# data[].attributes.headline
The Life (strikethrough) Murder of Bindy Mackenzie Part 2

# data[].attributes.subject
The Life (strikethrough) Murder of Bindy Mackenzie Part 2

# data[].attributes.body
I JUST WATCHED PART ONE OF THIS RESPONSE, AND I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE EMBARRASSED, BUT I'M NOT GOING TO REDO IT BECAUSE I'M LAZY.
Script:
DOES TOBY HAVE SECRET SUPERPOWERS THAT HE NEVER EVEN SHARED WITH BINDY, HIS FORMER BEST FRIEND?!?!?!?!??!?!?

Only time will tell, I suppose.But anyway, there really isn’t much to be said about Toby except for the fact that he is truly, deep down, a cane toad. He’s strange, he has a strange body, and he’s an invasive species to a book that would be better off without him.

SERGIO: The book’s inside cover describes him as ‘narcissistic’, but I don't think he really is. I mean, sure, he’s had a lot of girlfriends, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. (And anyway, that fact probably has some sort of correlation with the fact that he has a massive yet cool burn scar on his face.) He’s a thrill seeker and can be a bit blunt at times, but, as Bindy comments, he’s correct in his bluntness. In my opinion, he’s underappreciated in this book. He even rescues the situation when Bindy says something insensitive and rude about his burn scar by laughing it off and making it seem like a joke. He’s a pretty good person.

ASTRID: Bindy tries to make her seem like an archetype bully, but upon rereading the book, I discovered that she’s really not. Sure, she can be a bit mean to Bindy, and they don’t exactly have a great history, but in Astrid’s defense, that one incident that made Bindy hate her was probably brought on by stress and panic, and she doesn’t go out of her way to bully Bindy, at least, not in the main timeline of the story. And anyway, she’s more of an outlaw than a bully, considering that she’s constantly running from the police, doing drugs, and underage drinking. However, because she is a book character and she seriously believes that she is a reincarnated carnation, I am willing to forgive her for these discrepancies.

FINNEGAN/MARKUS: At first glance, Finnegan just seems like a transfer student going to another school after a relative of his who was connected to the school died. Simple enough. However, when you think about it, he’s actually an undercover boy with a false identity posing as a high-school student to protect another student from falling prey to a murder conspiracy after his cousin, a member of the schoolboard, was murdered herself. And, after the villain discovers his involvement in the murder conspiracy, she tries to kill him, too.

Wow.

Despite how much he cares about Bindy, the question has to be asked: Does he care about her romantically, or does he just want to protect her because she’s a person? Are his motives nothing but saving a life, or is there something more personal involved? And, most importantly, was it the chicken or the egg or nothing at all? Did he try to protect Bindy because he loved her, or did he fall in love with Bindy while trying to protect her? Or did he never love Bindy in the first place?

Given how attached he seemed to her even after the murder conspiracy was over, it seems like he did indeed love Bindy, but then again, she’d fallen pretty hard for him. Maybe he just didn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her that he never loved her in the first place. In either case, he does really care about her, which shows that he’s a good person with a deadly-accurate moral compass.

Hopefully, I was able to point out something about these characters that wasn’t totally obvious. If not… this still counts as a response anyway, right? Please let this count as a response anyway.

In conclusion - Astrid always brings up her close encounters with the police like they’re no big deal, and, even in the presence of adults, SHE’S NEVER ARRESTED FOR THEM. Why? Do none of the adults care about a juvenile delinquent being on the loose???????

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Life (strikethrough) Murder of Bindy Mackenzie Part 2.webm

# data[].attributes.headline
Wiley and the Hairy Man By Some Author Whose Name was Probably Mentioned in Class but I Wasn't Paying Attention to That Part

# data[].attributes.subject
Wiley and the Hairy Man By Some Author Whose Name was Probably Mentioned in Class but I Wasn't Paying Attention to That Part

