THE MOTHER-DAUGHTER BOOK CLUB Revisited

I have started to read this damn series THREE times.

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!

AMERICAN DIARIES Part 3

Celou's book is one of those where I can't find a great picture. She's way prettier in her art than this makes her look.

Celou is half French trapper and half Shoshone. Her father has journeyed away on some trapping thingy while her mother stays with Celou, the eldest, and her brothers who are 10 and an infant.

When some Crow come to cause trouble, it's up to Celou to save the day, which she does by using her brains. Celou's pretty damn awesome and this is a great book. Kaya would look up to Celou and her quick thinking and bravery.

Summer is possibly my favorite of these 19 girls. She's an indentured servant who's being wrongly accused of theft by the younger daughter of the house who used to be her close friend. Well, Summer's not having it and she spends the entire book trying to solve the mystery despite a lot of problems. She comes out well in the end, having proven what happened, her innocence and how the younger daughter set her up to take the blame for her own stupidity. She also comes away from the day determined to be successful when she finally finished her indenture and even save up money to buy the freedom of some of the household's slaves. She's awesome.

Agnes has the most unfortunate cover design. It says right in the beginning of the book that her hair is short and she does pincurls. Well, her hair on the cover is definitely not that. So it irritates me a lot.

Anyway, poor Agnes has a hell of a rough day. Her father steps on a nail and her mother has to take him to get it xrayed, so they're going to be gone until evening the next day.

Well, they run a dairy farm. Despite her mom telling her to dump the day's milk, Agnes figures out a way to milk all the cows, chill the milk, bottle it, crate it, get it all into the horse-drawn wagon, and deliver it with only herself and her two younger siblings doing the work.

Then her dad comes home while they're about to go on the morning run and he goes off about what they did wrong, not a word of thanks on them not losing the day's earnings. Agnes thankfully blows up at her father, blames him for her older brother running off because he never felt appreciated and essentially, with the help of her mom, forces him to thank all the kids for their hard work. He gets over it a bit by the end, but he's still a douche.

Amelina has the last of the first style of cover and she's a bit of a mystery, because I'm not sure this cover actually exists. On the copy I have, her art is different and the town is different.

Even the year is different. This one to the right says 1870, when the actual book is 1863 during the war.

See?

That's the cover I have down below, so something tells me Amelina's story got worked over, then they changed the cover to the new style with the new town and year. And bonnet style.

Amelina lives in a Cajun community and her life there is a bit interesting, although they don't go much into it. She's an orphan who lives with her widower uncle, who's gone a lot of the time, so even though she's young, she runs a household by herself and basically lives by herself.

Her adventure is coming across a wounded Union soldier and helping him survive, even defying her asshole uncle to do so. I was glad when they finally touched on the subject of slavery. The Cajuns there are against it. We already had a pro-South Civil War book and we really didn't need another. Although honestly, we've got another one coming up. Not one Northern girl during the Civil War but THREE Southern ones. At least this one's got her head on right. (And not one Asian girl, but all these stupid Civil War books. Ugh. So annoying.)

AMERICAN DIARIES Part 2

Oh, no, it's a trail book!

Actually, Willow's book is pretty good, mostly because I think the shortness of these books works in its favor this time. There's enough trail info, but the misery doesn't go on for pages and pages and pages.

Willow's father died during a river crossing, so most of the book is about trail life and her river fear. Her mother remarried and the stepfather is a little too strict for my liking. He's okay by the end, of course. Willow's younger sister got her foot crushed by the wagon and Willow's got a dog that needs constant minding. The only real fault with this one is that you're left wondering if they ever made it.

Ellen's one of my favorites from this series. Her book isn't incredibly interesting, because it gets a bit repetitive, but I think it tells the story well. Her father is away from their remote farm, leaving Ellen and her grandfather alone. Her grandfather ends up injuring himself and Ellen has to devise a way to get him back to the house, then fix the windmill he fell trying to fix, then find all the cows that got out when he left the dumb gate open, including her father's prized bull. It's a lot of her riding her horse back and forth, talking to the cat and, once he wakes up again, her grandfather. But it's a good, unusual adventure story. You don't see many female ranchers from the 1800s. Ellen's character is what makes this a really good book, not so much the story.

Alexia is one of my other big faves. Her father's dragging her all over the country with his schemes, but he seems to finally have found a decent job and they've lived in the same boarding house for a year. Alexia works with the designer/seamstress (called a modiste) who runs the boarding house, as she has arthritis and is struggling.

Alexia is afraid her father's lost his job and he's really pretty much an ass, so when she stands up for the modiste and doesn't let her father pull a get rich quick scam on her, it really makes you love her. She's offered an apprenticeship while her father is told to vacate quickly and he won't be arrested. Alexia chooses to make a life for herself and learn an honest trade, while you get the sense her father will never really learn.

She's another great personality like Ellen, but I like the story better in this one, so it's a better full package.

Evie's book is hard to read because the poor Irish racist neighbor brothers are just such assholes. Evie and her father are going to buy her mother today from the pair's former master. They'd been freed by the second master they had, who never bought the mother. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail, but I like this girl and so would Addy Walker. They'd totally be friends.

New Mythology Series!

The Thunder Girls are coming!

