AMERICAN GIRL OF THE YEAR: Blaire

 
The 2019 Girl of the Year was Blaire Wilson. 

Blaire lives on a farm, which supports a bed and breakfast run by her grandfather and a restaurant run by her mother. In the first book, her father is working on renovating the barn into an event space. 

Blaire is a cute character. She feels like a modern girl with her reliance on devices more than past GotYs, but it's not really a bad thing. Just a modern thing. 

Blaire has many "idea-sparks" about cooking, designing, event-planning, you name it. 

The first book has her trying to keep her grandfather from moving. She overhears him tell a friend that he's against the barn event space idea and is considering retiring. Of course he was just talking and it wasn't meant to be taken seriously, but Blaire throws herself into helping plan her favorite farm worker's wedding. The wedding needs to be done quickly so her brother can give her away at the altar before he goes on military leave. 

Blaire naturally gets into some friend drama by ignoring her friend in favor of wedding prep, but to be fair, said friend did volunteer to help with everything and then did basically nothing. I'm not a huge fan of Thea. She seems like another rather selfish BFF character. Thankfully, Blaire's books are loaded with other good characters to make up for Thea's suckiness. 

While the first book is a little stereotypical and fluffy, the second really succeeds. Both are well-written. I like this author's voice a lot. But the second has Blaire getting caught up in too much planning again, though this time it's for her 5th grade community service project. That's the kind of thing you want to overextend yourself on because it's for a great cause. 

No friend drama with the girls this time, but Blaire struggles to befriend a shy, standoffish new boy in her class. 

Blaire's newly-diagnosed as lactose-intolerant and she struggles with this in both books. 

I really enjoyed both of these. They seem very realistic with less once-in-a-lifetime big ideas than some of the past GotYs. 

AMERICAN GIRL OF THE YEAR: Gabriela

 
Hey, look, it's the Girl of the Year 2017. Oh, poor Gabby. They did you wrong. 

Gabby is a multitalented girl. She's a dancer in various styles as well as a poet. She struggles with a stutter, which is less focused on in this first book, though there are a few incidents with it.

The main plot of Gabby's book is her helping to raise funds to reopen her mother's community arts center, where all her non-school classes are. It's a good book with a lot of great moments and I love the cast. Shakespeare-loving Isaiah is my favorite. 

The only flaw for me is the poetry. She's into poetry. There are a lot of poems in the text. I get it. I'm just not into poetry at all, so they bore me.    

This was easily the best of the three books for me. Gabby learns her best friend Teagan is going to a special STEM school instead of the same one as Gabby, so she feels like she'll be alone against her nemesis Aaliyah. On the first day, Gabby and Isaiah, along with all the other sixth graders, are pelted with water balloons and they learn that sixth grade initiation is a thing. That sparks Gabby to run for sixth grade ambassador, so she can work to unify the school and end initiation. The annoying thing about this book is that the initiation itself should have been stopped by adults. Pelting younger kids with water balloons and leaving them post-its with mean nicknames that can last forever is flat-out bullying. It shouldn't take a student's efforts to stop this. The book has a nice resolution and Aaliyah actually is an interesting character once you get past her "you hurt my feelings so I bullied you to hurt you, too" mistake. 

  The third Gabby book is written by a different author, though you'd never know it. This one has Gabby taking on too much. Her ballet class is preparing to go en pointe, she's working on a solo and a duet piece for a poetry slam, and she's got to make not one but two Halloween costumes while also working on the class Halloween festival. She goes back and forth while considering a very large decision and also dealing with Teagan, who's now jealous of Aaliyah. 

Gabby's books are pretty good, though as I mentioned, the poetry element never captures my attention. Like at all. I like everyone as a character for the most part. Gabby's books make me wish they'd occasionally do an additional book for the friend character. I'd like to get into Aaliyah's head in her own story. 

AMERICAN GIRL: Tenney

 
So here's Tenney, who we talked about in Z's entry. 

I'm sorry, but you can't convince me this girl wasn't supposed to be GotY. FOUR BOOKS? FOUR? 

So Tenney is from Nashville. Her full name is Tennyson Evangeline Grant, which is pretty awesome. Her entire family is musical. Dad owns a music store. Mom runs a hot chicken food truck. Dad, Tenney and her brother are a band, though you don't hear much about them after the beginning of the first book. Tenney is a singer/songwriter who wants a career in music. 

Book 1 is her struggling with her parents not wanting her to start her music career yet, despite her getting a really good opportunity. 

