Then
Stacey was the sophisticated one — New York City, diabetes, complicated parents, a history of boyfriends that the series tracked more carefully than any of the others. Her romantic storylines always felt slightly more serious than the other club members’, maybe because Stacey herself seemed more serious about them.
I read this during what was clearly a Stacey era for me — a phase of working through all her books in order. The Friends Forever books were new at the time and I was trying to figure out if they counted as “real” BSC or something adjacent.
Now
They count. Stacey’s voice in the Friends Forever series is consistent with who she’s been since Book 3. The “boyfriend trap” setup is a good one — a situation that escalates because Stacey doesn’t say a straightforward thing at the right moment, which is true to character.
What these late books do well is acknowledge that the characters have history. Stacey isn’t starting from zero. The Friends Forever books feel like they remember everything that came before, which at book 130-something is not nothing.