Alice in Charge seemed a little more structured than most of the books in the series, which was good. It also had more difficult-to-swallow elements than most of the books, which was not good. Along with the usual who's dating who kind of discussions, the plot has two major focuses. A white supremacist group is fomenting in Alice's school, with not so subtle threats and intimidation stunts against the Gay/Lesbian Alliance and against a student from Sudan who is in America temporarily, and who takes Alice to a school dance. There is also a teacher who is molesting female students, and Alice and Amy are at the forefront of bringing his misdeeds out into the open.
I have found the semi-serious journalism involved in the high school newspaper, The Edge, pretty unbelievable any time it is mentioned. In this volume the school paper is at the head of bringing the white supremacist group out into the open. Completely unbelievable. The school also starts a "student jury" who assigns punishments to other students guilty of minor offenses. The idea of a panel of high school students questioning, trying and sentencing a fellow high school student, with both sides taking it seriously, while a teacher is merely observing, felt completely ludicrous.
The best chapters are when Lester takes Alice to visit a few universities over a weekend. That brings the lovable, gaffe-prone Alice we've grown to love back to the focus, with a nice dose of humor. I miss the humor that was much more present in the middle-school years.
So in short, the story was a little better, but less believable. Pamela, Liz, Lester and Alice's father and stepmother took a back seat in this volume. Much less focus on them than usual. ( )

I like that this book addressed some really controversial topics, but I did not like the way things ended with the sexual abuse situation. I can absolutely understand that the faculty adviser would have had concerns about the appropriateness of mentioning that situation in the paper the way it was done, but for very different reasons than the ones they stated—that it shouldn't have been published yet because Amy could have been making it up. Alice saw the teacher leave the room, then went in because she heard crying—in a deserted classroom. She went into the room and saw the wet spot on Amy's skirt. People don't pretend to cry when no one is around to see it; if Amy had been making it up, there would have been an audience. Knowing that that was the situation, I feel like anyone who still thought she was lying has some serious issues.

2.5 stars. I'm committed to this series but I'm starting to hope that it finishes when Alice graduates. Naylor covers a lot of ground but there are so many Big Issues that it's hard to see Alice's life in and among them. And yes, I'm happy to see that Naylor isn't afraid to tackle the issues, but having this many crammed into one book is about 3 too many. It's teetering on the edge of didactic, the dialogue is stilted and intermittently unrealistic- but it's still Alice, so I'm stuck reading it. The best part of this book was the totally believable comedy of errors surrounding Alice's college visit.


If you haven't read any of the series, this is not the place to start. ( )

We're up to the first half of Alice's senior year, and as our reward for seeing this series this far, we get... yet another Very Special Alice, this time on race relations. Characters still talk frankly, though oddly clinically, about sex and other issues, and Alice's friends with more interesting lives have little screen time. I have no idea why I still read each of these as they're published. ( )