The Babysitter III or "Return of Fashion Crimes!"

I think that since my one paragraph review of The Babysitter II went over well, I’ll just do the same thing for The Babysitter III. Because these books are so G-D boring! Can you believe there are four of them?? Thank GOD I only have one more to read. You guys owe me. (Just kidding, please continue to read. I love you!)

The cover for this book is at least a little bit titillating… a creepy hand reaching to turn off the light which is obviously already off. However, since this is the most interesting thing about the book, and that scene doesn’t even HAPPEN… then it’s safe to say I was a little bit disappointed. Except for the end. The end was satisfying. You’ll see…

Alright. Jenny and her mom decide its best for her to go to her cousin’s house for the summer since she still can’t get over almost being murdered by Mr. Hagen in the first book. (Side note: she apparently doesn’t care that she was almost killed by her shrink’s receptionist in the last book. She just glosses over that completely. WTF?) Her cousin Debra has a babysitting job and when she’s there alone, she starts getting the creepy Mr. Hagen calls that Jenny got two summers ago! At first she thinks it’s some guy that she had been prank calling, and then she thinks it’s her ex-boyfriend who dumped her after he found out about said prank calls, and then she thinks it’s Jenny’s boyfriend Cal who ran away from home. It all comes to a climax when the baby Debra is sitting for gets stolen, Cal shows up to see Jenny and Jenny is apparently abducted! I say apparently because it turns out that Jenny snapped, thinks she’s Mr. Hagen and took the baby in replacement of the baby that “he” lost many years ago. She’s quickly overtaken by the police because, well, she’s a teenage girl, holding a baby, on a horse, in the middle of a lightening storm. It was a weird final showdown. The book ends with Cal comforting Debra by telling her not to blame herself; he spent a lot of time with Jenny too and didn’t notice her descent into madness! Hmmm… you’re right Cal. It’s kinda… your fault!

So it was awesome that Jenny ended up being the baby-kidnapper/prank caller. That was pretty rad, and almost unexpected! Besides that, the book was so bad. Not AWE-some bad, just kinda shitty. I wonder if The Babysitter IV is about Jenny or Debra. Debra was at least more interesting, she was always prank callin’ boys. Ahhh, the days before *69 and caller ID. Twenty repressed memories of murderous receptionists out of forty one!

Now that THAT’S out of the way… lets talk 90s fashion. For some reason, these non-Fear Street books are filled with descriptive gems!

1. Jenny’s friend Rick wears faded jeans, torn at both knees, and a red and black t-shirt saying METAL MANIACS. I wonder if he also had long, permed hair?
2. Debra’s mom is apparently short, with a boyish body and a close cropped hair. So a pixie? She wears “a blue lycra tank top over black leggings”. Deee lighful! Who doesn’t love Mom camel-toe in the morning?
3. This description seems overly negative: "She was short and very fat. She wore an enormous, flower patterned wraparound skirt and a bright yellow sweater. Her face was heavily made up, with heavy black eyebrows painted above her dark eyes and thick, red lipstick smeared over her mouth." We get it. She's gross. BTW this character was homeless, which I think is a first for R.L. Glad to see he handled it so nicely.
4. This is a guy that Jenny has a crush on: "He had thick, golden eyebrows that looked like big caterpillars under his cowboy hat. His eyes were steely gray, narrow and close together. He had a great smile, with two front teeth that jutted out at odd angles." WTF Jenny? (For the Canadians: To get that picture of Harper, I typed in "inbred cowboy" into Google Images. Heh!)
5. Another mention of a Simpson's T-shirt! R.L. was so in touch with kids of the 90s!
6. There's talk of oversized men's shirts with black leggings. How could there not be?
7. Last but not least, Cal shows up to wear the HELL outta some denim. Black denim jacket over ripped blue jeans? Bad to the bone.