13 Little Blue Envelopes

 
This was the first Maureen Johnson I read, likely back in 2005 when the book came out. I remember buying it at Target. 

I don't remember my initial thoughts on it. It's too long ago. 

The book follows 17-year-old Virginia, called Ginny, on a wild trip across Europe. 

Her aunt was one of her favorite people, an unpredictable artist who lived in New York City until one day, she just didn't. She ran off to Europe and ended up living with a man in London, though she left him and went on a trip across Europe that she sends Ginny to sort of replicate. Aunt Peg is likeable but at the same time, hard to like. She should have contacted her family when she realized she was sick. She died of a brain tumor and then a couple years later, Ginny received a letter from her that sent her to NYC to pick up a package containing 13 little blue envelopes. 

Ginny is tasked with traveling across Europe with very strict and really severely dangerous rules. 

She's only to take what fits in a backpack and she's not to bring any guidebooks. Okay, those seem reasonable. 

She can't bring extra money. Aha, now we're getting problematic. One of the envelopes contains a bank card with quite a bit of money on it, but definitely not enough in case problems arise. Definitely, definitely not enough for a teenager in Europe on her own. 

The fourth rule is extra dangerous though. She can't bring a phone. This was written in the earlier days of cell phones, so regular phones were probably much more accessible, but still. Let her bring a phone for emergencies. Come on. She's not supposed to have a computer or music either. That I understand. No distractions from the experience. But no phone is dangerous. And no camera is just plain mean. Peg was an artist so you'd think she would have wanted Ginny to have more than just mental reminders of where she was. But then again, artists can be weird.

So off Ginny goes to complete the tasks set forth in her aunt's envelopes. She goes to London, Edinburgh, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Greece. She gets into a wide assortment of strange situations and mild trouble. She meets a theater guy in London who sort of becomes her boyfriend. She gets into some really uncomfortable situations that made me cringe to read, like when she can't tell the random American family in Amsterdam that she doesn't need to come along and follow their ridiculous itinerary. And then they give her an itemized BILL at the end of it all. That's why she needed access to more money, Peg. She's not assertive. 

In the end, she gets her backpack, including the final envelope, stolen in Greece. You'd think this would be a disappointing ending, but it works out. Through the twelfth letter, she learns her aunt loved Richard (the guy she stayed with in London) and he loved her. Richard gets her out of Greece and back to London, where he blurts out that the pair were married, though it was for health insurance reasons. Then Ginny and boyfriend Keith find a key hidden behind a poster, a key that leads to Peg's secret studio that Richard made for her in Harrods. They find Peg's stash of final paintings, an artistic representation of her travels and her illness. And as Peg was just beginning to be known in the art world, these end up selling for $133,000. All this goes to Ginny, though she leaves half with Richard. 

So Ginny does a bit of a coming of age thing, though I do hope she travels more safely in the future and actually appreciates more what she experiences. I never knew until recently that there was a sequel and that is what I'm reading next.

Girl at Sea

Felt like taking a break from my other reads to tackle Maureen Johnson's Girl at Sea. This one's underwater archaeology demanded it be tackled before 13 Little Blue Envelopes. 

Clio has an interesting life. When she was 12, she and her dad invented a board game that was turned into a real thing and into a video game. They made a ton of money but it was stolen by her dad's business partner. Shortly after, her dad took her diving with him (she's had a lot of dive training) and she ended up getting hit by a boat, leaving a big scar down her arm. Not long after in Tokyo, a famous manga artist drew a zipper over the scar and her dad let her get it tattooed on her. That bit of irresponsibility was the final straw that led to her parents' divorce.

Clio is now 17 and has just gotten a summer job at the art store she and her mom frequent. Her mom seems to do restoration work for big time, museum-level art. Clio wants to work there for the discount, but also because her crush works there. She's never been kissed and is determined for it to happen. Apparently, her best friend (a girl named Jackson who never once appears in the story) gets kissed a lot and Clio knows it is her time. 

So when her mom has to go to Kansas to do surprise restoration work in connection with getting a grant or something she never thought she'd get, Clio is very unhappy to learn that instead of doing her new art job and getting kissed by her crush, she's going to Italy with her dad. 

