* Photo credit to The Closet *
Instead of voicing my own views on this cover, I shall let my co-worker do it for me: “This one—[Jessica]—looks about sixty! She looks like a Golden Girl!” He also does not like Liz’s bathing suit. I would also like to add that I shun Jess’s peach bathing suit/black-as-night sunglasses combo. There is something uncomfortable about the color pair.
Lila Fowler is working in Malibu as a mother’s helper—yes, you read that right, Lila working, it’s stupid, I know—and raves to Jess about how awesome it is, so Jess cons Liz into getting involved in a similar gig because she can’t go to Malibu without her. (Ned and Alice, layin’ down the law!) Liz says she won’t go unless Jess does all the work in finding them the jobs, which Jess does, although she thinks she’s setting herself up for a sweet deal: She sticks Liz with a troublesome child named Taryn Bennet while she chooses to work for a couple with a baby—and this couple just so happens to be related to Tony Sargent, total fox and singing sensation! But it turns out that Liz gets to live the life of luxury in a mansion with Taryn while Jess has to sleep in a room with a baby in a house the size of a mall kiosk. HAR HAR, Jess!
I can’t believe the ghostwriter managed to flesh out this turd of a tale to 200 pages. Scoff! Lila, after bitching about how immature high school boys are, falls in love with a fifteen-year-old stud and Jess gives her shit for it, obviously forgetting her office liaison with Dennis. Taryn hates Liz—and life in general, actually—because her parents are wealthy, negligent a-holes, but Taryn looooovves Jessica because Jess tells her secrets that are one step away from being a cautionary tale for children. (I wish.) Jess falls in love with Liz’s next-door neighbor Cliff and it’s shockingly boring. Yawn.
Taryn gets so upset about her home life she runs away during a thunderstorm and nearly dies on a bridge, but Jess talks her down with a “secret.” Taryn is rushed to the hospital with a fever and is on the brink of death, and her guilt-stricken jokes for parents arrive, and Jessica and Elizabeth teach them how to love their daughter and make the family whole again. BAAAAAAAARF. It gets worse: “When [Elizabeth] got back, the Bennets wanted to talk. Audrey [Taryn’s mother] especially wanted Elizabeth’s opinion on how they could best go about getting to know their little girl.” I’m officially beyond sickened. I hope I never have to ask a sixteen-year-old busybody for help raising my future kids.
Then Liz meets Jamie Galbraith, the Sargents’ cousin who comes to visit, and falls in love within two seconds. Why am I always surprised by this frequent and stupid occurrence? I scoff at myself. He’s twenty-one and she’s sixteen, and it’s sort of grossing me out. I don’t care if the girl IS a Wakefield twin with a grail-shaped vagina—this ain’t right or hot! (But apparently he’s secretly seventeen—I don’t know; it’s never really cleared up. Just rest assured that it sucks.) To no one’s surprise, Jamie Galbraith is actually Tony Sargent, who’s hiding out from some groupie’s boyfriend, fresh out of prison. The guy finds Jamie/Tony and stabs him in the arm (good place) but Liz knocks the guy out with a vase just as the police arrive. Wakefields to the rescue! I can’t even handle it. Then Liz acts like a bitch to Jamie/Tony, and then goes to a Tony Sargent concert, where he dedicates a brand new song he wrote to her, and she breaks down sobbing, and then the book ENDS. Why do I continue to read this series? I’m a masochist.
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