Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. 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: (Taken from the cover of another edition - thank you Goodreads!) War is declared in Room 407.From the Back of the Book: Would they always be enemies? Dana and Shelley are fighting night and day and their roommate Faith is stuck in the middle. Everyone is on edge. Dana has a big decision to make. Her dad and his new wife have invited her to live with them - in Hawaii! And Shelley is afraid she's falling in love with Tom, even though she still loves her boyfriend back home. Can things possibly get any worse for The Girls of Canby Hall? (Sure. They could have actual problems but whatever.)
The blurb really sets the whiny, self-absorbed tone of this book. Buckle up, y'all.
This book was published in 1984 and I
can't remember if I've read it or not. I guess I'll see as we go
along. ((Note from future me: I had not read this one. I would have remembered something this appalling.)) The ghostie for this book is Lucille Warner. She wrote A
Roommate Returns which was a fucking fiasco of a book so I'm not
really looking forward to this one at all.
Why does Shelley look about 40 on this
cover? Dana and Faith look pretty consistent with other covers but
this is a totally different model for Shelley. She's also thinner
than Dana here so either Gale is a thing of the past, or the person
who did the cover never read the book. Equal odds.
Canby Hall Catch-Up: So you know the
drill. We have three protagonists: Dana (sophisticated
fashionista), Faith (urban photographer) and Shelley
(small-town farm girl). For the time being, Dana is dating
Bret-the-two-timer from Oakley Prep and Shelley is hopelessly
devoted to her hometown sweetheart Paul. I don't expect
either of those to last. In the last book, Shelley was mistaken for
Casey (still majorly calling bullshit on this one) and
kidnapped to keep Casey's parents from testifying in an art theft
case. Dana and Faith Nancy Drew'd the shit out of the case and ended
up saving the day with a little help from Bret.
Missing, Presumed Dead:
Casey is completely MIA in this book. I fear she was clubbed on the back of the head by Shelley in one of her dramatic episodes and buried beneath the tulips. Dorothy and Polly are keeping her company in the dirt.
Risen From the Tulip Bed: I know Gale wasn't technically missing for most of book 2 but at the end it was mentioned that Gale was no longer with us. I was crushed. Thankfully, Gale made a strong reappearance in this one, dripping dirt clods all over the carpet.
We begin with our protagonists on a
Sunday morning in March. We're being temporarily hosted by Faith who
is inexplicably eating a donut with strawberry jam on top. Not a
jelly donut, mind you. A cake donut she's put jam on. This is very
odd to me. The only thing we get from this section is a review. You
know.....they rabidly hated each other but now they're very best
friends. #yawn Faith decides to go into town for bagels and peanut
butter. I question her eating choices hardcore.
Suddenly we're the head of Dana's
father. This is weird. I don't much like being in the head of a middle-aged man. His name is John
Morrison (JM from here on) and he's come to tell Dana
something that he thinks might distress her. As he drives up to
Baker House, he sees an “attractive black girl” and
instantly knows it's Faith because she's apparently the only black
girl on campus or something. Also, it's a little creepy that JM (an
adult male) is thinking of a 15-year-old girl as “attractive”.
He asks her if Dana is around and she's says that Dana is up in good
old 407.
JM fetches Dana from her room and the
two of them go into Greenleaf to the ice cream shop. Dana orders a
marshmallow/lemon/walnut sundae. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? #gag Her father tells her that he's getting remarried and being relocated
to Hawaii for a year. Dana struggles with both these things. Like
many children of divorce, she'd held on to the hope that her parents
might get back together someday and Hawaii is a very long way from the East coast.
JM tells Dana that he and Eve really
want her to stay with them for that year. She asks why her and not
her sister Maggie and JM replies that he won't have time to
#keeponeeyeonMaggieatALLtimes (just kidding – he actually says they
want Dana because she's older). Dana is a little stunned by these
announcements and asks if she can have some time to think about it.
Her dad tells her that the wedding and relocation won't happen until
June so she has time.
Dana goes back to Baker House and heads
straight for Alison's room. Alison can solve any problem after all.
She pours out the entire story and throws an actual tantrum about her
father not wanting to be with her mother anymore. She tells Alison
that she wants to go home next weekend to see her mom and Alison
approves that. She also tells Dana not to make any snap decisions.
