The Unicorn Club #8 - Kimberly Rides Again
As you might have guessed from the title, Kimberly narrates this book. When I was a kid I religiously bought every one of the Unicorn Club books, which if I’m not mistaken, came out every other month. Which perhaps should have said something to me about their quality, but I digress. Anyway, I thought it was really weird when this one came out and Kimberly was the narrator, when she’d just been introduced two books ago, and when Ellen hadn’t yet had a book of her own. Does even Francine think she’s an idiot?
Kimberly doesn’t waste any time introducing the main plot point for the book, which is that her parents are paying for the Unicorns to spend the weekend at a nearby dude ranch, as a way for Kimberly to get “back into the swing of things” in Sweet Valley. I guess completely ruining the Unicorns’ previous incarnation as remotely human people wasn’t enough.
After a brief argument about salad dressing between Jessica and Lila, Kimberly thinks to herself how after the Unicorn/Angel split, she’s totally in now. The girls discuss cowpoke attire - Lila has purchased alligator boots for their upcoming trip - and after Kimberly puts down the Angels for a while, they decide to invite Mandy along with them to the dude ranch as a way of convincing her to come back to the Unicorns. Apparently it doesn’t cost extra to have another person along, because Kimberly’s parents are never consulted about this change in guest list.
Jessica and Kimberly corner Mandy the next day after school as she’s on her way to the day-care center. It takes a bunch of convincing (Mandy says “I didn’t think that Unicorns and Angels were supposed to, you know, socialize.”) but she’s really enthusiastic about horseback riding, and finally agrees when she realizes the rest of the Angels are going to be out of town or busy that weekend.
In the next passage, Lila for some reason tells everyone that she just spoke to Janet. Apparently Janet liked this guy named Chris Blake (which, hilariously, was my friend’s kinda punkish, high-school boyfriend’s name), but she only knew about him because her friend Cindy liked him first. Chris asked Janet out, Cindy got mad, and then Chris dumped Janet. This annoying, completely irrelevant, convoluted story was a ploy to get the girls to talk about putting friends before boys, which they kinda-sorta agree to do, “unless something comes up.” I love 13-year-old girls’ idea of integrity.
We next see our insipid intrepid crew en-route to the ranch in Kimberly’s dad’s van. It’s boring.
When they arrive, the Unicorns plus Mandy are given a tour by Mrs. Margot, the director of the ranch. I wonder if Margot is actually her last name, or if it’s some kind of colloquial thing. Or if she’s somehow related to Crazy Margo. Princess Lila is dissatisfied with the straw-filled mattresses, I thought you’d all like to know. Mandy is oddly fascinated with the lodge itself, as well as the ranch’s history, and considers sitting inside all weekend listening to Patsy Cline.
Lila and Jessica lamely argue about drawer-usage, and all the girls wonder if there will be Cute!Boys at the ranch. Pretty soon, Mrs. Margot knocks on the door to bring the girls down for dinner. She mentions that the girls will meet her son, Herbert, and as soon as she leaves they all make fun of his name, like omg, what is he, 75? But…shock me shock me shock me…Herbert is a total hottie!! Well Sinead O’Rebellion.
Not only is Herbert soooo cute!, he is also a singer. (An aspiring star of Nashville, at that.) As he finishes his first song, Kimberly decides that she doesn’t just have a crush on him - she’s in LOOOVE. Predictably, the other Unicorns also like him, but only Kimberly is distracted enough by his very existence to start buttering her hand instead of a dinner roll. I know it’s been said before, but…these are the popular girls??
Herbert makes his way over to the Unicorns’ table and Kimberly starts telling him about the club. Because that’s how to impress an older guy, tell him all about your club that’s named after a creature popularized by Lisa Frank. She also says that she’s the president (Hee!) and that none of the other Unicorns are very good at riding, but she is. Herbert’s basically like “um, yeah,” and continues doing his rounds of the tables.
