Mary Anne’s Bad-Luck Mystery

Mary Anne's Bad-Luck Mystery by Ann M. Martin is a spooky friendship story for 9 year olds about a chain letter that Mary Anne decides to ignore.

What happens

It's the seventeenth Baby-Sitters Club book, and Mary Anne tells it herself. She LOVES checking the post, so a letter just for her is a real thrill. Until she reads it.

It's typed and unsigned. Break the chain, it says, and bad luck will fall on her and everyone she loves. Kristy says it's nonsense. Mary Anne agrees (mostly) and drops it in Claudia's bin on her way out of the club meeting.

The next morning she falls out of bed. Then she tips orange juice over a white dress, drops a plate of macaroni cheese in front of the whole cafeteria and forgets a babysitting job. Who hasn't had a day like that?

Then a little parcel arrives. Her name is made of letters cut out of magazines, like a ransom note. Inside is a tiny glass ball on a gold chain with what looks like a seed in it. The note says it's a bad-luck charm, she has to wear it, and Halloween is coming.

This is where it gets properly fun. Mary Anne is shy and a bit of a worrier, and she's quick to assume everything is her fault. Then her friends start owning up to their own bad luck that week, and even Kristy goes quiet. At lunch they all edge away from her down the table!

It's spooky in a sleepover sort of way, and nobody knows who sent the charm or why. One babysitting job is told through the club notebook, and it's a little comedy of its own (a cardboard robot costume that falls apart after three seconds).

Two small things before you hand it over. Mary Anne's mum died when she was very little, which she mentions early on as backstory. And Claudia, who is Japanese-American, gets described as "exotic", which is a dated way to talk about someone and might be worth a quick word.

As a later book it catches you up on the club as it goes, and that gives a few earlier stories away. If your reader would rather meet everyone in order, Kristy's Great Idea is where it all starts.

What to read next

If they love the puzzle of who sent it, try Curse of the Arctic Star (Claudia has read a Nancy Drew, after all). Nancy and her two best friends go undercover on a brand-new cruise ship. They're a bit older than the sitters, and someone leaves Nancy a nasty anonymous note in her suitcase.