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.
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.
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