MY THOUGHTS:
Oh dear, this 8th Glad Book is nothing to be glad about. It's even worse than Pollyanna in Hollywood, and I really struggled to get through it.
Jimmy lands an engineering job in the heart of Mexico, so as is now the pattern, Pollyanna and the kids trail along. Miss Aguamonte owns a gold mine with a sinister reputation, as her father died down there during his final expedition. Situated within a mountain nicknamed, 'The Mountain of Death,' she wants it drained and checked out by a professional. No locals will go near the place, but Pollyanna is happy for Jimmy to barge right in. Those two are very flippant regarding the supernatural.
Junior, who is now about 15, is taking advantage of his passion for photography whenever he can, and accompanies his dad on a couple of exploratory trips to take photos. Judy, aged 12, is believed to be delicate, impressionable and poetic, so her mother treats her like fragile glass. Judy also develops her first crush on a boy. Ruth, who must be 9 or 10 by this stage, still comes across as a kindergarten kid.
Borton seems clueless about the kids' development. She has the young man Junior still speaking in a high-pitched voice, and tweenie Judy needing her hand held to cross the street. Then Pollyanna talks to her pre-adolescent daughter as if she's five years old.
'I wonder if you know how many little girls are left in school while their mothers and fathers travel for pleasure of because of business. You should be glad that daddy and I always take you with us everywhere.'
There is far too much description of Pollyanna being toured around Mexico, 'ooohing' and 'aaahing,' without anything happening plot wise. And the continuity aspect is a facepalm. After Smith preserved the integrity of Porter's original classics so beautifully, the series regresses to a game of Chinese Whisper with the introduction of Borton as the third author. She retains just a smidgin of what came before and even mixes up Aunt Polly and Aunt Ruth; a colossal blooper at this stage of the game. I blame the publisher too, for allowing an oversight of this magnitude to slide repeatedly through the editing filter. Seriously, didn't they have even one single proofreader who had read the first seven books? I won't even get started on what happens to poor Nancy, who seems to have aged by about 30 years compressed into one.
When the action finally does heat up, it loses credibility fast. At this point an earthquake, light plane smash and the two Js being tied up at gunpoint just makes me groan. I now face the remainder of the series with trepidation rather than anticipation, especially when I see the name of Elizabeth Boring, sorry, Borton on the next two books. Her offerings remind me of some of the more forgettable fan fictions I've come across.
Never thought I'd say it but even Jimmy's sexiness is insufficient to save this story. I guess next up will be Pollyanna's Door to Happiness, although I doubt it'll make me very happy. This series clearly should have stopped when Harriet Lummis Smith put down her pen.
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(Update: It's fair to say that Door to Happiness was not half as bad as I expected. That's encouragement not to completely give up on a series you're enjoying.)
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