I want to like Clio's dad but every problem in this book would have been solved by him treating her like an adult. 

They're all going on some expedition by boat off the coast of Italy. The cast is:

1) Clio

2) Her dad, who bought the boat really cheap from a divorced woman wanting to stick it to her ex. 

3) Julia, an English archaeologist and surprise, her dad's girlfriend.

4) Julia's daughter, Elsa, who is half-English, half-Swedish and looks like a curvy "cheese goddess." Elsa is suffering from a breakup and is determined to hook up with...

5) Aidan, Julia's assistant, who is the expedition's tech guy. 

6) Martin, Clio's dad's old friend who's basically going along to keep her dad in line. 

The first problem is that her dad didn't say a word about Julia. Clio finds out by seeing him kiss her ear on the teeny tiny plane they take between Italian cities. Yeah, I'd be grossed out, too. 

But the bigger problem is that her dad basically forces her to work on the ship as its cook a) without telling her first and b) without telling her what they're doing. She's forced to do all the cooking AND cleanup by herself (because everyone else just ditches) and no one will tell her anything. Elsa doesn't know either but she's not being forced to work. She's a linguist so she just serves as their translator when it's needed.

As you can imagine, Clio is not pleased. She also realizes she didn't make it clear when she said goodbye to her crush that she would at some point be back, so she's obsessed with emailing or calling him to clarify. But her dad won't even let her call her mom. He says he did it and that's that. She's not allowed to have access to the outside world, which makes no sense, because she's not been told anything that she could give away.

All in all, her dad means well but he's a total dumbfuck and causes all these problems himself. Clio does a bunch of reckless stuff. She and Aidan bicker all the time because of course they like each other. Elsa gets mad about this because he did kiss her first. Martin is having heart problems and Clio's sleuthing finally gets her in the know, so she's able to go on the major dive with her dad. 

There are a few flashback sections to an old archaeological mystery that's really pretty cool, and they end up finding what's basically a Rosetta Stone but for an older language than Egyptian. 

Then the boat gets hijacked and Aidan and Clio have to save themselves AND the stone and float around in the ocean for hours until they're rescued. 

It's really a very wild book. The archaeological stuff is out there. The action movie stuff is out there. The rest is typical YA family and romance drama but combined with the first two elements, it gets crazy. 

I didn't hate it at all, but it did frustrate me that so much time was spent hiding the mission from Clio when she could have been included from the beginning, and more time could have been spent discussing the history, the significance and the search. It's got good bones and it's different but it's not exactly perfect.

GIRLS SURVIVE Series: Part 8

 

Every time I think this series is over, I see more new books! 

Maddy lives in the Dakota Territory in 1888. She's from St. Paul, so she's a city girl and everyone makes it clear that she isn't cut out for this kind of life. They're pretty abusive actually. 

One day in January, the weather is very nice so it's off to school for Maddy, though her aunt forces her to take her heavy cloak. It's a good thing, too. A powerful blizzard hits and Maddy and the other students are trapped in the school. 

The oldest boys head for one of their homes to get help, but too much time passes and after a window breaks, Maddy insists they need to risk getting to her home, which is very close. I love how Maddy strengthened herself and went from bullied city girl to having good suggestions and keeping everyone going. She turns her cloak into a rope that holds all the remaining students and their teacher together, and then they go out into the blizzard. It's not an easy journey and it's the stupid teacher that almost messes it up, but Maddy gets everyone to her house and earns their respect. 

This one doesn't pull any punches though. Those two older boys who never came back to the school got lost and were found frozen to death. The teacher might lose some toes and I think they mentioned others that died. Wikipedia says there were 235 fatalities. 

I enjoyed this one because I'd never heard of this incident before, and I liked Maddy as a character. 

1935 Oklahoma. Must be the Dust Bowl. 

I liked this one as much as I could. The father is horribly stubborn about leaving his family farm, but it should have been clear long before that there was no way this was going to end well. Then the family faces hatred in California and it takes them a while to get back on their feet, but they do by working together with other fellow migrants. 

I liked Millie and some of the minor characters, but I really didn't care for Millie's dad at all. He comes around eventually but still meh.