The next morning, Dana tells her
roommates about her big decision which will be referred to as #thehuladilemma from here on out. Faith acknowledges that it would be
weird for them to have another roommate but that it's a great
opportunity for Dana. Shelley turns it into a #whyme scenario and
makes it all about her. They walk to the dining hall still
discussing things. Faith is basically reassuring Dana that her
feelings are valid and that everything will probably work out just
fine. Shelley interrupts this to panic about her tryouts for the
school play. Seriously, Shelley, can you just let someone else be
the focus of the conversation for five fucking minutes? #dramallama
We land in Shelley's head for play
tryouts. She finds the entire experience very life-changing and
can't wait to rhapsodize about it to her roommates. They're having
dinner with a bunch of friends, though, and it frustrates her that
she can't talk to them in an “intimate conversation” like she
wanted. Don't they know the entire trajectory of her life has
changed???? Finally they get back to their room and Shelley
dramatically announces that her entire life has meaning now and she
knows what she wants to do with her future. She declares that she'll
be an actress. Somehow Faith and Dana manage not to roll their eyes.
#betterwomenthanme Shelley then tells them that she's going to
change the spelling of her name to “Shelle” from now on
because it's more sophisticated and better suited to her new
existence.
Save me now.
Shelley can suck my toe because I refuse to type 'Shelle' again ever.
For the next few days, Dana and Shelley
are both completely preoccupied with their own lives and not really
being supportive of each other. When Shelley talks about the play,
Dana doesn't listen. When Dana talks about her dad, Shelley doesn't
listen. Shelley goes to her first play practice and meets Tom,
a boy from town. She's instantly drawn to him despite being
practically engaged to Paul back home. Yes, folks, we're about to
have our first case of the infamous illness that plagues our Canby
Hall girls.
Tom tells her that she's prettier than
she looked in the newspaper and the ghostie takes this opportunity to
remind us about Shelley's kidnapping. But don't worry too much about
Shelley's trauma, y'all. She's enjoying her “minor celebrity”
status.
Fuck me.
Later, Shelley goes on and on about Tom
to her roommates. How incredibly tall he is – how his “whisper
was sheer magic” - how he caught her interest in a major way.
Dana gets annoyed at all this and sarcastically asks Shelley how long
Tom's eyelashes were. Shelley does not appreciate the comment.
We skip ahead to Friday. Bret has
arrived to drive Dana to the train. He's come early so they can talk
about the situation. He encourages Dana to talk to him and tell him
“the hard parts” that she's not telling anyone else. She is comforted by how much he cares for
her. He tries not to influence her much but he tells her he'll
really miss her if she decides to go. Dana thinks he looks tense and
pale.
Dana spends Friday evening with her Mom
and Maggie but they don't talk much about #thehuladilemma. On
Saturday, Dana hangs out with Eve (JM's new bird) for a bit.
They see a play and then go to Eve's apartment for tea. Dana ends up
liking Eve but feels guilty about it. She feels like it betrays her
mother. This is all pretty relatable for once. I think any kid with divorced parents feels this way at one point or another.
Finally on Sunday, Dana talks to her
mom about #thehuladilemma. Dana's mom refuses to make the decision
for her but Dana can tell that her mom doesn't want her to go. She
returns to Canby Hall even more confused than she left it.
Back at Canby, Shelley won't shut up
about Tom. He's the best actor and the most dreamy boy and the
greatest trumpet player and a wonderful speaker and it goes on and on
until both her roommates are sick to death of it. Faith is doing a
better job of hiding her annoyance, though. Dana keeps snapping at
Shelley because Shelley should recognize that Dana is the one with
serious problems here.
Dana and Shelley are BOTH being super
self-absorbed here and Faith should just burn it all down and start
fresh somewhere else.
Shelley is agonizing over how to tell
Paul that she wants to pursue acting after high school. It's always
been assumed that she would go back to Iowa and be a proper housewife
and she doesn't think he's going to take the news well. Dana asks
her if she can cut it out for awhile because she's worried about
something that won't even happen for two more years. Shelley
dramatically says that the entire course of her life has changed and
Dana gets even more mad. She snaps that it's her life that's
about to change and she doesn't have two years to get used to the
idea. She then takes a few digs at Shelley about her stupid name
change (which I've refused to reflect in this blog) and her actual
lack of knowledge about the theater. Shelley cries and Dana leaves
in a huff.