That night as they’re lying in their beds, Kimberly confesses her love for Herbert to Jessica. Jessica, predictably, laughs. Bless you, Jessica. Kimberly’s all, “Eighth grade and eleventh grade aren’t that far apart!” Actually, there’s a continuity error, because she says “seventh grade” - despite the fact that Kimberly is constantly rubbing it in everyone’s faces how ~mature~ she is since she’s older. Anyway, it’s still gross. As they’re drifting off, Jessica whispers “All’s fair in love and war.” Ruh-roh.
The next morning, they’re all woken up by a clanging bell calling them down to breakfast. It describes their outfits, from which Kimberly deduces that they’re all trying to impress Herbert. This includes Ellen’s Hard Rock sweatshirt. Oh, the 90s.
At breakfast, Mandy refuses to eat anything, and after acting all weird for a while, admits that she’s afraid of horses. All the stuff she said earlier was a lie, and she thinks she should just go home. But, oh god, she HAS to ride one, because ever since she recovered from Teh Cancer, she decided she was going to seize every opportunity that came to her. Kimberly tells Mandy she can ride with her, which makes her feel better. Kimberly also thinks that if Herbert finds out about how nice she is, he’ll “think she’s cool.”
The Unicorns head over to their riding lesson with Herbert, and all say various stupid/untrue things to try to impress him. Like, Jessica says she loves to wake up at dawn and ride her horse in the quiet sunrise. Mandy admits her fear of horses, and although all of the Unicorns offer to share their horses, Herbert decides she’ll be best off riding with him. Kimberly is jealous for a minute, but then decides she’ll just have to impress him with her riding skillz.
Unimportant but hilarious: as they’re heading out, Lila gets splattered in horse manure and has to run off to change her clothes.
Now that she’s riding with Herbert, Mandy seems much calmer than she did before. Jessica and Kimberly suspect her whole story was made up so she could get closer to him. When they stop for lunch, Lila and Jessica claim saddle-soreness, and Jessica decides to try and walk it off. After a few moments (during which Kimberly brags about how great she is at riding) Jessica screams and they all rush over to her. She’s tripped and hurt her ankle! All conveniently out of anyone’s view! Herbert, not knowing about her sociopatic tendencies, carries her back to the picnic, and says she can ride with him on the way back. Mandy gets demoted to Kimberly’s horse.
When they get back to the ranch, Jessica’s ankle is magically better. Kimberly is all butthurt that her friends are trying to “steal” Herbert from her when she’s the one who’s in love with him. She calls Jessica out on the whole ankle thing, and accuses Mandy of lying about her fear of horses. She’s pretty bitchy, and says she wishes Mandy hadn’t come along at all, and that the Angels should fly in and take her away. Mandy starts to cry, and Kimberly is left alone in the stables.
Herbert comes up to her and asks if she wants to help him brush and untack the horses, and of course she jumps at the chance. Kimberly asks him about the harder trails at the ranch, including one he likes to go on at night called the Moonlight Madness Trail. When they’re done, he suggests she go get ready for dinner and get the trail dust off herself. Kimberly is momentarily horrified, until Herbert tells her she still looks pretty. He then ruffles her hair and says “You’re a cute kid, Kimmie.” You would think she’d take this hint, but instead she fantasizes about line dancing with him that night.
Kimberly and Jessica argue while they’re getting ready, and there’s more fighting at dinner. All this makes Ellen sad - some foreshadowing for the next book. Good work there, ghostwriter! Peppering it in before the last page. They continue fighting even when Herbert comes up to their table. Good form, girls. Mandy is crying yet again because Kimberly accused her (again) of lying about being afraid of horses, so Herbert offers to dance with her for the first song. But, le gasp! He’d already promised the first dance to Kimberly, back at the barn! She mentions this to Herbert who’s like “Hi, your friend is crying?” Kimberly grudgingly accepts this reasoning.