# data[].attributes.body
This story raises a lot more questions than I think the author intended.
It's about this big hairy guy who's living in the forest and minding his own business for the most part, as far as we can tell. He hates dogs, so Wiley, the main character, always makes sure to bring his dogs wherever he goes so the Hairy Man can't kill him the way he killed his... uncle, I think... and stuff him in this big sack that he apparently keeps around just for impromptu murders. Then, one day, Wiley goes into the forest and meets the hairy guy. The hairy guy wants to eat him or something because... reasons? Anyway, he'd dispatched his pet pig to distract the dogs, so Wiley was alone and thus an easy target.
Wiley, like the brave, courageous hero that he is, climbs a tree to escape because he doesn't think that the Hairy Man can climb, what with his cow feet and everything. However, the Hairy Man is apparently not as much of an idiot in the first part of the story as he is in the rest of it, so he attacks the tree to knock Wiley off. Wiley shouts, and I quote, "Fly, chips, fly! Back in yo same old place!" And... it works?
All the wood chips that the Hairy Man knocked off the tree go flying back to where they were previously. How this works I have literally no idea.
Anyway, moral of the story, Wiley escapes by stalling long enough for his dogs to find him and he bravely, heroically, without looking back once, runs away terrified.
He talks to his Mammy (who really seems like she should be the true hero here), and she tells him exactly how to defeat the Hairy Man. He does it, then he does something similar, then he does something else similar, because everything always comes in threes in these mythical universes.
In the end, they beat the Hairy Man, and only one pig had to be sacrificed. (Pig, whoever, wherever you are now, you will not be forgotten.)
Anyway, it's clear that Wiley is supposed to be the hero, since he's the one who does all the heroic stuff. However, he would've had to just hide in his cabbage (or cabin, or whatever those things are called) and pretend nothing had happened without the assistance of Mammy.
I mean, Mammy is the one who gives him all this information. Mammy tells him how to defeat the Hairy Man, Mammy gives him advice, and Wiley only succeeds by doing exactly what she tells him to. Heck, the last time they have to trick the Hairy Man, Mammy herself confronts him without freaking out once. When Wiley confronted the Hairy Man, he was one step away from wetting his trousers. So therein lies the question: who is the real hero?
Personally, I still think it's Mammy. She's way braver and smarter than Wiley, and the only time Wiley is able to do anything right is by acting as her ventriloquist dummy and repeating exactly what she said to the Hairy Man. However, we wouldn't have any gender stereotypes in this story if Mammy was the hero. Can't have that, can we? This way, we get to have a brave, masculine hero just bursting with testosterone standing up to his fears to save his village and a polite, docile female who only exists to offer him the occasional advice and bake him bread. It's perfect! (Sarcastic sarcasm is sarcastic.)
And there's one final nail in the coffin to prove that Mammy is just a plot device created by the author to further Wiley's success and that this plot would never play out this way in real life. If Mammy had this much knowledge of conjure (the story's word for magic) and the Hairy Man, why didn't she just go out and defeat him herself? Nowhere in this story is this in any way clarified. It's clear that she knows how - Wiley's actions are all born out of her advice, after all - and it's clear that she's not afraid of the Hairy Man, since she stands up to him without batting an eye near the end without undergoing any character development whatsoever to show that this changed from the beginning to the end of the story. Therefore, the only reason Wiley is the hero of this story at all is to reinforce gender stereotypes about guys being brave and facing their fears and girls hanging back on the sidelines to offer the guys help and advice.
Granted, this may not have been the author's intention. In fact, given that (according to the internet) 'Wiley and the Hairy Man' was written by a woman, it probably wasn't. However, I think that all authors should take this into account before they publish and ask if they're actually being reasonable.
In conclusion, I am never going into a forest without a rope to climb trees and escape terrifying Hairy Men again. Can't even count how many times I've made that mistake and it's been almost fatal.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Life ('Life' is actually crossed out but I couldn't figure out how to do a strikethrough) Murder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty

# data[].attributes.subject
The Life ('Life' is actually crossed out but I couldn't figure out how to do a strikethrough) Murder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty

# data[].attributes.body
Minutes: 232
Pages: 488
The only reason I picked up this book was because it had 'murder' in the title, and murder in realistic fiction books is generally very interesting. Then I discovered that it was the companion book to 'The Year of Secret Assignments*', so I picked that book up. Then I discovered that IT was the companion book to 'Feeling Sorry for Celia'. Since a.) I did not want to get caught in Compainonbookception, b.) in Inception, if you go more than three layers in, you end up in Limbo, and I did not want to end up in Limbo, as it seemed to be a relatively boring place in the movie, and c.) the school library didn't have 'Feeling Sorry for Celia', I decided to just read 'The Year of Secret Assignments*' and 'The Life (insert strikethrough over 'Life') Murder of Bindy Mackenzie', since companion books normally don't require intense and detailed knowledge of the original book - usually, there are just some references and maybe a few transferred characters.
I would also write a response for 'The Year of Secret Assignments*', but I lost it, so it's not really an option right now.
Anyway, 'The Life (strikethrough) Murder of Bindy Mackenzie', told entirely through the characters' writing, is about stuck-up genius Bindy Mackenzie who tries to be kind and helpful but is constantly attacked by a group of students that she calls 'The Venomous Seven' - Toby Mazzerati, 'cane toad'; Emily Thompson, one of the main characters in 'The Year of Secret Assignments' who's constantly getting words wrong; Elizabeth Clarry, a long-distance runner; Briony Atkins, the shy smart girl; Astrid Bexonville, Bindy's archnemesis; Sergio Saba, a kid with a massive burn scar who's always seeking thrills; and Finnegan A. Blonde, AKA Markus Pulie, here to avenge his cousin by saving Bindy from the people who are trying to kill her.
(As you can see, one of these archetypes is not like the other.)
Anyway, Bindy may be a genius, but she's also a bit of a naive airhead, fantasizing endlessly about a relationship with Finnegan even when they've basically just met and never turning on her dad even when he's clearly a terrible parent. When she actually overhears an important conversation between Finnegan's cousin (the one who gets murdered) and another person, she somehow gets it into her head that they're two substitute teachers arguing over a Polish exchange student's grades, when in fact they were arguing about the school's password (which was 'Finnegan A. Blonde', Markus' childhood nickname which Bindy knows him by, in reverse).
Anyway, the main plot of the story is kind of ridiculous. It's a group of people who are trying to slowly kill Bindy with arsenic poisoning through poisoned nail polish, poisoned books of manners that Bindy (for some reason) chooses to read of her own free will, and some delicious pastries. Her grades start dropping and she gets increasingly tired, and she thinks that it's all her fault until it's too late.
Anyway, Try, the leader of Bindy's Friendship and Development (FAD) group and one of the people trying to poison her, tries to convince the group (the Venomous Seven and Bindy) when they begin to catch on that their crazy ideas of a murder plot are just normal teenage signs, like self-obsession and obsession with crises. While a bit unfair, I actually think these are pretty accurate character traits of most teenagers. Bindy even identifies them within herself. But... the group was right. They correctly identified the cause of Bindy's problems (murder) before any of the responsible adults did by using these teenage character traits.
In addition, at the beginning of the book, Bindy always draws boxes around her weaknesses whenever she has to write them down to prevent them from spreading - her weaknesses being reverie, a difficulty coping with anti-climax, and occasional difficulty judging distances. (This may seem really unrelated, but don't worry, I'm sure some of it will lead back to my point eventually.) By the end of the book, though, she's just writing them out in the open with all her other words. BE FREE, WORDS, BE FREEEEEEEEEEE!!
This connects to what I think the theme of the story is - not that everyone you hate is secretly a good person and everyone you trust is trying to kill you, although that certainly seems to be the case with Bindy (she ends up becoming great friends with the Venomous Seven, and the people who were trying to kill her were all people she previously liked and trusted, even admired). It's that you shouldn't try to contain your flaws - you should use them to your advantage instead. The FAD group may have possessed all of Try's teenage flaws, but they were able to use them to their advantage by realizing that she was being murdered before anyone else did and eventually saving her life. Bindy's boxing of flaws did her no good - in fact, the more she did it, the sicker she got. (True,this was because of arsenic poisoning and not the revenge of the words, but still, they correspond.) By the end of the book, she stops using the boxes, and immediately, her attempted murder is stopped and her attempted killers are exposed. While these two facts aren't directly related, they are linked, which I think is symbolic of the idea that you shouldn't try to stop the things you can't change about yourself. You should embrace them and use them to help you. Who knows? Maybe they'll save your friend's life one day.
In conclusion - Bindy, I seriously cannot believe that you enjoy reading books about manners, especially completely outdated books about manners from the eighteen and nineteen freaking hundreds. They're dumb and they're useless - even more useless than my entire plethora of dumb and useless knowledge.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Year of Secret Assignments* by Jaclyn Moriarty

