Like Nancy Drew Diaries #17 Famous Mistakes, this story appears to be about sabotage but isn't. The publisher's summary and most of the story lead the reader to believe that the story is about sabotage. The same approach was taken with Famous Mistakes. It's like the people at Simon and Schuster are turning the sabotage into a running gag.
The two words "chuckled" and "smirked" are used a bit much in this story. Use of "chuckled" doesn't mean anything, but I thought of Harriet Adams each time since I recently read through her Dana Girls books. Harriet used "chuckled" excessively in her writing.
Use of "smirked" in these stories annoys me. "Smirk" means "to smile in an irritatingly smug, conceited, or silly way." I noted use of "smirked" on pages 3, 6, 29, and 67. Nancy is guilty of three of the smirks, and George commits one of them. In my opinion, Nancy smirking is out of character. It bothers me.
From page 67:
I smirked. "You just don't like that she calls you Chuck."I paused when I read that sentence and considered that "I smiled" or "I laughed" would have sounded so much more like Nancy Drew and would have retained the same overall meaning. I cannot stand the use of "smirk" in these books.
Up until page 92, this book bears some similarity to The Haunting on Heliotrope Lane. Really, it does, and that's very bad.
Nancy is portrayed in a negative fashion, like she was in Heliotrope Lane, on at least 13 pages.
Page 5: Nancy is nervous. She admits that she doesn't like being "in front of huge crowds of people."
Page 34: Nancy feels "like a clumsy oaf."
Page 52: Nancy panics and tries "to breathe through the nausea rising in [her] throat." Admittedly, Nancy does have good reason to feel this way at this moment, but the original Nancy Drew would have been concerned and then would have taken action. She would have solved the problem and single-handedly kicked someone's butt. She would not have been nauseated.
Page 59: Nancy's heart leaps into her throat.
Page 61: Nancy is called "la petite inspecteur" which makes her cringe.
Page 67: Nancy is called "little girl detective."
Page 79: Nancy experiences "self-doubt."
Page 85: Nancy admits that she is nervous.
Page 87: Nancy says that she is "clumsy" and a "nervous wreck."
Page 89: Nancy's stomach does a "few uncomfortable somersaults." Also, Nancy hates being in front of an audience.
Page 90: Nancy wills her "stomach to stop its gymnastics."
Page 91: Nancy's heart hammers in her ears.
Page 92: Nancy breathes "a sigh of relief."
Some of these examples of Nancy's fear are extremely like the examples from Heliotrope Lane. The same person might have written both books. Could we please keep this person away from Nancy Drew? Surely some other writer could be found.
The main reason I am so offended by Nancy being portrayed as scared is that the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift are not portrayed in this fashion. They do experience nervousness, but the way the emotion is conveyed to the reader is very different. The way nervousness is conveyed in the Nancy Drew Diaries series comes across as an attempt to take Nancy down a notch. The approach is different in the other two series. I feel like Nancy is being treated differently for some reason. It's very strange.
George also once again likes to eat and shows up in Nancy's room with a large amount of food. I don't get it.
On page 94, the girls give the excuse that they are going to the bathroom to cover their exit from the show. They don't go to the bathroom, but at least this book did get in the obligatory bathroom mention that is a staple of this series. I would have been disappointed if it hadn't.
The first 50 pages of this book are quite boring. I had to fight the urge to begin skimming during that part of the story due to my extreme boredom. There is no reason why the reader should have had to endure so much information about how dog shows work. Furthermore, the conversations are boring. Absolutely nothing interesting happens during the first 50 pages. This part of the story should have lasted no more than around 20 pages, and even that might have been too much.
The culprit is revealed during the first chapter—not so that the average child would know. Perhaps some adult readers new to the Nancy Drew Diaries series might miss spotting the culprit. On the other hand, anyone who has read through all the Nancy Drew Diaries books will spot the culprit immediately during the moment of the first encounter. The Nancy Drew Diaries books do not have diverse plots. Simon and Schuster must have one plot outline with empty spots where different names and places can be filled in, just like Mad Libs. One story outline is copied over and over.
While the book becomes interesting beginning on page 51, it is still below average and weak for the Nancy Drew Diaries series. On page 95, Nancy declares that she is done being "obedient" and that she will "bite back." From that point on, Nancy is on fire. Notice that my list of negative statements about Nancy Drew occur no later than page 92 in the book. It's like this book was written by two different people. Pages 1 through 50 are boring with negative statements about Nancy. Pages 51 through 94 are better but still have negative statements about Nancy. Page 95 through to the end of the book have no negative statements. The last part of the book is very good.
