#30 Mary Anne and the Great Romance

Mary Anne looks kind

Of FLDS on the

Cover. It's the hair!

Summary

Richard, Dawn, and Mary Anne surprise Sharon with a birthday dinner at Chez Maurice. When cake time comes, though, Dawn and Mary Anne are the ones who are in for a surprise. Richard proposes to Sharon, and she accepts! Dawn and Mary Anne are pretty excited that they get to be stepsisters, but not so excited that their parents want only a civil ceremony with a justice of the peace. Seriously...the girls practically had an entire fancy church wedding planned out before Richard and Sharon could even let them know what their plans were! Richard and Sharon end up compromising, and agree to a small chapel wedding with only Sharon's parents, a few work friends, and (of course) the BSC as guests, followed by a dinner at Chez Maurice.

All is well, until Dawn tells Mary Anne that she thinks they should share Dawn's room when the Spiers move in with the Schafers. The problem? Mary Anne didn't know she'd be moving, and she doesn't want to. She eventually calms down, though, once she finds out that Tigger won't be kicked to the curb, and that the Spiers won't have to get rid of all their stuff.

The wedding goes smoothly, other than the fact that the Pike triplets think a mostly naked angel in the chapel's stained glass window is the funniest thing they've ever seen. Dawn gives Mary Anne a silver barette as a "now we're sisters" present; remember this, because that bit of information will come in handy during my next recap. Anyone who's been reading the BSC much as an adult will know what I'm talking about. Anyway, it's time for Sharon to throw the bouquet, and....the book ends with a cliffhanger, so we don't know who catches it. (Spoiler: it's Mary Anne.)

Meanwhile, the Arnold twins are having issues. Carolyn is now Ms. Popular at school, and Marilyn feels left out. They're fighting and arguing all the time, until Mary Anne plants the idea of separate rooms in their heads. Mrs. Arnold agrees, and the girls are much better friends when they're not sharing a bedroom.

Thoughts and Things

• Why is it that Mrs. Arnold can't seem to see what needs to be done for her daughters unless a member of the BSC points it out to her? First Mallory, now Mary Anne.
• I think this subplot would have made more sense as a part of the next book, when Mary Anne and Dawn are dealing with their own room issues. Better yet, this book and the next one should have been combined into one book somehow. Maybe they originally were one book, but it ended up too long and Ann had to split it up.
• I can't believe that Richard and Sharon agreed to a wedding that wasn't what they originally wanted, and that they didn't seem that excited about, just to please their teenage daughters. It's nice of them to want to include Mary Anne and Dawn in their decisions, but still. It's their wedding. Also, I'm assuming that the newly married Spiers footed the bill for the dinner at Chez Maurice. They must have loved paying for dinner at the nicest restaurant in town for the entire BSC, plus the Pike triplets.
• No one ever mentions what Jeff thought of the news that his mother was getting remarried. He just shows up before the wedding and acts really formal around Richard. I would have liked to see Jeff's reaction.