Jessica, Lila, and Mandy are all dancing, and Kimberly is standing off to the side complaining to Ellen. Ellen eventually convinces Kimberly to get out there and start dancing, and she actually has fun for like a minute until she realize Herbert isn’t going to drop everything and dance with her all night. She storms off the dance floor, and goes over to the snack table. Herbert and Jessica join her, and Herbert offers to dance with her for the last song. Joy! And then Jessica spills punch on her. She claims it was an accident, but Kimberly throws a total tantrum and runs out of the room screaming and crying.
The rest of the Unicorns come back into the room, where Kimberly’s been holed up sulking. They all seem pretty happy, and mention that they feel bad that Kimberly had to leave. She of course does not believe them. Being the genius that she is, she decides that her final chance to impress Herbert is to meet him out on the Midnight Madness Trail, and after the others are asleep, she sneaks out of bed and down to the barn.
Despite knowing that she should go slowly on an unfamiliar trail, Kimberly takes off galloping. After Kimberly is nearly hit in the face by an owl, Fabio-style, the horse spooks and Kimberly falls off, badly twisting her ankle. The horse runs off back toward the barn, and Kimberly realizes she’s stranded - she can’t walk on her ankle, and her friends won’t notice she’s gone until the morning. She’s understandably scared, and starts to cry.
After about fifteen minutes, Kimberly hears horse hooves in the distance. When the riders become visible, Kimberly realizes it’s Jessica and Mandy, and they’ve come to save her. It turns out, Mandy had wanted to talk to Kimberly about what had happened, but saw she wasn’t there. So she got Jessica, put her fears aside, and rode to find Kimberly.
They figured out where she was because they’d overheard her talking about trails with Herbert (how, I don’t know, because that conversation took place when they were in the barn alone) - and when Jessica saw Kimberly’s horse running frantically back to the barn, they knew something must be wrong because, in Jessica’s words, “Horses do that, right? Or is that Lassie?” There’s a reason this series is about the Wakefields.
So, everyone makes up and it’s peachy keen, and they’ll never let a guy get between them again. Hahahaha…ahem. Excuse me. They ask Mandy once again to join the Unicorns, but she is still indecisive, meaning she’s staying in the Angels for now.
Also, Herbert has a girlfriend, whose name is Gladys. The Unicorns, properly jilted, make fun of her name, and make up fake boy names to tell everyone at school. The names are cooler than “Herbert.” In the end, everyone is glad to be returning home, except Ellen. I wonder why…..!
Kimberly doesn’t waste any time introducing the main plot point for the book, which is that her parents are paying for the Unicorns to spend the weekend at a nearby dude ranch, as a way for Kimberly to get “back into the swing of things” in Sweet Valley. I guess completely ruining the Unicorns’ previous incarnation as remotely human people wasn’t enough.
After a brief argument about salad dressing between Jessica and Lila, Kimberly thinks to herself how after the Unicorn/Angel split, she’s totally in now. The girls discuss cowpoke attire - Lila has purchased alligator boots for their upcoming trip - and after Kimberly puts down the Angels for a while, they decide to invite Mandy along with them to the dude ranch as a way of convincing her to come back to the Unicorns. Apparently it doesn’t cost extra to have another person along, because Kimberly’s parents are never consulted about this change in guest list.
Jessica and Kimberly corner Mandy the next day after school as she’s on her way to the day-care center. It takes a bunch of convincing (Mandy says “I didn’t think that Unicorns and Angels were supposed to, you know, socialize.”) but she’s really enthusiastic about horseback riding, and finally agrees when she realizes the rest of the Angels are going to be out of town or busy that weekend.
In the next passage, Lila for some reason tells everyone that she just spoke to Janet. Apparently Janet liked this guy named Chris Blake (which, hilariously, was my friend’s kinda punkish, high-school boyfriend’s name), but she only knew about him because her friend Cindy liked him first. Chris asked Janet out, Cindy got mad, and then Chris dumped Janet. This annoying, completely irrelevant, convoluted story was a ploy to get the girls to talk about putting friends before boys, which they kinda-sorta agree to do, “unless something comes up.” I love 13-year-old girls’ idea of integrity.
We next see our insipid intrepid crew en-route to the ranch in Kimberly’s dad’s van. It’s boring.
