Review Detail

First Impressions: When I was a kid, one of the first books I fell head over heels in love with was Little Women. I must have read it at least a hundred times and will even pick it up now and then for a quick re-read. It’s one of my favorite classical novels! I am obsessed with spin-offs of stories that I love, so I was really excited to see a book about Little Women in the young adult category.

First 50 Pages: When I started to read this book, I noticed that pacing seemed a little bit off. It moved very quickly and didn’t quite explain things very well. However, the first few chapters weren’t bad so I am jumping ahead of myself. I liked the beginning of this book. I enjoyed Emily’s interaction with her crush and the whole premise of her writing assignment. Who wouldn’t love to go into a story and change a part that you didn’t like? I loved this book up until Emily got sucked into her copy of Little Women. So much went downhill from that point.

Plot: I’ll start with what I really liked about this book. Like I already said, the whole idea of being sucked into a book and being able to change parts that you didn’t like. It’s a really unique idea. I like this book’s concept of time traveling. For Emily, there were some parts she was totally unprepared for and some parts of the book were hilarious. For example, what does 18th century Emily do when she gets her period? It’s in there!

Emily herself was a very interesting character. Some of my favorite parts of this book were when she was psychoanalyzing all the March sisters. She was a really funny character and had this snarky attitude. Her adjustment to live in a completely different world from hers was really entertaining. I liked how she grew throughout the book and how she discovers exactly why she was sucked into Little Women in the first place. She becomes a much more self-dependent young lady, who figures out that…well, I can’t tell you!

Now for the not so good stuff. The pacing of this book was uneven. The plot itself and the dialogue were repetitive. Once Emily was inside of Little Women, she all of a sudden had “story amnesia” and was forgetting what would happen in the story. That was odd to me and I couldn’t understand why she would all of a sudden forget what was supposed to be, one of her favorite stories. The entire middle section of this book should have been cut in half. It almost became boring to read and I had to push myself to keep going.

I did like the ending. It wrapped everything up nicely and I was pleased with the final outcome of the story.

Final Thoughts: This wasn’t my favorite book by this author. I think it could have been done a tiny bit better then it was. It wasn’t a bad read, it just dragged on somewhat too much for me. I think a younger audience will like this book, especially for fans of Little Women.