It's a day or two later. Dana has
stopped talking to Shelley. Faith confronts her about it and Dana
tells her that she just can't take Shelley's drama right now. Faith admits
that it's been a little hard to handle but she doesn't want the two
of them to be fighting. Dana doesn't either but it's a bad time for
her right now and she just can't take anything more.
Shelley, meanwhile, is going completely
gaga over Tom and feeling guilty about it. She loves Paul and can't
understand how she could feel this way about another boy. It doesn't
stop her from wanting to spend more time with Tom, though, and she
invites him to take a tour of campus after practice. He accepts. As
she's giving the tour, she notices that the groups of girls spotted
around the grounds look like bouquets of flowers.
#whatthefuck?
Maybe this is the ghostie trying to hint to us about Shelley burying Casey under the tulips.
Shelley is her bumbling self during the
tour and she can't read Tom's reaction at all. She finally decides
that he must hate her and she declares that she's really far away
from Iowa. I'm not sure what that means. Do the guys in Iowa just
find her irresistible or something? Tom is puzzled by that comment
but asks her out on a date that weekend anyway.
That night there's a fire in Baker
House. One of the girls on another floor was smoking and dropped her
lit cigarette into a trash can. I can't believe one of the perfect Canby Hall girls would ever do such a thing.
#clutchmypearls
The fire department comes and the
entire dorm is evacuated into the dining hall. The fire is put out
quickly but the smoke is too thick for the girls to go back that
night so they are all sent to the other two dorms. Dana, Faith and
Shelley all head over to Addison House. It's newer than Baker and
cooler. The rooms are kind of like pods where each girl has her own
little area that she can close the door on but they're all connected
when they want the doors open.
Dana is assigned to a girl named Nancy
and they become fast friends. Dana tells her all about #thehuladilemma situation and Nancy can relate. Her parents are
divorced and both remarried. Dana enjoys having someone to talk to.
The next few days are strained in Room
407. Dana seems to be spending most of her time away from the room with Nancy and she's barely speaking to her roommates. Faith is trying not to take it
personally because she knows Dana is really struggling right now but
it's starting to get to her. She finds herself being impatient with
other people. Shelley is also tense. She gets furious with Tom when
he doesn't stop a conversation the second she walks into the room.
Wow.
#bitchmuch?
All of a sudden, the ghostie realizes that she hasn't really given Faith anything to do so we take a bizarre side trip. There's a guy named Ray who has a crush on her but Faith thinks he's
too rich and preppy for her. Way to judge people based on the
surface, Faith.
Now we're with Shelley who is doing a
Jane Fonda workout tape with some other girls at Baker House. She
quits early, though, saying Tom likes her “pleasingly plump”
so I guess Gale is back. Welcome back, Gale. I knew there was no way they were letting you go gently into that good night.
Faith can't figure out what to do about
Dana and Shelley and she eventually decides that maybe her social
worker mother can help. She invites her roommates to go home with
her for the weekend and they agree. On the plane, Shelley launches
into what Dana calls 💫“The Performance”💫. It involves lots
of dramatic sighs and grunts and impassioned cries about how Paul and
her family will never be able to accept her new career path and about
how her new feelings for Tom will affect everyone in her life.
#selfcenteredmuch? Dana can't stand it and picks up a magazine,
tuning Shelley out completely.
Faith's mom Joan picks them up
from the airport along with Faith's brother and sister (Richie
and Sarah). Dana and Shelley will be sharing Richie's room
for the weekend while he sleeps on the couch. They are awkward with
each other and barely speaking. Faith pleads with Joan to help her.
During the weekend, Joan talks to Dana
about trying to be more patient. She urges Dana to count to ten when
Shelley annoys her and to remember that Shelley's problems are just
as real and important to her as Dana's are to Dana. Then Joan talks
to Shelley about being more supportive of Dana and not so
self-absorbed. By the end of the weekend, all is well in Room 407
again.
#whoneedsAlisonanyway
The girls slip back into former habits as
the week goes on. Dana begins to get annoyed with 💫“The
Performance”💫 again and Shelley is spending so much time with Tom
and the play that she starts to fail French. Her teacher tells her
she has to have mandatory tutoring and Shelley is panicked that it
might interfere with the play. Back in her room, instead of
studying, Shelley begins to watch herself in the mirror on the back
of the door. She practices picking things up and moving, trying to
be graceful and actress-like.
