First, there's Sophie's annoying habit of CAPITALIZING things for emphasis. She does this A LOT. It's pretty ANNOYING, even though it actually does feel like something someone her age would do. So realistic yet obnoxious? Yeah.
Second, there's her entire family situation. Her dad is some useless piece that fancies himself a poet and wants to go to Newfoundland and have everyone else just leave, so it's just him and his poor dragged along wife and child all alone in the wilderness. But he's USELESS, to borrow Sophie's convention, and he is barely any help. His wife is equally useless. Neither of them has much interest in Sophie. Apparently, rich UK people used to let servants raise their kids, which you know, whatever, but when you're dragging your daughter along to no man's land, you could at least TRY to connect with her some. Oh, dammit, the caps are kinda contagious. And they're not even rich themselves, they're just freeloading off Uncle Merchant. (His name is Thaddeus, but he's a rich merchant.) So poor Sophie has been raised to know how to do absolutely nothing for herself and is dragged along with her parents, who she has no connection with, to an empty place where she's surrounded by fishermen and a couple Irish families. She decides she wants to learn how to do things, so the entire book Sophie's skills save her family's ass and do they once thank her? I do not remember reading any sort of thanks. The epilogue is satisfying, because the mother, who has the painting bug, moves them to a larger nearby colony, and singlehandedly uses her painting skills to provide for the family, while Sophie also earns money and the father is still useless, but then Sophie returns to Mairie's Cove, marries the kid she liked the first time around and NEVER SEES HER AWFUL PARENTS AGAIN.
Third, there's not really all that much peril.
The Christmas story follow-up in A Season for Miracles is cute, because Sophie finally has a female friend her own age and she sticks up for her, against class differences and such.
Overall though, I would probably skip this one. The reason it's taken me so long to write this is because I just had to keep putting the book down due to not caring.
Catherine the Great's Royal Diary is up next, but I might take a little break from these series and switch to something else for a bit. We'll see!
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