I think the first was one of the first couple years after we moved here and I made it through the first three books.
The second time, I did the same thing: read the first three books. Then I wrote this:
http://redblackandwhitebookreviews.blogspot.com/2015/12/heather-vogel-frederick-mother-daughter.html
I started the fourth book then, but I can't remember when I got around to finishing it, although I definitely did. I just never wrote about it. I think I got a couple chapters into the fifth and then stopped again.
I can't explain why this is. I love this series. I apparently just get derailed really easily.
Well, this time, I'm finishing them! I have the last one arriving from Amazon today. I pulled 1-4 out of my bin in the storage closet and whipped through 1-3 over the past day and a half. I'm a few pages into #4, but I decided to stop and write this post.
I'm not going to do what I already wrote, but I thought it would be fun to answer some of the questions in the backs of the books and add to what I've already written.
To summarize the series quickly: It's about four very different girls whose four very different mothers form a book club for all of them to take part in. The first book's antagonist and her shrewish mother are added to the club in the second book, while the third introduces yet another mean girl character that gets redeemed by the end.
Book 1:
Which character do you identify with most and why?
This is a bit difficult to answer, because each girl is very defined by her likes. Emma is the bookworm writer. Jess is the brainy animal lover. Megan is the fashion designer. Cassidy is the tomboy athlete. Being a bookworm writer, I identify with Emma a lot, but we don't have the same personality. I've got Cassidy's feisty side, while Emma's a bit of a doormat. I see a bit of Jess in me, too, because I was shy when I was younger but if you picked on my friends or an animal or a younger kid, I could go off. And I identify with Megan as well, because she followed her dreams instead of what her parents wanted her to do. Luckily for her, she's already making money at it!
And actually, that's the only question worth typing. The others are about Little Women, which was the book they read, or "Why do you think Jess is shy?" That's not interesting.
Book 2:
This one's got pretty useless questions, too. Sigh! I thought this was going to be a good plan, but no.
However, there is one: Were the moms right in inviting Becca and her mother to join the book club, even though Becca had been intentionally mean to some of the members in the past?
This is something that, while I saw it coming, it still kinda blew my mind. Becca is a proven bully. All the mothers know it. Her mother is basically her adult equivalent. Yet they invite both of them to join the club, which I think is what Mrs. Chadwick (Becca's mom) wanted all along, but instead of asking nicely, she bullied the mothers in the first book. So they knowingly invite TWO bullies into their club. And it is not smooth sailing whatsoever. The question makes it sound like Becca stops her bullying, but she doesn't. She makes it worse by pulling a hurtful prank on Megan and then making her believe it was Emma and the others. And the resolution of this is way too easy on her. Megan let her off the hook so easily, it was equally mind-blowing as the Chadwicks being allowed to join in the first place. So no, I don't think they were right in letting them in, because they did nothing to control the bullying that still took place once both Chadwicks joined. It took a giant blow-up to fix the situation and that was entirely the girls' work.
Book 3:
Okay, this one's questions are useless, too. But I'm just going to continue on with what I was just talking about.
Book 3 is the by far the weakest of the opening trio of books.
Why? Well, for three reasons, but the first involves the question from the second book.
The Becca situation seems mostly resolved, except in some small cases. She does pull the placecard switcheroo on Jess, but it's been proven that Becca's first interest is boys and she will throw anyone, even her best friends, under the bus if there's a chance she can score some boy time.
So now that Becca has gone from enemy to frenemy, what does the author do?
Adds a new mean girl.
Savannah Sinclair, Jess's roommate at boarding school, is just as hurtful as Becca. While Becca's worst tricks were publicly humiliating (reading Emma's poem out loud and putting Megan's mom in the school paper), Savannah went for physical damage. She smears taffy on the girls' pillows during a sleepover at Jess's dorm. Thankfully, it's Cassidy who gets stuck, the one character who doesn't care about her hair, and she warns the others before they get caught, too, but that's a severely fucked up prank. I loved the blue cheese retaliation, but I do think the punishment on the book club girls was a bit severe and Savannah got off too easily considering she could have physically damaged five girls.
Yeah, Savannah's a bitch. So what does Jess's mom do when she finds out Savannah's going to be alone at the school for a weekend? She invites her to the farm.
So once again, we've got these parents who purposefully put bullies around their children. It seems really stupid. I don't think the author was ever bullied because no one who went through actual bullying would think this was a reasonable solution not just once but twice.
Because of course, Savannah turns out to be a misunderstood, lonely girl who redeems herself by the end.
Two redeemed bullies. Please stop, Vogel-Frederick. Please. I actually like the character of Savannah. She has more depth than Becca. But not all bullies can be redeemed and it's more than a little unrealistic to have this keep happening.
The second reason I think this book is the weakest is because of Darcy. We don't see too much of Emma's older brother, but what we have seen is a nice guy. So when he becomes obsessed with mocking Emma about her boyfriend Stewart, it feels out of character. The situation escalates into him coming into their driveway and shining the headlights on the shy pair as they're about to have their first kiss. This was needlessly cruel and is completely blown off. Emma stomps into the house and tells her father Darcy's a moron and that is it. He's not bitched at by her. Nothing. I hate unresolved things like this, especially when they stem from a character going OOC.
The third weak spot is the puppy plot. Hiding a pet never, ever works and the girls should have known Emma's dad would say no. You can't turn most dog haters into dog lovers, sadly. They've got their whatever the fuck lame reasons for disliking dogs and they're stubborn about them. This is the one thing I heavily dislike about Emma's dad, who is otherwise awesome. But yeah, the puppy plot was lame and felt like something out of one of the weaker BSC books.
Add to that Cassidy's constant grumping about her mom's pregnancy, which of course resolves itself as soon as she sees the baby; a pen pal plot that adds a handful of weak, underdeveloped characters; and a trip to visit said pen pals, which culminates in some of the group getting lost after they just got lost at the end of the second book, and it makes for a weak book. I still enjoyed all the characters and Megan's grandmother Gigi is a particularly fine addition to the cast, but it was weak. I need a thesaurus because I've said weak so much.
So now I've got Book 4 to reread and 5, 6 and 7 to tackle for the first time. I'm going to try to get these read and reviewed before vacation on the 2nd. We'll see how that goes!
No comments:
Post a Comment