When they arrive, the Unicorns plus Mandy are given a tour by Mrs. Margot, the director of the ranch. I wonder if Margot is actually her last name, or if it’s some kind of colloquial thing. Or if she’s somehow related to Crazy Margo. Princess Lila is dissatisfied with the straw-filled mattresses, I thought you’d all like to know. Mandy is oddly fascinated with the lodge itself, as well as the ranch’s history, and considers sitting inside all weekend listening to Patsy Cline.
Lila and Jessica lamely argue about drawer-usage, and all the girls wonder if there will be Cute!Boys at the ranch. Pretty soon, Mrs. Margot knocks on the door to bring the girls down for dinner. She mentions that the girls will meet her son, Herbert, and as soon as she leaves they all make fun of his name, like omg, what is he, 75? But…shock me shock me shock me…Herbert is a total hottie!! Well Sinead O’Rebellion.
Not only is Herbert soooo cute!, he is also a singer. (An aspiring star of Nashville, at that.) As he finishes his first song, Kimberly decides that she doesn’t just have a crush on him - she’s in LOOOVE. Predictably, the other Unicorns also like him, but only Kimberly is distracted enough by his very existence to start buttering her hand instead of a dinner roll. I know it’s been said before, but…these are the popular girls??
Herbert makes his way over to the Unicorns’ table and Kimberly starts telling him about the club. Because that’s how to impress an older guy, tell him all about your club that’s named after a creature popularized by Lisa Frank. She also says that she’s the president (Hee!) and that none of the other Unicorns are very good at riding, but she is. Herbert’s basically like “um, yeah,” and continues doing his rounds of the tables.
That night as they’re lying in their beds, Kimberly confesses her love for Herbert to Jessica. Jessica, predictably, laughs. Bless you, Jessica. Kimberly’s all, “Eighth grade and eleventh grade aren’t that far apart!” Actually, there’s a continuity error, because she says “seventh grade” - despite the fact that Kimberly is constantly rubbing it in everyone’s faces how ~mature~ she is since she’s older. Anyway, it’s still gross. As they’re drifting off, Jessica whispers “All’s fair in love and war.” Ruh-roh.
The next morning, they’re all woken up by a clanging bell calling them down to breakfast. It describes their outfits, from which Kimberly deduces that they’re all trying to impress Herbert. This includes Ellen’s Hard Rock sweatshirt. Oh, the 90s.
At breakfast, Mandy refuses to eat anything, and after acting all weird for a while, admits that she’s afraid of horses. All the stuff she said earlier was a lie, and she thinks she should just go home. But, oh god, she HAS to ride one, because ever since she recovered from Teh Cancer, she decided she was going to seize every opportunity that came to her. Kimberly tells Mandy she can ride with her, which makes her feel better. Kimberly also thinks that if Herbert finds out about how nice she is, he’ll “think she’s cool.”
The Unicorns head over to their riding lesson with Herbert, and all say various stupid/untrue things to try to impress him. Like, Jessica says she loves to wake up at dawn and ride her horse in the quiet sunrise. Mandy admits her fear of horses, and although all of the Unicorns offer to share their horses, Herbert decides she’ll be best off riding with him. Kimberly is jealous for a minute, but then decides she’ll just have to impress him with her riding skillz.
Unimportant but hilarious: as they’re heading out, Lila gets splattered in horse manure and has to run off to change her clothes.
Now that she’s riding with Herbert, Mandy seems much calmer than she did before. Jessica and Kimberly suspect her whole story was made up so she could get closer to him. When they stop for lunch, Lila and Jessica claim saddle-soreness, and Jessica decides to try and walk it off. After a few moments (during which Kimberly brags about how great she is at riding) Jessica screams and they all rush over to her. She’s tripped and hurt her ankle! All conveniently out of anyone’s view! Herbert, not knowing about her sociopatic tendencies, carries her back to the picnic, and says she can ride with him on the way back. Mandy gets demoted to Kimberly’s horse.