Book 2 has Tenney struggling with handling critique and dealing with a drummer/musical collaborator who she doesn't get along with. She's also got friend drama, because she's supposed to be helping best friend Jaya (on the cover there) with a fundraising effort for Jaya's cousin in Bangladesh whose school got damaged by a tropical storm. Jaya is getting more help from Holliday, a girl Tenney doesn't trust because Holliday is frequently mean to her. 

Book 3 is pretty much Tenney vs. Logan. Now that they've signed a contract together to play as a duo, they've got to start really collaborating on original songs. Logan tends to not look very dedicated though and it's getting to Tenney. Turns out Logan has a lot of family drama going on. 

Book 4 is Tenney vs. Logan Round 2: This Time It's Christmas. 

All their problems get ironed out. The entire cast is honestly likeable, though the little sister gets annoying and Logan makes you grit your teeth constantly. They're decently written books, but they're just not very interesting. I'm not musical. I don't care about the songwriting process or performing or recording or any of that jazz. 

I don't feel that Tenney deserved four books. She's not that fascinating. I was more interested in Jaya and even Holliday. Tenney's books focus solidly on Tenney and put the friend characters almost entirely in the background. I would have liked a book that wasn't centered around music and instead actually added character development to the cast. 

With these books, a good writer combined with good characters and good development can make them work for me, even if the girl's chosen theme is something I'm not interested in. I know practically nothing about ballet, but I loved Isabelle. However, a lot of these more recent offerings have been failing at firmly keeping my interest.

AMERICAN GIRL: Z

Z is a different sort of American Girl. Suzanne "Z" Yang is one of only two contemporary characters that were released. These came alongside the regular 2017 Girl of the Year. There were criticisms of the other contemporary girl, Tenney, saying that she was originally supposed to be the GotY and Gabriela the second contemporary. This seems quite possible. 

I prefer Z to Tenney, because she's very similar to my favorite AG doll. It's nice to see a Korean-American character. 

Z is a filmographer who makes stopmotion videos featuring her American Girl dolls. She has a group of friends and online followers called Z's Crew. 

The first book has Z making her first "real" movie, a ten-minute piece for a competition. The second book has her on the road with her mother, a filmmaker, learning how to be an assistant. In both books, she makes error after error until she learns a lesson and then she succeeds. 

The books are a bit different because they're written by two different authors. 

They're decent, but far from the best in the series.

AMERICAN GIRL OF THE YEAR: Lea

American Girl of the Year 2016 Lea spends two of her books in Brazil. 

Lea's special for me. I remember seeing her at Kohl's and pointing her out to my mom. I hadn't read her books yet. 

Not too long after, my aunt passed away rather unexpectedly. My mom surprised me with Lea, saying she was a gift from my aunt, since I wouldn't be getting one that year obviously. When I started reading her books, I learned that Lea was from St. Louis...the city my aunt spent most of her life in. 

Lea's first book chronicles the first half of her Brazilian adventure. she and her parents are visiting Zac, Lea's much older brother, who's doing his senior year in undergrad as a study abroad. 

Lea and Zac have issues reconnecting, which stem from Lea's being a bit oversensitive when it comes to him and him being...well, an oblivious dumbass. 

Lea meets a girl her age, Camila, and Camila's older cousin Paloma, who Zac develops a crush on. Both girls and Lea's dad help Lea conquer her fear of swimming in the ocean, which she's never even seen before. 

Lea lost her adventurous, world-travelling grandmother not long before and her connections with Ama throughout the entire trilogy are nice. 

The second book finds Lea and Zac in the rainforest outside Manaus, staying with Zac's host family. After an accident in their previous location, Lea's dad is recovering from a broken leg and her mom stays with him, but everyone agrees Lea is capable of joining Zac for this next planned leg of their trip. 

Lea struggles with facing new fears. She wants to see Amazon wildlife, but is afraid of a nasty rooster belonging to Zac's host family and is even more afraid after an accidental spill off the side of a boat into the Amazon. 

Then Lea and Zac find a baby sloth in the rainforest. She's clearly injured and there's no sign of her mother. They rescue the sloth, Zac having emailed a professor who knows a wildlife sanctuary. But when Lea posts pictures of the sloth and tells the story, her best friend is angry that she interfered with wildlife. They work things out online, but Abby's another idiot. Her whole reason for being angry was that she thought Lea just took a baby sloth, not that there was no sign of the little animal's mother. Lea blames herself for not telling the story better, but shouldn't her best friend know her well enough to know she wouldn't do that? 

