Title: Boy-Crazy Stacey
Author: Ann M. Martin
Series: The Baby-Sitters Club #8
Blurb: The Pike family is taking a vacation to the beach, and Stacey and Mary Anne get to go along to help out! Two weeks of sun, sand . . . and the cutest lifeguard Stacey has ever seen!
Mary Anne says that Scott the lifeguard is way too old for Stacey, and besides, she shouldn’t be ignoring the Pike kids to spend more time with a boy. But Stacey is in love. What could possibly be more important than following her heart?
Review: Of all the BSC, I probably related to Stacey the least. She seemed very wild to me as a kid – from the big city, wearing fancy clothes, being into boys. It was all so foreign to me. I didn’t dislike her, I just didn’t really understand her.
So when Mary Anne gets upset because Stacey wants to spend all her time ogling the lifeguard, I was more on Mary Anne’s side, even though the book seems to want us to focus on Stacey and her crush. The lifeguard, Scott, also knew exactly what he was doing, leading her on. You knew he didn’t have any interest in this little kid and was only calling her pet names so that she would bring him sodas or sandwiches. It seems so obvious now, but I guess for a thirteen year old, it wouldn’t seem that way.
Or maybe I just would never have even had the nerve to talk to a lifeguard. Heck, I was so shy at that age, I probably wouldn’t even call out to a lifeguard for help. I’d just let myself drown so as not to embarrass myself.
I liked that Stacey learned a hard lesson here, although she did end up with a cute boy her own age and got her first kiss. And Mary Anne went on her first date! Man, I was such a late bloomer. I didn’t go on my first date until, um, my junior year of high school, I think? And didn’t have my first kiss until . . . several years later. Yeah, see why I don’t relate to Stacey at all? Boys were so not on my radar at her age!
This book was fun because of all the beach vacation shenanigans, plus we got to know the Pike kids a bit better. They seem like a cool family.
Categories: nostalgic reads
Life With No Plot 
Aw I remember this book! I thought Stacy was kind of crazy in this one, too, even though she was my favorite of the bunch. (I thought she was so sophisticated, being from New York haha.)
I always enjoyed the books from her perspective since she was so different from me, but I was definitely a Mary Anne. I was painfully shy as a kid and so related to her social awkwardness!
I definitely had some Mary Anne in me. I always felt more like a Kristy, though, because I was kind of a tomboy.