Mother-Daughter Book Club 1

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.

MOTHER-DAUGHTER BOOK CLUB & BETSY-TACY

The fourth Mother-Daughter Book Club book has Emma moving to Bath, England for a year. A visiting professor and his family take over her house, leading to romantic entanglements for Cassidy (in a mostly hate at first relationship with Tristan, the older brother) and Megan (with Simon, the nicer younger brother).

Emma has to endure yet another Mean Girl, Tristan and Simon's "distant cousin" Annabelle, who calls herself Tinkerbell. Emma dubs her Stinkerbelle. After one particularly bad incident, the MDBC daughters decide to band together and earn money to fly her home for spring break, so they start a baking business, dubbed Pies & Prejudice. (You can guess what book the club is reading this time.)

In one of the series' most poignant moments, Mrs. Bergstrom passes away suddenly and leaves quite a bit of money to cover several things. She funds Cassidy's hockey club for younger girls, provides for her dog's care, and gives money to Megan's grandmother for her to start her own business. Most importantly though, she gives funds to the book club, allowing them all to join the Hawthornes in England in an amusing, but also somewhat dull for me trip. I've never read Jane Austen. I never will. So going to all these themed places was dull for me.

It's a decent book, but I really didn't think we needed a THIRD Mean Girl. Two was enough.

The fifth book adds point of view chapters for Becca for the first time. This book is mostly fueled by the failed Secret Santa exchange between the girls, muddled up by Jess's younger brothers, who don't get nearly enough punishment for this.

Becca's father has lost his job. Cassidy may or may not like Zach Norton. Megan gets dumped via email.

The families visit different places for Christmas. Megan and Becca's families go on a cruise. Emma goes with Jess's family to New Hampshire. Cassidy's off to California.

There's a lot of typical drama, but thankfully no real Mean Girl incidents.

The highlight of this book for me is that they're reading the Betsy-Tacy series, which I adore. I loved all the references and it inspired me to reread the series myself.

The Betsy-Tacy series was written by Maud Hart Lovelace and tells about Betsy Ray and her friends, growing up in Deep Valley, Minnesota between 1897 and 1917. Betsy is based on Lovelace herself and most of the characters have real life counterparts and many incidents actually happened in the real town of Mankato.

The first four books are when the girls were younger. Betsy-Tacy has Betsy and Tacy at 5 when they meet, and Tib joins them at the end. The fourth book, which is the best of the initial four, has them at 12.

I always read Winona's Pony Cart in between books 3 and 4, because that's about the right age placement to insert it. It stars Winona Root, a character you see more often in Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, the fourth book.

The adventures in these books are mostly younger girls' games and fancies, although Downtown broadens the horizons. But it's important to read them, as Emma points out in MDBC, because you can't ignore "half the body of work." Heh. The first four books, while a little more childish, are important to establish the background of the girls you watch go through high school and beyond in the rest of the series.

If you haven't read these, read them. They're up there with Anne of Green Gables for me and edge out the Little House series even on my list of favorites in that genre.

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!

HEATHER VOGEL FREDERICK: The Mother-Daughter Book Club 1-3

I stumbled across this series while walking the aisles at Booksamillion. I used to have to wait for my mom at work more than I do now, so I'd just go wander the bookstore. It must have been late 2013 or early 2014, since I found the entire series. I devoured the first three books, then got only a couple chapters into the fourth when I stopped. I'm not sure why I got derailed from the series. (Possibly it was when my last shitty relationship started, but I can't remember for sure.)

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.