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.

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?

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???????