# data[].attributes.subject
The Year of Secret Assignments* by Jaclyn Moriarty

# data[].attributes.body
Minutes: 115
Pages: 340
I wasn't going to write a response on this book at all, since I left it in my locker (the black hole of books I've read but keep forgetting to return to the library) and was writing that response from home, but (miraculously) it washed up on the murky black shores of my locker, so here's my response on it.
Like 'The Life (strikethrough) Murder of Bindy Mackenzie', this book is composed entirely of writing from the characters. There's Cassie's diary, Lydia's Notebook (trademarked), and a series of messed-up legal notes from Emily's father to her. Example:
Emily's dad: Emily, there is no reason why you would drink my wine, is there?
Emily: No. I don't even like wine. I like bourbon and vodka.
Emily's dad: Ah. That's a relief.
(This father literally cares more about some missing wine from his wine collection than the fact that his daughter has very clearly been underage drinking.)
(Emily is in tenth grade and in no way of age to legally drink.)
(And Lydia says that her family is bad.)
(Emily, I think you should seriously consider moving out.)
Anyway, the legal notes are messed-up, Lydia's Notebook (trademarked) is hilarious, and Cassie's diary is surprisingly profound, but those make up only a small part of the book. Where the story really shines is in the letters between Emily, Cassie, and Lydia and Charlie, Sebastian, and Matthew Dunlop.
The story mainly revolves around a pen pal project that one of the teachers of Lydia, Emily, and Cassie started - a letter exchange between their school (Ashbury) and their rival school (Brookfield). Emily's pen pal is Charlie, a mostly-innocent kid with a terrible home life and a slight sense of humor. (Emily falls in love with him, of course, because this is a realistic fiction book about high school.) Lydia's pen pal is Seb, an amazing artist who's obsessed with soccer. (Seb falls in love with her, of course, because this is a realistic fiction book about high school.)
But Cassie's pen pal, Matthew Dunlop, is different - despite how psychopathic he is, he's a welcome relief from the endless romance between Seb and Lydia and Charlie and Emily. His first letter to Cassie is 'Eat (CENSORED) and die, private school (CENSORED).' Regardless, Cassie presses on, appearing to slowly wear him down with her patience. Eventually, she even falls in love with him (of course), but it turns out that he was just leading her on and lying to her about his life because he was a total jerk.
Honestly, I am absolutely astounded by how stupid the residents of this school appear to be. A teacher has them try to become friends with Brookfield students even when most of them clearly have criminal records, the entire trio of friends falls in love with their pen pals before they even meet them, and finally, at the end of the book, NO ONE points out the glaring inaccuracies in Emily's case during the trial.
Let me explain.
Matthew Dunlop (real name Paul Wilson), the jerk that Cassie fell in love with, is a manipulative jerk. Seb jokes that he has supernatural abilities, since he's able to charm even the most on-guard and alert teachers and students at Brookfield. Honestly, considering how many people he dupes before he's exposed, I think that Seb might actually be right - Paul is a mutant. (I'm sure Professor X is reaching out to him as I type this.) It kind of proves my point already - everyone is such a total idiot that no one can tell that Paul is clearly a psychopath. Anyway, Emily, Cassie, and Lydia team up to reveal his identity - up until that point, he was still operating under the name of Matthew Dunlop, and nobody knew which Brookfield student he was. Emily comes up with the genius idea of filling the envelope of the next letter Cassie sends him with glitter so that it gets all over his hands when he opens it. This may be the best and most amazing idea I've ever heard - even if you try to get it off, glitter sticks. It almost makes me want to throw in the towel and conclude that Emily is a genius, everyone else is an idiot, game over.
Unsurprisingly, the plan works - Lydia tells Seb to keep a lookout for a guy with glitter on him. Seb spots a single speck of glitter on Paul Wilson, breaks into his locker, finds the ripped-up remains of the letter along with a mountain of glitter, and sends a letter with the discovery that Matthew Dunlop is Paul Wilson to Lydia.
A lot of stuff happens then that I won't go into because it's not important for this post, but eventually, someone starts 'attacking' (and when I say 'attacking' I mean uncreative graffiti and some spilled grapeseed oil) Ashbury. The culprit is (obviously) Paul Wilson, but he frames Emily, Cassie, and Lydia for it. This is because, earlier in the book, Seb attacked Paul for joking about how he totally broke Cassie's heart. Paul thinks that Cassie put him up to this, so he gets revenge on her and her whole group.
Unfortunately, since Emily, Cassie, and Lydia skipped class to go to the movies that day, they weren't in their class at the time of the attack. Their 'form mistress' (this book is set in another country) sees this as the final nail in the coffin. She breaks into their lockers with permission from the school and threatens to look through their personal things for clues. Since the girls don't want their secrets divulged, Emily volunteers to act as their lawyer in a trial against the teachers.
Unsurprisingly, the teachers treat this as a fake meeting, a way for the little kids to play at having power before the adults can decide their fate without their permission. However, Charlie, Seb, and Cassie show up just in time (naturally) with convicting evidence against Paul Wilson that they found after Cassie helped them break into his house.
This is a problem.
Even though (for some reason) no one points it out, this is not a legal method of obtaining evidence. It's called fruit of the poisonous tree, and it means that any evidence obtained by legal methods is not viable in U. S. court.
(Rereading this sentence, I fully realize how stupid I am. THIS BOOK ISN'T SET IN THE U. S., AND THEREFORE 'FRUIT OF THE POISONOUS TREE' IS COMPLETELY INVALID. I'M DUMB.)
Anyway... wow. I'm really embarrassed now, but if I delete that, I have to delete all the buildup I wrote for it, and that took a long time to write, so time to nitpick for more evidence against Emily!
Still, it does seem a little strange that NO ONE asks how Seb, Charlie, and Cassie were able to get into Paul Wilson's house, especially since later they bring HIM in and force him to confess. It seems like everyone is bending the rules to let Emily win, which is really strange, considering that almost no one is actually on Emily's side. Heck, the representative of Brookfield even interjects when Emily starts to shoot herself in the foot! (Is that normal? I don't know if that's normal. If it's normal, I'm even more of an idiot, but whatever.)
UNLESS everyone is just too stupid to notice all the mistakes they're making.
In conclusion, in 'The Year of Secret Assignments*', everyone's an idiot. And now I'm an idiot, too, for making so many mistakes trying to prove my point. I'm probably still wrong, in fact. WHATEVER. I"m tired.