When they get back to the ranch, Jessica’s ankle is magically better. Kimberly is all butthurt that her friends are trying to “steal” Herbert from her when she’s the one who’s in love with him. She calls Jessica out on the whole ankle thing, and accuses Mandy of lying about her fear of horses. She’s pretty bitchy, and says she wishes Mandy hadn’t come along at all, and that the Angels should fly in and take her away. Mandy starts to cry, and Kimberly is left alone in the stables.
Herbert comes up to her and asks if she wants to help him brush and untack the horses, and of course she jumps at the chance. Kimberly asks him about the harder trails at the ranch, including one he likes to go on at night called the Moonlight Madness Trail. When they’re done, he suggests she go get ready for dinner and get the trail dust off herself. Kimberly is momentarily horrified, until Herbert tells her she still looks pretty. He then ruffles her hair and says “You’re a cute kid, Kimmie.” You would think she’d take this hint, but instead she fantasizes about line dancing with him that night.
Kimberly and Jessica argue while they’re getting ready, and there’s more fighting at dinner. All this makes Ellen sad - some foreshadowing for the next book. Good work there, ghostwriter! Peppering it in before the last page. They continue fighting even when Herbert comes up to their table. Good form, girls. Mandy is crying yet again because Kimberly accused her (again) of lying about being afraid of horses, so Herbert offers to dance with her for the first song. But, le gasp! He’d already promised the first dance to Kimberly, back at the barn! She mentions this to Herbert who’s like “Hi, your friend is crying?” Kimberly grudgingly accepts this reasoning.
Jessica, Lila, and Mandy are all dancing, and Kimberly is standing off to the side complaining to Ellen. Ellen eventually convinces Kimberly to get out there and start dancing, and she actually has fun for like a minute until she realize Herbert isn’t going to drop everything and dance with her all night. She storms off the dance floor, and goes over to the snack table. Herbert and Jessica join her, and Herbert offers to dance with her for the last song. Joy! And then Jessica spills punch on her. She claims it was an accident, but Kimberly throws a total tantrum and runs out of the room screaming and crying.
The rest of the Unicorns come back into the room, where Kimberly’s been holed up sulking. They all seem pretty happy, and mention that they feel bad that Kimberly had to leave. She of course does not believe them. Being the genius that she is, she decides that her final chance to impress Herbert is to meet him out on the Midnight Madness Trail, and after the others are asleep, she sneaks out of bed and down to the barn.
Despite knowing that she should go slowly on an unfamiliar trail, Kimberly takes off galloping. After Kimberly is nearly hit in the face by an owl, Fabio-style, the horse spooks and Kimberly falls off, badly twisting her ankle. The horse runs off back toward the barn, and Kimberly realizes she’s stranded - she can’t walk on her ankle, and her friends won’t notice she’s gone until the morning. She’s understandably scared, and starts to cry.
After about fifteen minutes, Kimberly hears horse hooves in the distance. When the riders become visible, Kimberly realizes it’s Jessica and Mandy, and they’ve come to save her. It turns out, Mandy had wanted to talk to Kimberly about what had happened, but saw she wasn’t there. So she got Jessica, put her fears aside, and rode to find Kimberly.
They figured out where she was because they’d overheard her talking about trails with Herbert (how, I don’t know, because that conversation took place when they were in the barn alone) - and when Jessica saw Kimberly’s horse running frantically back to the barn, they knew something must be wrong because, in Jessica’s words, “Horses do that, right? Or is that Lassie?” There’s a reason this series is about the Wakefields.
So, everyone makes up and it’s peachy keen, and they’ll never let a guy get between them again. Hahahaha…ahem. Excuse me. They ask Mandy once again to join the Unicorns, but she is still indecisive, meaning she’s staying in the Angels for now.
Also, Herbert has a girlfriend, whose name is Gladys. The Unicorns, properly jilted, make fun of her name, and make up fake boy names to tell everyone at school. The names are cooler than “Herbert.” In the end, everyone is glad to be returning home, except Ellen. I wonder why…..!