. Jane says
it was fine. Cary was amazing, serving their hamburgers in the
fanciest way possible with radish roses and carrot curlicues.
#hearthands Jane is sure she fooled her mother with the fake pearls
but then her mother shows up unexpectedly and demands to see them.
Jane fesses up and
goes for a walk with her mother. Her mother tells her this long
story about how she once damaged an heirloom watch and lied to her
parents about it. In the end, she glosses over the loss of the
pearls and says they aren't important because the family will always
have love.
Sure.
I buy that.
That's how things
happen in the real world. This ghostie really has her finger on the
pulse of realistic reactions.
That night there's
a surprise “un-birthday” party for Jane in Merrie's room and they
finally get around to eating that cake. Dee finds the ring and will
thus be the first engaged. Toby finds a key and will have success
and fame. Andy is clearly jealous of this and Toby hands it over
without hesitation because she's just an awesome person. Jane finds
the dime and will have wealth which everyone finds super hilarious.
Maggie finds the pearls in her piece.
I CALLED THAT
ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jane calls Cary to
tell him the good news and he's happy for her. She can tell
something is wrong, though, and asks him about it. He says he's on
restriction the next weekend because of coming in late and he won't
be able to play the Homecoming gig. Not only will they get a
reputation for backing out on their gigs, but they won't get the
promised $200 to go toward recording their first single.
The next day a
letter from Neal arrives. Which is pretty damn amazing since he just
left the day before. The post office moves fast in Massachusetts.
Inside the letter is a check made out to Jane. It turns out the
owner of the boat felt responsible for the dead battery so he
refunded their rental fee. Jane cashes the check and asks for $1
bills. She clips the money to a small tree she gets from a
greenhouse and then sends it up to Cary's dorm room to make up for
the money they lost.
Okay. This is the
second time in a single book that I don't hate Jane and I find it
SUPER disconcerting. This can't go on.
When the dorm
monitor hears why Cary was late, he lifts the restriction and Cary is
able to go to the gig after all. Because that's how life works in
this series, people. Just go with it.
In the end,
Ambulance arrives at Homecoming just as everyone is leaving because
the replacement band is horrible. They save the dance with their super cool awesome music and immediately
get booked for three more gigs. JANE AND THE GIRLS FROM 407 SAVE THE
DAY AGAIN WITH THEIR MAGICAL MONEY TREE!!!!!!!!!
It ends without a super cheesy line and I'm weirdly disappointed.
I feel like this
book was completely useless. Nothing important happened. There was
no character growth. It was a throwaway.
Also, the cover
LIES. It's a lying liar who lies! At no point was Jane wearing
those pearls when blowing out the candles. THEY WERE BAKED INSIDE
THE CAKE!!!! Seriously, do the artists even try?
The Least Annoying
Person in Greenleaf Award: This could go to several people but I'm
going to mix it up and give it to Neal. He just seems like a really
good friend and boyfriend in this book. Plus he has some kind of
magical mail powers that allow him to send a letter across the state
in less than 12 hours. That's pretty impressive.
The Bitch of Baker
House Award: This is pretty shocking but there really wasn't one.
This was such a non-book. Jane is the only one even in consideration
but it's kind of hard to give it to her when she gave Cary a money
tree.
Coming up Next:
Shelley-the-drama-llama is on her way back to Canby Hall!
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