# data[].attributes.body
Minutes: 106
Pages: 287
This book involves a seventh-grade boy and a seventh-grade girl. Therefore, I knew just by reading the description that there would be romance. However, like the brave and noble slacker that I am, I selected this book and POWERED THROUGH like a SUPERHERO even though I knew how it would end because I was too lazy (and desperate) to look for a book that I would actually enjoy.
This book seemed relatively innocent (I mean, it talks a LOT about Emily's new curves like they're the biggest deal in the whole universe - I suppose they would be to ignorant middle schoolers - although I can't really talk, since I'm one of those ignorant middle schoolers - I just need to stop this rant and get back to being semi-productive), but besides that, it's reminiscent of books I would read in elementary school back when books for my reading level were actually cool and interesting. I mean, the favorite movie of the main character Bridge and her older brother Jamie is RUDOLPH. RUDOLF the RED-NOSED FREAKING REINDEER. The movie that I stopped liking once I saw the Polar Express for the billionth time and finally realized how creepy bad special effects really are. I can see fifth-grade Bridge and Jamie liking this, but Bridge is in seventh grade and Jamie is in TENTH GRADE. They're just in denial of their lost childhoods at this point.
Anyway... wow. I've forgotten what I was talking about.
Despite the innocent veneer of this realistic fiction book for teens, it contains (brace yourself; it'll be a shock) A CLICHE RELATIONSHIP.
I know, right? SHOCKING.
The lovebirds in question are Bridge, who shouldn't have survived a car accident but did, and Sherm, who is still super salty that his grandparents got divorced. It's TOTALLY CLICHE - they have a meet-cute correcting each other's English papers, she joins his club, they go out to lunch, all their friends tease them about being a couple but they deny it, and on the last page, they kiss.
For more plot lines exactly like this, see literally every realistic fiction book ever.
I had high hopes for you, 'Goodbye Stranger'. And yet you crushed them under a merciless boulder of evil. You are truly one of the least creative books I've ever read.
And the least consistent, too! Like, a thing between Bridge and her friends Tab and Emily is that they all draw creatures (a three-eyed Martian, a funny-looking bird, and a spotted snake) on their homework. On their first day of seventh grade, though, they act like they're too grown-up and mature. Which would make sense if Tab didn't later admit that SHE LOVES THE MAGIC FREAKING SCHOOL BUS.
So you're too mature to draw cool animals, but you're not mature enough to stop watching children's cartoons? HMMMMMMM? I THINK NOT.
Emily, on the other hand, is a total gullible idiot, putting all her trust in this random guy just because he texted her a picture of him in his underwear and kissed her ONCE. He leaked a photo of Emily topless? Well, he says someone stole his phone and posted it, so it must be true! It happens again? Golly, he must have really bad luck! Everyone hates me and is calling me R-rated names? Of course it's not his fault, because GUYS ARE NEVER LYING, MANIPULATIVE SCUMBAGS. NOPE. CAN'T THINK OF A SINGLE INSTANCE WHERE SOMETHING REMOTELY SIMILAR TO THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED!
(I really hope the heavy coat of sarcasm I just applied did not go unnoticed.)
So we've got the five-year-old kid/thirty-year-old woman, the airhead hot girl, and... who else? Oh yeah, Lover Boy and Lover Girl. With their powers combined, they can COMPLETE THE CAST OF ARCHETYPAL CHARACTERS ONCE AND FOR ALL.
Much more interesting is the character of Jamie, who's always getting into dumb bets with his rival, Alex, and always losing. Alex is a slimeball, so Jamie's lost a lot of valuable stuff to him over the years. Jamie is a completely sweet guy who's not easily flustered, really cares about Bridge, and just seems very easygoing in general. He's the ONE character who's not 110% stereotypical, so of COURSE he's almost completely glossed over most of the time.
Anyway, for the image of this post, I chose Rudolph, mostly because the characters' obsession with the stupidly old made-for-TV movie mirrors what I think could be considered a kind-of theme throughout this book.
I forgot to mention - there's also a B plot line that follows an unnamed person. I'll get to her in a minute.
The kind-of theme I believe that I've found is this: Throughout the book, the characters keep thinking about the past. Sherm thinks about life before his grandfather moved out, Emily longs for a time before everyone at school called her R-rated words, and even Jamie wishes he could redo his life and not lose his valuable Rolling Stones t-shirt to Alex.
At the end of the book, Sherm finally sends all the letters he's written but never sent to his grandfather, thus accepting that his grandfather still deserves to be a part of his life; Emily stays in her relationship and eventually the rumors die down; and Jamie finds love and learns to make better friends than the manipulative jerk that is Alex. Even the anonymous girl finally gets over being betrayed by her best friend on Valentine's Day.
This is reflected in Bridge and Jamie's love of Rudolph because it came out AGES AGO. It's so old that dinosaurs feel nostalgic watching it. It's so old that it first came out on VHS tapes (which might as well be record players at this point). IT IS SO OLD THAT IT WITNESSED THE BIG BANG.
Yet it's still loved by Bridge and Jamie, representing their refusal to get over the past. At least, until the end.
At the end of the book, Jamie gives away his Hermey the Elf action figure to the girl he loves. (HERMEY, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!) By letting go of this beloved figurine, he's choosing to move on with his life. Improve as a human being. Maybe even... commit to a relationship.
(By the way, I call this a 'kind-of theme', since it's totally overshadowed by Bridge and Sherm's romance.)
In conclusion, I anticipate the day a truly original teen realistic fiction book is written, though I fear it may never come.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Life (strikethrough) Death of Bindy Mackenzie