Remember in the Goddess Girls Super Special when girls from other schools visited to compete in the games? Well, Freya was one of them and here she is in the first book of this brand new series featuring the Norse deities!

I'm REALLY excited for this, despite being very lazy lately on my GG reviews. I still haven't written Nyx's. Maybe I'll crank that out later, but I'm kind of in historical fiction mode.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1481496409/

Freya's book is set to come out on May 1st and I can't wait to see who the other Thunder Girls are!

AMERICAN DIARIES Part 1

Kathleen Duey's American Diaries series runs for 19 books. The series began in 1996 with four books, followed by another four in 1997, three each in 1998, 1999 and 2000, one in 2001, and the final book in 2002.

The books are much shorter than Dear America and they're quick reads. They're not true diary format either. Each begins and ends with a diary entry and there are maybe a couple more scattered in the middle.

There are two types of cover used for the series. The first type is as shown here with the cameo design containing an image of the girl that goes from her head down to about her waist or a bit lower. The second design retains the cameo, but the girls are now shown from about the shoulders up and that's it. I prefer the first design because they're more interesting-looking. The later books look far more plain.

They don't run in chronological order, as most of these series don't, but being numbered, I always read them in the order of their numbering, not chronologically.

The first book stars Sarah Anne Hartford, a girl growing up in Puritan Massachusetts in 1651. Sarah's is actually the first book chronologically as well and no others are set during the 1600s.

Each story does not span many days and deals with one major problem. Sarah and her friend were walking home from church and were caught playing in the snow, which was a pretty punishable offense in their society. Sarah, however, was wearing the coat of her friend's older brother and the people think it was him and not her. She debates with herself for awhile, torn between telling the truth and possibly losing the love of her strict father, who is courting a really nasty woman.

The second book, featuring Emma Eileen Grove, is set in 1865 after the end of the Civil War. Emma, her older brother and younger sister are travelling on a steamboat to St. Louis in search of their uncle. Their father is who knows where after the war and their mother died during it. They harbor a hatred for Yankees and a very poor understanding of what the war was actually about. (I sneer through Civil War stuff that has the characters say the war was about anything but slavery.) There's an accident with the ship and Emma and her younger sister are forced to rely on the help of a black worker and a Yankee soldier to survive. The older Southern woman who befriended them is also revealed to come from a plantation with a nasty reputation, so by the end of the book, Emma's a bit wiser about how people actually are. I still don't like her though!

Anisett is an idiot.

That's pretty much the whole book.

Set in 1851 California during the gold-mining craze, this book tells about Anisett and her mother, who make dinner pails for the miners. Anisett's younger brother is mentally disabled, though it isn't clear exactly how, unlike in certain Dear America books where the boys had Down Syndrome. Anisett finds a gold nugget and doesn't know how to go about staking a claim, so she asks the relatives of a nice new miner she just met. However, she's overheard by this guy who spends the entire book being an utter prick, and he hijacks everyone with plans to take over the claim. The day is saved, of course, by some quick thinking and some outside help, but Anisett is still an idiot. She spends most of the book getting yelled at for daydreaming. Repeatedly. Like screw up a couple times, but how are you supposed to like a character that doesn't seem to ever learn?

This sad copy of the book is the only clear picture I could find of Mary's book. She's in Philadelphia in 1777 and her family are mostly Loyalists, except her brother who was disowned for joining the Patriot army.

So what happens when her delirious, injured brother returns home the same day as the family throws a giant party for the British officers?

I enjoyed this one the most out of these four. Mary's a fun character and she's not annoying like Anisett or ignorant like Emma. Her art is so unattractive though! Poor girl!

MY STORY: 1800s Part 1

Trafalgar's another ship life book, but it's actually quite a good one. Lots of action and decent characters.

The actual battle takes up very little of the book near the end.

Waterloo is by the same author and again, it's quite engaging. There's a murder mystery wound through it and quite a bit of intrigue. The main character isn't a soldier himself, but a servant to one of the officers, so he sees a lot of the action without the kid in battle aspect.

Both of these are better than my tiny blurbs are making them sound. If a book is good, sometimes I don't have much to say about it!

A teeny picture is what I could find for this particular cover. These are the older covers that I favor, even though I actually don't possess them for this book or the next. I have the newer, mostly white covers.

Mill Girl sums it up. Poor girl has to go to work in the mill. Her family kinda sucks. Sucky things happen to other poor people around her. But things work out okay in the end.

I love this cover. I should track this version down, but it's hard picking the cover when you have to import.

This one's quite the fairy tale. I mean, it's a depressing fairy tale, because Irish potato famine, but still. The girl goes to work in her wealthy landlord's house and she and the son fall for each other. He runs away to join the resistance, which is where her older brother is. With her mother dying, she goes to find her brother and fails, then when she returns, the house is burnt and the rest of the family is all gone. Then she goes to find them and ends up working for the resistance alongside the landlord's son. They run off to the US together and happen to find the rest of her family, minus her mother who predictably died as she was very sick before, and they all leave together. 

It's good, but more fairy tale-ish than historical.

Considering I've left the next book sit maybe 1/4 finished for several days, I'm taking a break from My Story and switching over to American Diaries for awhile.