Anyway, last week, I went through my book bins in my storage closet, one of which contains the already-read books in series I'm in the middle of. I like to get an entire series read before I decide where it's going to be stored. I saw these three and decided it was about time I finish the series.
I reread 1-3 first and just finished #3 earlier tonight. I thought I'd write about them quick, then I'll probably put the others together, too.
SPOILER WARNING: I'M ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT DETAILS THIS TIME.
The Mother-Daughter Book Club is set in Concord, MA, and is formed by the local mothers of four very different girls:
-Emma Hawthorne's mother is a librarian and her father is an author. She's the one who loves to read and write. She's a bit overweight at the start of the series and wears secondhand clothes. She takes up ice-skating in the second book and slims down some, although she's still mostly the same person. She's actually the first of the original 4 girls to get a boyfriend, Stewart, who just happens to be the nerdy-older-brother-turned-model of the girl who picks on her all the time.
-Jess Delaney has been given the unfortunate nickname of Goat Girl by the same girl who picks on Emma. Her parents run a goat farm/orchard and make cheeses and such. In the first book, her mom is actually away living in New York, pursuing some mid-life crisis dream of reviving her acting career. And she's doing pretty well, because she's a popular soap opera character. Jess and her father struggle to run the farm and keep an eye on Jess's young twin brothers. Jess is one of the smartest kids in their middle school and in the third book, receives a full scholarship to a local private boarding school. She wants to be a vet and loves science, nature and the Latin names for things. In the second book, the girls work together to save Half Moon Farm, which is a pretty fun storyline. Jess has a crush on Emma's older brother, Darcy.
-Megan Wong is the fashionista/part-time mean girl. Well, she mainly plays that role in the first book and things are finally mostly resolved in the second. Megan is part of the popular girl clique led by the resident mean girl, Becca Chadwick. Becca's the one who always picks on Emma and Jess. Emma and Megan used to be best friends, before Megan's dad got rich and Megan fell in with the clothes-obsessed, boy crazy girls. Megan struggles in the first book, because she likes her mean girl friends, but she also likes her book club friends. She tries to balance the two, which gets more interesting when the moms invite Becca and her mother to join book club in the second book. She also has to deal with her mom, who's determined to devote her husband's money only to worthy causes, champions the environment and organic yadda yadda and doesn't accept that Megan wants to be a fashion designer. And in the third book, Gigi, her maternal grandmother moves in and that leads to a lot of conflict because she's a lot like Megan and nothing like her daughter. Megan is an interesting character, because she's not your brainiac and/or techie Asian stereotype girl. She's like Claudia Kishi for the modern age, only focused on fashion and not all kinds of art.
-Cassidy Sloane has recently moved from California. Her mother is an ex-model named Clementine, who's pretty famous, and her older sister looks exactly like her, while red-haired Cassidy looks like her late father. She struggles the most with internal family issues throughout the three books. She misses her father, has trouble dealing with her mother dating and then getting engaged, and in the third book, her mom's pregnant. Cassidy's sports crazy. She tries out for the boys hockey team and makes it, becoming team captain and frequently MVP. She also plays baseball. She's the least interested in boys of the four.
I don't have a favorite of the four girls, although I can say Cassidy tends to be my least favorite. She's really good at getting back at mean girls, but her constant family issues and grumbling about the "girly" books they have to read for book club, even though she ends up liking them, get annoying. The parents are all pretty likeable, although Mrs. Wong and Mrs. Chadwick aren't all the time. My fave is probably Mrs. Hawthorne. And Mr. Hawthorne, except I disagree with his random hate of dogs.
The format of the books is interesting. Each is divided up by the four seasons and each season has four chapters, one from the first person PoV of each girl. Frequently, there's a good gap of time in between the girls' chapters and that can be problematic. If there's a problem in, say, Emma's chapter, and they jump to Jess's, it's often resolved with a throwaway line or two. I got seriously pissed in the third book when Emma's older brother Darcy does something extremely assholish to her and there's no resolution. They just end the chapter and move on. There's no confrontation, no much-deserved apology, nothing.
Book Club meets once a month and they only work on one book per year. PER YEAR. I can read a book in less than a day, so I can't imagine spending an entire year on one book. Or sometimes the girls don't finish their monthly assigned reading and I'm thinking "You had a MONTH. WTF have you been doing? You're like twelve!" The first book has them reading Little Women. The second is the Anne of Green Gables series, where they do actually make it to two books for the year. The third is Daddy-Long-Legs and other Jean Webster books. I've never read Jean Webster, but they explain things well enough that I got the gist of it and wasn't offput. I do have Daddy-Long-Legs coming in the mail though! I want to read it. They also provide fun (and sometimes not so fun) facts about each author and do entertaining activities based on the books.
But the book club stuff is maybe 20% of the books themselves. They're mostly about the characters and their struggles, their relationships with each other, their families, their crushes, etc. And boy, do they have some struggles! What I did actually become offput by a couple times was the mothers' reaction to their daughters being bullied. They ask the Chadwicks to join the book club. It's a disaster at first, but it does eventually work out and I think Becca starts getting chapters in the fifth book. And then there's the Savannah problem in the third book. Again, the bully is welcomed by the bullied girls parents with open arms. Both times it's worked out okay, but that's not very realistic at all and could have been really damaging to the bullied kids.
Anyway, I really enjoy this series for the most part and I recommend checking it out. I'm about to start the fourth book now.
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