# data[].attributes.subject
The Life (strikethrough) Death of Bindy Mackenzie

# data[].attributes.body
(See other response for statistics)
OH GOD, THIS IS LITERALLY THE MOST AWKWARD I HAVE EVER BEEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. I'M SORRY.
Script:
It was a long and painful journey that led to me finally plowing through the amount of information that I needed to read this book (see my first response on this book), but when I finally did, I was surprised that it actually lived up to the title.

I’ll admit, I thought that it would end with some stupid, preachy message about how Bindy wasn’t really being murdered, and it was just her being too obsessed with her schoolwork. Nope. Someone really was trying to poison herI don’t know if I was more relieved that it actually defied my expectations or frustrated that it didn’t present a half-baked excuse not to try hard in school.

Despite that, I liked the book for the following reasons: 1.) It was relatively long and gave me something to do besides stare at a computer and pretend to be doing something with my life, and 2.) Despite the characters almost all being archetypes, I actually liked most of them.I mean, sure, they were overused, like Briony, the quiet, shy girl. But they were actually used to make some pretty good points - for instance, that shy people are usually very interesting and not just shy because they’re smart or whatever. Again, Briony’s an example of this: She has some really interesting theories, she can be quite funny, her mother is a marine biologist, and she’s brave enough to actually talk in class exactly three times every time after Toby challenges her to do it - which is actually a total (censored) move, but, as he points out, “she’d never say a word otherwise”. And he’s right.

So, here are my insights on each of the characters (Bindy, Elizabeth, Emily [ugh], Briony, Toby, Sergio, Astrid, and Finnegan/Markus). This may seem uncreative, but 1.) I actually think I have some insightful things to say about these characters, and 2.) I’m tired and running out of time to do this assignment.

BINDY: She’s incredibly intelligent and not socially awkward at all, although, here’s the unusual thing: She thinks she’s incredibly socially skilled, but she isn’t. She doesn’t know how to make friends (or even how to keep friends) and she can come off as bigoted and self-righteous. She thinks that she always knows what to say, but she often hurts those around her. She jumps to conclusions very easily, can be gullible at times, and is a nosy, stuck-up know-it-all most of the time, but in the end, she’s not really a bad person.

ELIZABETH: Honestly, I don’t think we really have enough information about Elizabeth to make a decision about her character. In ‘The Year of Secret Assignments*’, she hangs out with Cassie after she’s heartbroken by Paul Wilson for the first time, which is kind of nice. She’s always out running instead of going to class, so she clearly doesn’t care about her grades that much. She’s constantly spacing out and seems at least moderately popular, but all in all, she’s not a big enough deal to have a decent amount of information provided about her.

EMILY: If you’ve heard my audio response on ‘The Year of Secret Assignments*’, you’ll know how much I hate Emily. In fact, I hate her so much that I’m just going to skip her.

BRIONY: Like I said, for such a shy, quiet girl, she’s actually a very interesting character. She’s not the stereotypical shy genius - well, she’s certainly smart, but she’s exclusively an expert in marine biology. (She also has an arsenic testing kit, which really doesn’t seem right, since she’s not even close to the top of her class in biology, but whatever.) She’s not especially sweet and kind, but you know what? She’s so brutally honest, insightful, and occasionally funny that I don’t really care. Briony, you are awesome.

TOBY: Honestly, he’s just a weirdo. When he’s assigned to be Briony’s ‘buddy’ for a class assignment, you know what the first thing he does is? SLAP HER ACROSS THE KNEES WITH HIS NOTEBOOK. As Bindy observes, ‘Briony seemed unsurprised’. Like, do these two know each other? Are they cousins or something? If not, Toby is by far the strangest member of the class.

