Cherry Ames Doctor's Office and Ski Nurse Mystery

In Cherry Ames #26, The Mystery in the Doctor's Office, Cherry takes a position in a doctor's office.  Soon after Cherry's arrival, she begins to wonder whether the medical secretary, Irene Wick, is up to something.

Here we go again with another book with a lengthy and detailed description of another doctor's office.  I am long past being bored with these books, and I now simply want it to be over.

I wasn't interested in the book until around one-third of the way into the story.  It was obvious from the beginning of the book who the likely culprit would be once Cherry discovered what the mystery was.  However, there was no mystery for the first one-third of the book, so I was quite bored.  Finally, the mystery begins with the suspect as expected, and I enjoyed the story from that point on.

That is... I enjoyed most of the remainder of the story.  The book has a subplot involving some theater people that bored me.  I skimmed everything having to do with the subplot. 

In Cherry Ames #27, Ski Nurse Mystery, Cherry works as a nurse in the mountains of Switzerland.  This book did not interest me at  all.  I skimmed the first half of the book, then I quit reading the book halfway through.  I couldn't finish it.

The plot of this book gets started faster than some of the other books, but it wasn't interesting.  The characters are flat and uninteresting. I didn't care about anything.

We learn on page 19 that Cherry speaks some Italian and French.  When did this happen?  It's like she's morphing into Nancy Drew with all of Nancy's abilities.  However, it is stated that Cherry "struggles" in other languages, so she isn't perfect like Nancy Drew.  Still, it's interesting that the reader only now learns that Cherry can speak other languages.

On page 23, the doctor tells the patient, "It's a good thing you didn't hurt your right hand.  That would be inconvenient."  The patient then informs the doctor that he is left-handed.  This is only mentioned because the man's left-handedness is important to the plot.  However, the passage jumped out at me since I am left-handed.  I found it interesting that the doctor naturally assumes that the patient is right-handed.  This reminded me of how society has always looked down on left-handed people.  It's not so bad now as before, but during the first part of the 20th century, many parents forced left-handed children to use their right hands.  Even during the last ten years, I have had people suggest that I will have a shorter life because I am left-handed and will die from an accident.  The old wives' tales still linger.

I noticed as I read this and other higher-numbered Cherry Ames books that some characters have surnames that match series names published by Grosset and Dunlap.  A character named "Swift" appears on page one of this book.  This character was in the very first book and was one of Cherry's nursing friends.  I recall noticing it but not thinking much of it.  In recent books, character names have included "Drew," "Holt," and "Hardy." Only one such name appears per book, usually mentioned just one time in the book. I might have missed other names, since it was not until a book mentioned the "Drew girls" that I took notice, thinking it strange.