The third book is set back in St. Louis. Lea is excited that Camila is coming for a visit. The girls and Lea's best friend Abby are taking a children's photography course. Lea wants to become a better photographer, while the other two are beginners. 

When visiting a century-old house Lea's mother is resorting, Lea and Camila find an old photo of a girl wearing the same compass necklace Lea's "Ama" wore. This sets Lea off on a search to find out how this girl was connected to her grandmother. Sadly, she neglects Camila and Abby steps in to spend time with the Brazilian girl. I liked her a little better in this book, but she still makes Lea cry when she says Lea will never solve the mystery. Pretty nasty thing to say to your best friend who's still missing her grandmother. Why do these girls tend to have such terrible friends? Predictably, everyone makes up, Lea's photography is excellent, and they find the girl in the photo who tells them more about her past and her friendship with Lea's Ama.

I enjoyed Lea's books a lot, though they're far from perfect. The cast of characters is mostly solid and at least she does something different. Her rainforest experience is also very different from Jess's, which helps differentiate the two. 

AMERICAN GIRL OF THE YEAR: Grace

Vacation is the perfect time to knock out some more book reviews. I brought a ton of books with me. I always bring way more than I can read. I'm starting with trying to finish off my American Girl of the Year reviews, including some I've never read before!

I left off with Isabelle back in...February? Isabelle was the last GotY to have the older book format with lots of illustrations. Grace's book begins the new style that are basically just chapter books. The only pictures here are the ones on the covers. 

Mary Casanova is Grace's author. She also did Jess, Chrissa, and McKenna's books, and a couple mysteries, as well as Cécile: Gates of Gold, one of my precious Girls of Many Lands series. 

Grace was the GotY for 2015.

Grace's first book is set mostly in Paris. Her mother has to fly over to help her younger sister, who's about to give birth. Grace comes along for the 5-week stay. 

Grace's aunt Sophie runs a bakery alongside her husband Bernard. Bernard has a daughter named Sylvie, who's a year younger than Grace. 

Grace and Sylvie get off to a rocky start, but manage to patch things up once they finally both communicate to each other that neither has a good grasp of the other's language. 

The fourth book in the series, which comes only in ebook form, is Grace & Sylvie. This was written by a different author, but it blends seamlessly with the first book. 

Even though it was the last one written, I suggest reading it second. It tells a lot of the story from the first book only through Sylvie's eyes, so you really can see what she's going through. 

So Grace fixes things with her cousin and gets into the swing of helping in the bakery. She also spends a lot of time with a stray French bulldog she names Bonbon. At the end, Bonbon ends up coming home with her!

The second book picks up right where the first left off with Grace only just arrived home from Paris. She struggles with training Bonbon, who's been a street dog for who knows how long. 

Then she struggles with her friends. The three had planned to start a business together before Grace learned she was going to Paris. While there, Ella and Maddy began a dog-walking business, which Grace felt very left out of. To her mixed feelings, that ended up not working out, but she returned to the US with the idea to start a French baking business. Both her friends are slow to get on board. Neither is into baking. Ella's dad just lost her job, so she has no money to help buy baking supplies. Maddy's just...kind of a brat. She only wants to do things her way and she only really wants to do what she's good at (the more artistic stuff). (I swear, there are a lot of girls named Maddy in books. This one is the redhead.) 

The three girls eventually figure everything out with the help of their parents, Grace's grandparents and her older brother. 

The third book finds the girls' back in school with their business doing very well. Unfortunately, the bad things start to come. Maddy's mom brings them bad news about needing business licenses and an approved kitchen, which would mean Bonbon could never set foot in the family kitchen again. Not likely. Grace gets the idea to work from the kitchen at her grandparents' bakery and it's going great, with supervision from Ella's dad who's still out of work, until her grandparents announce that business is so bad they're going to have to sell. 

Grace brainstorms and gets an idea to revamp the bakery into one that looks a bit more French. (Of course.) People start to believe the girls' business has taken over the old bakery and with the orders pouring in, Grace's grandparents realize they need to team up. So both bakeries join forces and that saves her grandparents from having to sell and the girls from having so many orders they can't possibly fill them all. Ella's dad is also hired on as a part-time manager with the potential to go full-time, so that works out, too. 

Grace's books are good, but not the most enjoyable for me. I'm not into baking. Or French anything really. I do love a good macaron and a Napoleon, but I don't want to read about baking prep for pages and pages. I like Grace and Ella a lot, but Maddy never grew on me after her obnoxiousness in the second book.