Little Women

--spoilers! you've been warned--

I HATED this book. LOATHED it. Actually, had it ended with volume 1, I would have given it a 5 star review, but I actually really disliked the women the girls became. Meg lost any spark/personality and was almost unrecognizable by the end. Beth literally withered away after exposure to scarlet fever which may I remind you really came about because of her sisters.

You cannot expect me to be okay with Jo marrying a 40 year old man who me meet really in one chapter, and whose romantic reasoning for coming to seek Jo out was that he had recognized a poem she had written and felt she was lonely. I felt like crying out as Laurie had, "Jo! Don't marry him. I can't bear it!"

The ending just felt pathetic, and I was more than slightly peeved that Amy--the most spoiled and detestable of all the characters--ended up with the ending I wanted for my girl Jo. The one injustice in Amy's life is that she had a sickly daughter named Beth--original, really.

I literally cringed, and my heart was in knots once I got to Jo's refusal. I quickly texted my friend Amber, "I HATE THIS BOOK." I had heard beforehand that Jo ended up with the professor, but as I started reading the book I thought, "surely, they were mistaken. I heard/read incorrectly. There's no way Jo doesn't end up with Laurie."

I will say, I enjoyed the specs of religiosity because the messages more often than once aligned with lessons I'm learning. But, I'm just not at all happy with the girls' fates. My consolation prize is that the 1994 film version sort of recognized the weird pairings and tried to fix them up a bit by writing in eases into the love story (i.e. the line about wanting a first kiss from Amy, the dates we see Jo & the Professor go on). I'm still really bitter about this one though, I'm just going to pretend Laurie&Jo forever!!!