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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Much Ado About Anne, December 3, 2008
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Much Ado About Anne (The Mother-Daughter Book Club)
This well written book is a delight. The protagonists learn about literature, life, and love and so do we. The story is told in the first person by four young women. You can follow who's speaking by the chapter headings, and, if you like a challenge, by listening for their different voices. The setting is modern New England.
I particularly like this book because it presents the kind of challenges that ordinary people face, and shows how the girls and their community meet those challenges. Difficult situations are not minimized, but nothing is overdrawn. Nothing blows up. No one gets killed.
An added attraction is the information offered about Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea, and the author of those books, Lucy Maude Montgomery. The "learning" is not thrust on anyone, neither the girls in the book, nor the reader.
This is a very good book.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
www.Booksandchat.com, November 13, 2008
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"Much Ado About Anne" by Heather Vogel Frederick
If I had had a daughter, this would have been a series that I would have really encouraged her to read. Not only would she have gotten a taste for what it's like to be in someone else's shoes, she would have come to understand what loss means. Loss of a parent, a home and even the loss of self. She would learn what its like to selflessly help someone else and to not always think of yourself first. She would also see what it's like to gain confidence, trust, and maturity.
Perhaps Emma, Jess, Megan and Cassidy aren't facing what every 13 year old faces, but I think that more teens than not, know what it's like to worry over losing their home, gaining a new step-parent, being bullied in school and even making career choices.
I really loved this book and will make a point now of reading the first in the series: The Mother-Daughter Books Club. I will also be picking up Lucy Maud Montgomery's series and read something that I missed while growing up.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Charming, November 20, 2008
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"Much Ado About Anne" is a well-written, charmingly original best-friends story that weaves the saga of a group of 7th grade girls from Concord, Mass., with the classic novel "Anne of Green Gables". The girls and their mothers are reading "Gables" this year as part of the Mother-Daughter Book Club. As they get into various scrapes and schemes, it becomes apparent that teenage girls are still teenage girls, even 100 years after L.M. Montgomery's novel was published. There will always be short tempers, snotty rivals, and hair-brained shenanigans (and the mothers aren't exempt from this, either!)
You don't have to have read "Anne Of Green Gables" to enjoy and understand "Much Ado About Anne," but if you have read it, you'll get an extra layer of amusement out of this story.
One complaint that knocked off a star in my rating: The four main characters take turns telling the story; the perspective switches with each chapter. This got a little confusing in "Anne". I know that this whole "rotating viewpoints" device is nothing new in literature, but I had a difficult time with it in this novel (as well as its predecessor, which I read before reading this one.) The only indication we get of who's narrating the chapter is their scrawly-print name on the first page. Despite the girls' differences in personality, they have no noticeable differences in their "voices," or way of storytelling. You don't have one girl with a sarcastic sense of humor or one who always uses big words or one who's crisp and blunt. They all sound the same.
Otherwise, Frederick is an adept storyteller who has a way of including snarky phrases that caused me to laugh out loud quite a few times. The pace of the story is slow at times, but it gets where it's going eventually, and the ending is satisfying. Preteens should eat this right up.
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