We skip ahead a couple of days. Faith
is suddenly jealous of Dana/Bret and Shelley/Paul/Tom (the way I
arranged that made Tom and Paul look like a couple which is way too
progressive for this damn book). She decides to accept Ray's
invitation to a photography exhibit in town. They have a lot in
common since she's a photographer for the Canby paper and Ray's a
photographer for the Oakley paper but she's still reluctant to get
involved with him for reasons that she doesn't really bother to tell
us. I find it hard to be invested when I have no idea what's going
on.
Faith is super-judgmental when Ray
comes to pick her up. She hates his preppy style of dressing and for
some reason his gentlemanly manners seem to piss her off. It's not
because she's a feminist or anything – at least ghostie doesn't
make it seem so – it just angers her that he's so “smooth”.
After the exhibit they go to the pizza
place with some other people from school. The whole time they chat
about cameras and film and various other things I didn't pay
attention to at all because, while I respect and love looking at
photography, the actual details bore me.
Dana and Faith find out about Shelley's
French grade. Shelley seems pretty casual about it and acts like
it's no big deal but, when Dana quizzes her, it's pretty clear that
Shelley is in big trouble. Dana and Faith agree to sacrifice some of
their time and their own activities to tutor Shelley.
It doesn't take long for the tutoring
sessions to light the powder keg that Dana has been sitting on for
days. One Thursday she has to skip Choir practice in order to be
there and then Shelley shows up super late because she's been hanging
out with Tom. Dana explodes. She tells Shelley that she's being
thoughtless and selfish and wasting both her and Faith's time.
Shelley actually stamps her foot and tells Dana that she's mean.
It's extremely childish. Dana calls her out on it and Shelley starts
bawling and tells Dana that she doesn't know what it's like to have a
hard-knock life. Dana storms out of the room.
As the days go on, things get frostier
in Room 407. Dana and Shelley stop talking to each other at all and
Faith isn't very happy with either of them. Dana decides that things
have gotten so miserable there that living with her father for a year
seems like the solution to all her problems. She talks to her dad
and tells him that #thehuladilemma is a go.
Shelley's grades continue to dive.
She's now pulling mostly C's and D's and she's starting to worry that
she won't even be allowed to come back to Canby the next year. She
tries to make an effort but can't really concentrate on anything
that's not the play or Tom. Nothing else really matters to her. A
huge French test is coming up, though, and there's no way she's going
to pass. She decides to cheat.
During the test, Shelley wrestles with
her conscience. She takes out her cheat sheet but doesn't look at
it. She decides not to use it. The teacher catches her putting it
back into her pocket and the next thing she knows, Shelley has an
appointment to see PA (head bitch in charge).
When Dana hears about Shelley's
misadventure she forgets to be mad at her. She immediately goes to
Shelley to tell her that she knows Shelley would never cheat.
Shelley is grateful for the support but nervous as hell. Dana offers
to accompany her to PA's but Shelley wants to go alone.
There's only three pages left in the
book and I think ghostie definitely had a #ohshit moment when she
realized she had to wrap everything up in so short a space. As a
result, the end is very rushed. PA accepts Shelley's explanation of
not actually using her cheat sheet and Shelley receives no
punishment. She and Dana apologize to each other and decide to be
best friends again. Dana decides in the last two sentences not to go
to Hawaii because everything is fine now. It's ridiculous and we
deserved better than that, ghostie. You should be ashamed of
yourself.
The Least Annoying Person in Greenleaf
Award: I think Bret can have this. Shelley was unbearable, Dana was
almost as bad and Faith was super-judgmental. I can't give it to any
of them. Bret was supportive of Dana the entire time without pressuring her to do what he wanted her to do. Good on ya, Bret. Enjoy your trophy.
The Bitch of Baker House Award: I
could go one of three ways here but Shelley was definitely the most
annoying so she gets the trophy this month. I literally wanted to
set her on fire for most of the book. I hate Shelley so fucking
much.
Coming Up Next: So, here's the bad
news. I don't actually have book 4. They're out of print, of
course, and it was the one book I was unable to locate. So we will
be missing that one and moving on to book 5 next month. Sorry,
y'all.
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