Books like Boy-Crazy Stacey

Yikes.I was obsessed with this book as a kid- when I read it I had never seen a real beach, much less visited the East Coast, so I romanticized the shit out of Sea City, the fictional Jersey Shore town that Stacey, Mary Anne, and the Pikes visit. I loved the mini golf and the corny themed burger restaurant and all the shit covered with shells in the gift shops and the candy store and the Tunnel Of Luuuuv. Plus there was the whole "Stacey's in L-U-V with a lifeguard!" thing, which I got totally wrapped up in.As an adult? I hated it. Were I buying BSC books for a young lady in my life, I might "accidentally" neglect to give her this one. We have Stacey and Mary Anne irresponsibly allowing eight children, one of whom is five, to play in the ocean alone. They figure it's okay since there's a lifeguard on duty, which is a preposterous theory considering that they both know that the lifeguard just sits around being adored by twelve-year-olds all day. Then Stacey basically peaces out on the whole job to obsess over the eighteen-year-old lifeguard, leaving Mary Anne to babysit for eight kids all by herself. On the beach. Surrounded by strangers. By the waves. There's one point where the lifeguards are pretty sure they've seen sharks and whistle for everyone to get back in the lifeguard. A few minutes later they let everyone back in the water, even though they still think it looks like there could have been sharks out there, and "you can never be too careful." Geez. No shit, Sherlock.Then there's Stacey's sad, depressing obsession with an adult lifeguard. (I mean, look at the cover of this book. The dude looks like he's thirty-five.) She spends most of her vacation hanging out at his lifeguard stand, fetching him sodas and sandwiches, and pointlessly mooning over him. He gives her his freaking whistle (leaving him, I note, dangerously whistle-less on this apparently shark-infested beach) and she acts like he's given her a kidney. God, I hated this. Every time Stacey ran back to the Pikes' house to grab a cold soda for Scott the lifeguard, a little piece of me died inside. Eventually Stacey realizes her mistake in ditching eight kids with Mary Anne throughout the whole vacation, but she never really apologizes for it. Mostly she just feels super proud of herself for having transferred her obsession with the college-aged lifeguard to a guy her own age whom she met a day or two before she left Sea City. Man. Stacey was totally my favorite when I was a kid. No wonder I ended up being such a codependent mess.