It's quite odd. Nancy is in no danger during the first 92 pages of the book, yet she is nervous quite often. She is nervous about being a dog handler. While I can understand the average person being nervous, this is Nancy Drew (said with a lilt, of course). Nancy Drew wouldn't be nervous about being a dog handler.
Nancy seems to have a split personality in this book. She's nervous about a dog show, yet from page 95 through to the end of the story, Nancy does a bunch of dangerous stuff that does not make her nervous at all. That makes no sense!
The book was written overall in the style of the The Haunting on Heliotrope Lane up through page 94, and then the book was written more like a Hardy Boys Adventures book for the rest of the story.
I don't know how good I can even say that this book is overall. I probably would go with overall good, but I strongly dislike a good part of the book.
This book is a disappointment, since the the previous two books are quite good and this one falls down again. The Nancy Drew Diaries books continue to be uneven in quality. Some books are good, and other books are bad.
Several fans state that the Nancy Drew Diaries series is an improvement over the Nancy Drew Girl Detective series. I concede that some Nancy Drew Diaries books are an improvement over some Nancy Drew Girl Detective books. I disagree with the blanket statement that the Diaries series is more true to the character. The way that Nancy Drew is picked at in the Diaries series comes across as a bunch of cheap shots taken for no reason.
I have questioned Simon and Schuster's intent and practices for some years. I have even wondered whether they were trying to destroy Nancy Drew by giving the inferior stories to the Nancy Drew Diaries series and using bad authors. While unlikely that Simon and Schuster would try to destroy a franchise that it owns, the company is at the very least guilty of neglect.
I feel that Simon and Schuster (S&S) is taking Nancy Drew for granted just like Grosset and Dunlap did during the 1970s. Grosset and Dunlap's neglect caused the Stratemeyer Syndicate to sell its series to S&S. The Nancy Drew books created by S&S were, in my opinion, an improvement over the final Nancy Drew books produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate.
Nancy Drew is once again suffering at the hands of a company taking the franchise for granted. This time, however, the franchise will not be sold to another company.
4 comments:
I haven't read the Nancy Drew Diaries (I checked out of the Nancy Drew series with the shift to first-person writing. I just don't feel like Nancy should be telling the stories directly to the reader), but from the way this review makes it sound, my guess is that the writer/s probably feel that having Nancy constantly doubt herself makes her "relatable" to the young girls who are presumably still the primary audience for these books.
What is curious to me is that the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift do not doubt themselves in their current series like Nancy does. Why has Nancy Drew been turned into an insecure female sleuth while her fellow male sleuths are confident? I've never been one to worry much about sexism, but there seems to be some going on here.
I haven't yet bought or read any of the Nancy Drew Diaries books. Unlike ADF, I like the idea of first person narration. I bought the entire Nancy Drew Girl Detective series, although I haven't read them all. A simple list of the good and bad Diaries volumes might be a handy guide. Even better would be an overview containing such a list.
Didn't realize it had been more than a year since I posted my comment!
In response to Jennifer's post on 2019/12/07, I still believe the "self-doubt" issue ultimately comes down to the authors/editors/publishers thinking that a female audience doesn't want an overly confident heroine, since they won't be able to relate to her. Making the series first-person from Nancy's point of view is a direct cause of this, I believe. I think the editors are working on the assumption that girls don't want to read about a character who's "better" than them, so it becomes important to knock Nancy down a few pegs. If the series were still written in third-person, or even in first-person from the perspective of, say, Bess or George (maybe they could alternate chapters), I don't think it would be as much of a problem.
Conversely, I don't think the same belief holds true about male audiences, who probably are assumed to want to jump into the role of competent, capable heroes. I'm not sure why S&S seems to have taken such a regressive view of Nancy, but that's what I think is going on here. I believe it all comes to the ill-advised decision to make Nancy the narrator of the series. Such a direct link to the audience means that Nancy has to be given flaws and weaknesses in order for readers not to feel that she's too much better than them. This was never a concern in classic Nancy, who was more of an avatar or role model than this Nancy, who appears to be designed to establish an emotional, empathetic link with the readers.
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