Also, over the course of their winter break, Toby goes from being a plump, cane-toad-like little kid to being a stretched-out tall teen with an amazing body. OVER THE WINTER BREAK.

Does the human anatomy even work this way? I mean, you have to work out to get results, but this kind of result could not possibly happen over the course of a week and a half. Or could it?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Life (strikethrough) Murder of Bindy Mackenzie.webm

# data[].attributes.body
(See other response for statistics)
Script:
(When I wrote the script for this, Wyatt was singing the SpongeBob theme song and meowing at me and Nate was shouting “TRASH!” and “OOF!” over and over again, so I’m sorry if it doesn’t make much sense.)

I didn’t think that ‘The Year of Secret Assignments’ would be a very creative book. I was incredibly shocked when it was.

It’s a story told entirely through a series of notes, letters, diary entries, etc. This is not a new idea, and I’ve seen plenty of other books that have also done it. However, the story was so unique (or at least semi-unique) that it didn’t matter.

The story is about Emily Thompson, an airheaded, shopping-obsessed girl who really wants to be a lawyer but always gets terrible grades; Lydia Jaackson-Oberman (my personal favorite character) who’s sarcastic, slightly crazy, and wants to be a writer; and Cassie Aganovic, a sweet, sensitive girl whose father died last year.

These characters are all part of a pen pal assignment with a rival school, Brookfield. For their pen pals, Emily gets Charlie, a part-time car thief who wants to get to the bottom of a mystery about a prank caller; Lydia gets Seb, a soccer-obsessed artist; and Cassie (of course, since she’s the least likely to be able to handle it well) gets Matthew Dunlop, a complete and total psychopath who starts off his letters by threatening her, but, when she keeps writing to him anyway, pretends to be worn down to the point where he’s in love with her so that he can completely break her heart when they finally meet.

Also, Matthew Dunlop is not his real name. It’s a fake name he made up to trick Cassie. His real name is Paul Wilson.

During this response, I will be ranking all the characters (Matthew Dunlop/Paul Wilson, Seb, Charlie, Lydia, Cassie, Emily, Claire, Emily’s father, and Mrs. Lilydale) from least to most morally ‘good’. (We don’t get enough information about any other characters for me to include them.) I don’t generally like judging people like this (especially since I am not exactly a high ranker in the whole ‘karma’ thing), but for the sake of the response and because I can’t think of literally any other ideas, I will do it.

9.) Matthew Dunlop/Paul Wilson

I can guarantee that literally no sane person who read this book will disagree that Paul Wilson is literally the worst character in this book. He’s the archetype over-the-top, remorseless psychopath with an excess of superficial charm. He breaks Cassie’s heart, as I mentioned before, but he also frames Seb for attacking him, manipulates the teachers, and carries out full-on ATTACKS on Ashbury (Emily, Cassie, and Lydia’s school) and Brookfield, attempting then to frame the girls for it because he thinks Cassie put Seb up to attack him earlier on in the book (long story). He has no redeemable qualities, and I’m glad he meets his downfall by the end.

8.) Emily’s father

If you paid attention to my last response in which I mentioned that Emily’s father blatantly ignores Emily’s blatantly obvious underage drinking, you’ll understand why I’m giving him such a low rank. Not only that, but he only ever communicates with Emily via professional legal notes. Plus, he’s the only non-evil character without a successful redemption. Sure, he lets Emily go and see her horses, which she rarely gets to do, but he does it in the form of an impersonal legal note and makes it seem like a punishment, bringing out all the worst parts of it instead of being like, hey, your mom and I are super proud of you, so here’s a free trip to visit your horses that you never get to visit! Yay!!

Sure, he may not be a bad guy, but I still will never forgive him for all his many, many shortcomings.

7.) Mrs. Lilydale

Honestly, I kind of feel bad about giving her such a low rank, since, even though she does a lot of messed-up things, she’s just doing her job.

Mrs. Lilydale totally blends into the shadows until the very end of the book, when Matthew pins the attacks on Brookfield and Ashbury on Lydia, Emily, and Cassie. Since the girls skipped class to go to the movies on the days of the attacks (Thursdays), Mrs. Lilydale automatically assumes that there’s no possible way that they could be innocent and demands to look through their personal things, such as Cassie’s diary, Lydia’s Notebook™, and Emily’s letters from Charlie. Obviously, none of them want their personal items read, which Mrs. Lilydale takes as PROOF POSITIVE that they are guilty.

