Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Fantastic Flying Book Club, Netgalley, and G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers for this free copy. All quotes in this review are taken from the Advanced Reader Copy and may change in final publication.
I personally haven’t read or watched Little Women, and I know that so many people love that story so I was curious to know what people thought of this retelling. Although I feel like this was more of a continuation rather than a retelling since it seemed like it went further than what happened in Little Women, but then again since I didn’t read the original, I wouldn’t know for sure!
As someone who doesn’t have any background information on the original source material, I felt like this was an interesting story. I think I fall under the majority of people when I say that Meg was my overall favorite character compared to our main character Jo, even though Meg wasn’t the main focus. And I guess since most people were pretty disappointed with how the original story ended between Jo and Laurie, this kind of gave them the closure that they were looking for. As for me, I guess either way would have been fine for me.
I did also read that since the original ending was giving autonomy to Jo for keeping her single and having Jo and Laurie as just friends, this book did some sort of injustice to the original author’s wishes, and I could see that too. In essence, this book could be seen as some sort of fan-fiction to those that wanted to see Jo and Laurie have some sort of romantic relationship that they would have never seen. Kind of like how people wanted Zutara to happen, when the end game was always going to be Kataang.
So I guess I’m pretty in the middle with this. I will say that I’ve always been a fan of de la Cruz’s writing, so I didn’t have a problem with the prose itself. It was definitely really interesting to see de la Cruz and Stohl partner up for this one. My only experience with Stohl was for Beautiful Creatures, and that was a partnership novel as well, so I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of reading Stohl’s work alone. But I feel like their voices just meshed well together in this novel and it seemed to do well here.
I personally haven’t read or watched Little Women, and I know that so many people love that story so I was curious to know what people thought of this retelling. Although I feel like this was more of a continuation rather than a retelling since it seemed like it went further than what happened in Little Women, but then again since I didn’t read the original, I wouldn’t know for sure!
As someone who doesn’t have any background information on the original source material, I felt like this was an interesting story. I think I fall under the majority of people when I say that Meg was my overall favorite character compared to our main character Jo, even though Meg wasn’t the main focus. And I guess since most people were pretty disappointed with how the original story ended between Jo and Laurie, this kind of gave them the closure that they were looking for. As for me, I guess either way would have been fine for me.
I did also read that since the original ending was giving autonomy to Jo for keeping her single and having Jo and Laurie as just friends, this book did some sort of injustice to the original author’s wishes, and I could see that too. In essence, this book could be seen as some sort of fan-fiction to those that wanted to see Jo and Laurie have some sort of romantic relationship that they would have never seen. Kind of like how people wanted Zutara to happen, when the end game was always going to be Kataang.
So I guess I’m pretty in the middle with this. I will say that I’ve always been a fan of de la Cruz’s writing, so I didn’t have a problem with the prose itself. It was definitely really interesting to see de la Cruz and Stohl partner up for this one. My only experience with Stohl was for Beautiful Creatures, and that was a partnership novel as well, so I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of reading Stohl’s work alone. But I feel like their voices just meshed well together in this novel and it seemed to do well here.