Cynthia Baxter

...their joking conversation was about to launch the most daring, most intriguing, most delicious prank of the Pratt twins' mischievous career.

Teenaged twin sisters Christine and Susan Pratt, both baffled by boys, relish the thought of figuring out what makes boys tick. So Susan proposes that Chris disguise herself as a boy for a week and do some investigating in the camp of the opposite sex in Marshmallow Masquerade by author Cynthia Blair.

And what do marshmallows have to do with this? show more Well, it makes sense when you read it.

This is the third Pratt Twins book I've read since my preteens. After reading the first two books in this series, I expected the relatively simplistic, corny style here.

In fact, this one may be the corniest I've read so far. So many exclamation points, an overuse of italics, and cheesy, dramatic declarations that would drive me to facepalms if not for my glasses being in the way. A macho guy with overdone chauvinism, a big buffoonish bully who wants to beef and brawl over nothing, and a good guy who's practically bursting with all of his, well, goodness.

I could go on, and possibly confuse you all as to why I've rated this book with five stars. But as is always the case with me, I don't have to think a book is perfect to find it amazing.

There's just something so downright fun about the Pratt sisters' adventures. Also, like the first book in the series, this tale ties in meaningful points worth thinking about. Biological vs. traditional (made-up) differences between guys and girls. Gender-based assumptions we make about people's likes and dislikes without knowing those people as individuals. The games guys and girls play with each other, sometimes without a second thought, and the emotional effects those games can have. I didn't even have to fully agree with all of Chris's and Sooz's conclusions for their sentiments to get my own wheels turning.

In a way, this particular story is more Chris's than Susan's. But it's yet another Pratt Twins tale I absolutely ate up. show less

Susan Pratt is shy, studious, and a plain dresser while her teenaged twin, Christine, is outgoing, trendy, and popular at school, especially with boys. Each sister believes her twin has the better life, so they decide to secretly switch identities for two weeks. Christine bets they can pull it off, Susan bets they can't, and the stakes of this bet is a banana split in The Banana Split Affair, a novel by author Cynthia Blair.

I absolutely ate up this book back when I was a preteen--loved it show more enough to remember it into my adulthood and to want to read it again. I finally took another jaunt with this book more than twenty years later, and I still love it.

Sure, it's corny, with all the italics and exclamation points you could ever want. It leans toward the simplistic and stating the obvious at times, and, yeah, there's some super-fast falling in like-love in the story.

But it's fun. And rather touching. Sooz and Chris not only get an eye-opening taste of what it's really like to walk in each other's shoes, but each girl learns more about herself in the process.

I didn't realize back then that this is the first of thirteen books or so about the Pratt twins. (Nah, the copy I first read didn't have a #1 printed on the front cover.) So now I may have to check out some other books in this series. show less

Twin sisters Christine and Susan Pratt are heading off to start their higher education in New York City. Chris is attending college but Sooz is going to art school—a fact that leads to their investigation of an international art heist in The Apple Pie Adventure by author Cynthia Blair.

Well! This tenth Pratt Twins novel may be the last I'll read in this YA series (I preferred reading about the sisters when they were high-schoolers), but it's been a fun ride.

My nostalgic self gets such a show more kick out of the '80s-ness of these books, and their cozy corn—along with some of the implausibility wrapped up in the girls' capers—adds to their old-fashioned appeal for me. Not all of the sisters' adventures include mystery or danger, but here's one of 'em that does.

Now, this isn't the only book in the series to be repetitive at points and to have more pages to fill than important events to fill them, even for so short a novel. And I'll never get over the fact that the girls' love interests who were rather central to the plot in Book One are never heard of again as the continuing series tosses in a string of generic cute-'n'-nice guys for the girls to go on generic friendship dates with. (I mean, maybe Book One was originally going to be the only book? I didn't know at first that a whole series followed.)

But at least one of the guys this time actually has an affect on the outcome of Chris and Sooz's adventure. And hey! Gotta love seeing a pair of sisters fresh from high school helping to pull off what Interpol failed to do on its own. Heh heh.

Gee. Little did I know, when I found and loved The Banana Split Affair back in my preteens, that I'd discover more about the Pratt Twins and still be reading about them decades later. It's been great revisiting the kind of stuff that fueled my early imaginings about what teenhood must be like, and I'll likely return to a few of the novels for future comfort reading, especially Books One and Five. show less

Mallory Marlowe is newly widowed when she goes for a job interview at a Travel magazine. She wins the job and is immediately sent to Florida to discover if it has any of its old charm remaining after ‘Disneyfication’. When one of her fellow journalists on the press trip is murdered Mallory, who had a verbal altercation with the victim earlier that day, is considered a suspect. So, in between visiting some of the kitschier tourist attractions in Florida, Mallory tries to uncover who else show more might have had a motive for killing the unpleasant man.

As an amateur sleuth Mallory falls on the more believable end of the scale in terms of how she gets involved in the investigation and the methods she uses to solve the crime. However she’s a wee bit earnest and worthy for my tastes. I’m sure that seeing her discover she can cope on her own as a new widow is inspirational for some but I found that aspect of the book dull. The parts of the story that dealt with travelling through modern Florida looking for attractions that hadn’t been Disney-fied were more entertaining for me. I also enjoyed some of the characters accompanying Mallory on her trip such as the woman who wrote for a budget travel magazine who was constantly on the lookout for a cheap deal. Having backpacked my way around a good part of the world I could empathise with the penny pinching.

This is the first book in what I assume the author is looking to turn into a series and there is certainly much potential for brand new storylines with Mallory being a travel writer. If the series does continue on its present course I’m sure it will find many fans looking for a well written story featuring a heroine they can relate to and a hint of romance. For my tastes I’d like to see Mallory travelling beyond the US and also for the series to be a little more humorous but that’s just my personal tastes and I suspect others will be very happy just the way things are. show less