I would give her a higher number, but like I said, she’s just doing her job. She’s a teacher, so she has to cover all her bases, and honestly, Emily, Lydia, and Cassie being responsible did seem like the most likely option - they were reported by Paul Wilson, who at the time was a very credible student in the eyes of the teachers, and all the evidence seemed to stack against them. She just could’ve been a little less pushy and paranoid about it.

6.) Emily

This is an INCREDIBLY biased ranking, but whatever. I REALLY HATE EMILY!
She thinks that keeping secrets is always wrong and that all girls should tell everyone everything, but that boys shouldn’t express their emotions at all because nobody cares and there’s no point in a boy (or a fat person) unless he’s funny. Not only that, but she’s constantly mixing up words, which is my NUMBER TWO BIGGEST PET PEEVE (besides, of course, bad grammar).

I would give her an even worse rank, but I can’t really fault her for all this stuff about her, since she’s kind of too dumb to know better. Emily’s kind of an idiot, but most of the time, she tries to be nice and well-meaning. (Emphasis on ‘tries’, but still.)

5.) Charlie

Don’t get me wrong, Charlie is not a bad guy. In fact, he’s probably one of the more well-meaning characters, even more so than Emily. He’s a part-time car thief, but he really just takes them for a quick spin, figures out how they work, fixes them up a little bit, and brings them back. He’s got a rotten home life and is never taken seriously, and he’s actually pretty funny. Still, he’s easily obsessed and refuses to forgive Emily for an incident she masterminded that accidentally led to him embarrassing himself in front of the school superintendent, the cops, and one of his older brothers (at least, until the cliche of friends breaking up over some small difference and coming back together and forgiving each other to take on the final foe is over). He’s totally rude to Emily in his first letter to her, and, while I admire his reasoning, I don’t think it was a good choice on his part. If it had been Lydia, she would’ve tried to get him killed or something. However, it was airheaded Emily, and she wrote an incredibly angry letter back, sent him a few empty envelopes of misery, and then completely forgot about it. So he’s not the best character, but not the worst by any means.

4.) Claire

Ahh, yes. Claire the counselor. The only character more gullible and stupid than Emily. She’s the counselor that Cassie and her mother go to after Cassie’s father’s death, and she is a total airhead. However, I’m not going to give her a low rank because she’s not actually hurting anyone and she is actually the dumbest person on Earth.

She does do some questionably legal stuff that Cassie’s mother (a lawyer) jumps on, but it’s just because she’s totally stupid and well-meaning.

So why, you may ask, didn’t I give Emily this rank even though I used pretty much the exact same argument to discredit her? Well, because I’M BIASED, OKAY?????? I DON’T LIKE EMILY.
3.) Lydia

It seriously pains me not to give Lydia the rank of 1 since I really, really like her and relate to her, but I can’t go just based on personal opinion. Mostly, but not only.

Although Lydia is seriously awesome, sarcastic, funny, and just plain weird, she’s not by any means the morally best character. She refuses to stop playing games with Seb (and his heart), even when he’s clearly in love with her and wants to have a normal relationship with her. She keeps inventing new ways to set off smoke alarms and putting wine in various recipes where it clearly doesn’t belong. She even tries to trick Seb into thinking that she wants him to send her drugs when she first writes to him. Even though, in my opinion, she’s the best character of all time, morally, she’s not quite. Sorry, Lydia.

Please don’t kill me.

2.) Seb

As I mentioned, he’s Lydia’s pen pal. He’s totally in love with her and still wants her to go out with him even when she refuses to stop playing games and take their relationship somewhere. He’s fun and tries to play along with Lydia, putting up with her games even when he wants them to stop. He’s brave, protective of his friends, and, according to everyone in the story, incredibly good-looking (of course). He has a bit of an anger issue, but only lashes out to protect his honor and his friends, making him the most morally right character, except for…

1.) Cassie

There is no doubt that Cassie, the character in the book who’s lost her father and gets her heart broken by the psychopath Paul Wilson, is the morally best character in the entire book. She cares about her friends, she cares about her pen pal even when he threatens to kill her, and she never wants to get revenge and resort to violence. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I don’t like her as much as I like Lydia: whereas Lydia knows how great revenge can be, Cassie is the archetype perfect Christian girl - you know, revenge is overrated, turn the other cheek, etc. etc. However, she does eventually come to see sense and help take down Paul Wilson, knocking his ego down by multiple levels, so that’s good. THERE IS HOPE FOR YOU YET, CASSIE! JOIN THE DARK SIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Although that would make you lose the top spot on this list, which is too meaningless of an honor to just throw away, so… Yeah, maybe it’s for the best that she remains a good person throughout the whole book.

Anyway, those are my rankings, and honestly, I’m surprised at how much I managed to restrain from preferential treatment to my favorite characters.

In conclusion, Paul Wilson is a psychopath, Emily is a saint, and Lydia is just really freaking awesome.