I've briefly reviewed the first three of these before. Can't remember if I ever did any more.
This series. Sigh. I've tried rereading it at least three times. This time, I'm determined to actually get through all seven books.
The good premise is there. Four mothers decide to start a book club for themselves and their daughters. Unfortunately, the girls don't think it's a good idea. Emma and Jess are the only two that are friends. Megan is one of the school mean girls. And new girl Cassidy is a sports nut. so you've got the four very different girls stuck together with their four very different mothers, trying to get through Little Women in the span of a year.
Yeah, that's the most unrealistic part to me. They have A YEAR to read ONE BOOK. Way too long to really be feasible.
I've described their personalities before, but I'll give it one more quick rundown.
EMMA: Bookworm, "chubby" and really needs to learn to stick up for herself. Her mother is a librarian and her father a freelance author, so reading and writing is in her blood. She wants to be a writer. Her parents are my favorites in the series. Her dad is hilarious.
JESS: Emma's best friend. Lives on her farm which has been in the family since the Revolutionary War. (These books are set in Concord, MA, so there's a lot of history around.) Jess is a gorgeous blonde but she's called "goat girl" by the town mean girls because she's so busy helping on the farm that she carries the scent around sometimes. Loves science, nature and animals. Incredibly smart. Excellent singer. Might want to be a vet. Crush on Emma's older brother Darcy. She's even more shy than Emma though and also needs to learn to have a backbone. Jess's conflict is that her mother, who used to be an actress before her father inherited the family farm, returned to New York City to work on a soap opera. Her parents are not getting divorced, merely living apart, but the situation is weird and hard for a 12-year-old. I like her dad. He tries so hard. And her mom is cool, too.
CASSIDY: The tomboy sports character. Her mother is an ex-model who still commands a lot of star power. Her older sister looks like their mother, but she looks like her recently deceased father. Cassidy wants to play hockey but there's no girls' team, so her new friends help her try out for the boys' team and she makes it. With the backing of Emma's mom, who's my favorite of the mothers. This causes some tension and Cassidy and her mom end up getting therapy. The doctor says her mother is afraid of what could happen to Cassidy because she feels out of control after her husband's death. She eventually chills out about this, but the doctor had them sign a contract to promise to get along, which Cassidy's mom uses as a weapon a little too often. Don't force your daughter into dresses if she doesn't want to wear them. Nice pants exist. I do love Clementine, Cassidy's mom, overall but her insistence on following gender role stereotypes is annoying. Cassidy is my least favorite of the four because I can't relate to her at all. I don't hate her. She's just usually angsty or sporty and it gets boring.
MEGAN: Megan is Chinese-American and as far as I can tell, her family are the only non-white characters. Sigh. Nice to see some East Asian rep though, I guess. Megan is basically Claudia Kishi for the modern age except she's into fashion design instead of all types of art. She's not a great student, but she's not as bad as Claudia. She does deal with her cause-loving, environmentally-conscious mother taking ages to get behind supporting fashion as a possible life choice for her daughter though. Megan's family recently became wealthy. Megan is a confusing character because she starts out as one of the mean girls, but then feels left out when the other three book club girls start hanging out without her. She and Emma used to be friends so I guess she misses that like Emma does. She eventually stands up to mean girl leader Becca but never fully breaks ties with her. Megan isn't a horrible person so I can't understand how she can find anything to like in someone as nasty as Becca.
Becca Chadwick and her mother are the book's bullies. You can definitely see where Becca gets her nasty attitude from. My biggest problem with these books, and the reason I've never finished the entire series, is that so frequently there are events that have no repercussions. The books are divided in a very unique way. They're split into four sections, one for each season, and each girl gets a chapter. So sometimes we jump to a month later and all this time has passed, so events never get properly dealt with. Becca is a terrible bully. There's one incident where she steals Emma's journal and reads one of her love poems aloud in front of Emma's crush. The other mean girls, including Megan, don't try to stop her. Megan says, like, one sentence. That's it. Becca is caught red-handed by Emma's mom, but you get the clear feeling she's never punished. Then later, envious of Jess playing Belle in the school play, Becca sets loose Jess's pet goat on the stage IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PLAY. Becca and friends are kicked out of the play, but even Megan doesn't show much remorse about this in the aftermath. And the poor goat had just been released from the vet so it could have gotten hurt. Just because we understand how Becca can be such a bully, because her mom is the same way only less little girl petty, doesn't mean it's okay for her to constantly do shit like this without serious consequences.
I'm maybe 1/3 of the way through the second book and I had to stop. Cassidy is being angsty again and once again Becca is being a huge bully and all the adults are letting her. Because the mothers had the bright idea to let the Chadwicks join the book club. Who in the fuck understands why, because Calliope Chadwick is just as nasty to them AND their daughters as Becca is to the younger girls.
I honestly can't explain what it is about these books that I keep coming back to. There's something I love here, despite the giant glaring flaws and my inability to read more than basically one before needing to switch to something else. I'm going to try to bitch my way through the entire series this time. I'm just going to make myself stop after each one, write the review, and then read a different book from cover to cover before coming back to the club.
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