A GIRL FOR ALL TIME: Clementine's Winter

Ah, finally, I can say some good things about A Girl for All Time book. The author has definitely shown dramatic improvement. I didn't notice much (if any) tense switching. Her sentence spacing is still a problem. Two lines of dialogue from two different characters should be separated. It's confusing if they're not. But the story is not completely outlandish. It's something I could see Molly doing in the AG books. There aren't any big dramatic horrors or anything.

Clementine is the first AGfAT character who is actually very likeable in her book. She's got some snotty moments and she fights with her brothers, but that just makes her more real. Giesele, the Jewish German refugee, is easily my fave secondary character in any of the books, too. She's fun and I wish there was a doll of her.

My main issue remains that the author is a screenwriter. She doesn't spend enough time on the elements of a story that make up a novel. She hints at things or addresses them shallowly instead of digging into her characters' brains and motivations and such.

I want to know, does Clinton like Clementine or Giesele? It's not clear.

What happened to Frieda after the story?

Did Mrs. Pike die? It kinda sounds that way, but then be clear!

So once again, it leaves a lot to be desired, but definite progress has been made and I hold out hopes for Lydia's book. We learned some of the things she put in the trunk in this book, which was cool. And we learned a little about Constance, Clementine's aunt, who received the trunk from Amelia. Not sure if Amelia never had kids or if she just had sons, but definitely no daughters.

Character-wise, we've got...

Matilda: Tudor, the origin of the trunk

Lydia: Georgian

Amelia: Victorian

Clementine: WWII

Samantha: 1960s

I'm pretty sure they mentioned Elizabethan, Edwardian and Restoration girls. Constance should be the Edwardian, coming after Victorian.

A GIRL FOR ALL TIME: Amelia's Inheritance

This one also got two reviews:

FIRST REVIEW:

So I didn't give the first A Girl for All Time book a very favorable review. I'm afraid I don't have one for Amelia's book either. I think I've figured out one of the problems. The author is, I believe, a screenwriter. She kind of fails at writing prose. She switches from past to present tense on a frequent basis and that's Writing 101. Don't switch tenses! I wish they'd get her an editor. Or a better one if she does have one. Gods, I'd even do it! The tense switching drives me crazy.

Amelia's is another book that's a rather big adventure. I don't mind adventures if they're well-written, but these books are so short that it comes on too quickly and everything seems really unbelievable. Although Amelia's is more believable than Matilda's was, mostly because Amelia's doesn't use historical figures. She's in boarding school and is told her father is lost at sea. So she has to go live with her aunt and uncle, but her aunt is slightly insane and her uncle is only interested in her inheritance. He beats her and locks her in her room when she won't just give him the trunk. The maid hits him over the head and they escape into the poor side of town. The maid's brother works in a cheapie theatre type thing as a magician and invites Amelia onstage to have her head chopped off. She freaks because she has no idea what's going on and ends up getting invited to be a permanent part of the act, hooking herself and the maid up with a somewhat decent job. They come up with a con that will get the trunk back from the crazy aunt, but just as they're leaving with it, the uncle drives up. There's a Victorian car chase, a huge accident, the uncle's killed, and Amelia's seriously wounded. But she recovers and oh, her dad's not really dead after all. So yeah, BIG adventure.

And yet, I love my Matilda doll and the idea behind this series so much that I'll keep reading the books.

SECOND BRIEF REVIEW:

That was the original review. I still feel the same.

Ugh.

I love these dolls so much that it's practically painful to read these terribly-written stories about them!

Clementine's took 2 years. It has to be better.

Right?

*sigh*

A GIRL FOR ALL TIME: Matilda's Secret

I did two reviews for this book in one of my LJ comms.

FIRST REVIEW:

I finally finished reading the book today. It's only 180 pages and they don't even remotely take up the entire page, but I got about halfway through and then needed to put it down for awhile. Matilda is Katherine Howard's cousin. So you know this thing ain't gonna end well. I was thinking this was going to be some country girl in Court with the cousin she's just getting to know, who just happens to be on the track to becoming the next queen. Katherine shows her the ropes and such. Well, it starts out that way, but Matilda's entire purpose at Court is to get Katherine to be queen. Yep, we're putting all that on a 13-year-old. She does well at learning how to be a court mastermind and she pulls off some believable tricks, because it's clear that she is an intelligent girl, but it also feels like all the burden is on her. And she doesn't even try to stop Katherine from seeing Culpepper! You'd think she would have known to nip that sucker in the bud. She frets about it plenty, but she could try harder to make Katherine see the eventual outcome. Although Katherine's dumb as rocks, which she pretty much was, so that's accurate. And Katherine's story is quite a sexual one, which you can't exactly tell in a kids' book, so a lot of her true story was lost because of that.

Anyway, the book is just not that good. It's very shallow and you don't really get to know Matilda very well. It's all about her reactions, not herself. You see very little of her true self. It's got some nice bits about court life in there, but I'd say read the Royal Diaries instead. I was excited to have a book involving Katherine Howard, but this one just did not do the job, and it turned Matilda into a rather unlikeable character, because she's a pawn in such an unbelievable way and it overtakes any tiny bits of her personality that are shown. They shouldn't have made her related to Katherine and tied up in this big plot. She would have fared better as a casual observer.

I'm hoping the next book, Amelia's Inheritance, is better. The premise of the entire line is that this is one long line of female descendants, so things of Matilda's (I believe a trunk and brooch given to Katherine by Culpepper) are passed down. Amelia's Victorian, which isn't a time period that really interests me, but her story seems intriguing.

SECOND REVIEW:

Sadly, my thoughts are still the same. I just can't stand this book. Matilda is one of my favorite dolls, but she's a paper doll of a character. She's got hardly any personality and it changes quickly. She has promise, because she's interested in medicines and would love to become a female doctor, but she's way too easily caught up in court life and clothes and dancing. She loses the parts of her that make medicines and like to read, despite there being another character who also reads and can help her get books. She does this eventually, but by that time, she's also deeply immersed in the plot to make Katherine queen. She's completely taken over by what's going on around her and it makes her a very undeveloped character. We're told more about what she does than about who she is and what she's thinking. And this is written like a DIARY. We should know exactly how she feels IN DEPTH. But so many things aren't explored nearly as much as they should be.

I guess this is what happens when a screenwriter tries to write a novel for a small company. Big ideas with no solid development. I don't even know if there's an editor for these books, but if there is, it's another shoddy person.