A Tale of Two Proms: Bard Academy, #4 -- Cara Lockwood
You can go ahead and ignore the cover art. It has absolutely nothing to do with the storyline. No swordplay whatsoever.
Anyway, when I picked up A Tale of Two Proms, I thought there might be a chance that it wouldn't be the very last Bard Academy book. I mean, sure, it's Miranda's senior year and all, but I figured that if Cara Lockwood was willing to bring Parker and Ryan back as second-year Bard seniors, she very well might bring Miranda & Co. back for another outing as well.
I was very wrong. After finishing the book, I feel confident in saying that This. Is. The. End.
At the end of the school year, Miranda and Heathcliff will both be leaving Shipwreck Island: she'll be headed home and then off to college, while he'll be sent back to his doomed existence in Wuthering Heights. This already tragic situation is complicated further when Heathcliff proposes, asking Miranda to stay with him forever in a little cottage on the island. As much as she loves him, and as romantic as that sounds, she's not sure if she wants to skip out on her acceptance to UPenn and live the rest of her life hiding out in an electricity-challenged one-room cabin on a seriously haunted island.
So she's kind of got a lot on her mind.
And THEN, the meanest of all mean girls shows up on campus: Catherine Earnshaw. And she may as well be Miranda's twin.
And THEN x2, Heathcliff either starts drinking and stops bathing, or he's got a double wandering around, too.
And THEN x3, Miranda's estranged father gets seriously ill, requiring her to leave Bard while all of this is going on.
I haven't even mentioned all of the romantic entanglements the secondary characters are dealing with. That's a whole lot of loose ends to tie up over the course of a book. At times, all of that end-tying gets to be a bit much: much of the first half of the book feels more like Lockwood was getting all of the pieces in the right places—there are, after all, a lot of characters who need their happy endings or their just desserts—than telling an actual story.
But the second half picks up, and despite some unusual thickheadedness on Miranda's part (I found it somewhat difficult to believe that she would mistake SPOILER BUT NOT REALLY, JUST READ THE TITLE Sydney Carton END SPOILER for Heathcliff, even though they do look alike. Then again, I still haven't completely forgiven Peter Bishop for not picking up on Fauxlivia's identity sooner, so that might be a Personal Issue.), it ends up being loads of fun. Lindsay is much more likable than last time, Samir has a great moment in which he expresses his frustration with his sidekick/secondary character status, and Parker in a Regency-era ballgown is just as awful as Parker in a micro-mini. The series ends somewhat suddenly (for the characters and the readers), but there are plenty of geeky delights, meta-moments, and clever twists along the way.
Bard Academy, I'm going to miss you.
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Book source: Netgalley.