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If you like books about sisters, have we got a tale for you!  Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series, or at least the first 3.5 books, is the story of Feyre, and also her two sisters, Elain and Nesta.  After the family loses their mother, then their wealth (sound familiar?), it falls to Feyre to put food on the table and provide for her older sisters, her father, and herself.  She’s scared, but she moves forward anyway, and I, for one, am always here for a well-told story of courage, and give bonus points for adventure, romance, family drama, and fantasy.   Sign up here to join us for the discussion of the extended trilogy, on Friday, February 12 at 7:30 p.m.

Oh dear readers, I am loving my reading life right now!  Ashley is filling up my list with fun titles, both of the Little Women variety and of the Kindle Unlimited variety (we got a great deal, and you can, too, by clicking the link!), and I am HERE. FOR. IT.  I love a good deep dive into a title (and am only slightly sorry we’re doing it two months in a row), so getting to spend last week with another side of the story, that of Mr. March, and then getting this week’s title have been such a joy!

When I finished Meg & Jo by Virginia Kantra, I quickly texted Ashley to ask what our weekend holiday romance would be and then said “Also, DO NOT APPROVE THE LACK OF EPILOGUE.”  To which she replied, “ the epilogue is called Beth & Amy.”  I did not read the teaser, because I don’t usually unless I’m going straight through, and I’m SO excited about Beth & Amy except the whole not until May part!  What is this book about?  So, take Little Women but present (pre-pandemic) day and in small town North Carolina.  We’re mixing our timelines here a smidge with the sisters, but it all works in context.  I’ve always seen myself as a cross between Meg and Jo and this book brought it all home for me.  How I’m a blend of both and frequently feel the pull to lean in the opposite direction than I feel I’m leaning in the season (or moment, depending), so reading a modern book with an alternating point of view was such a fun time!  I want the next volume, but I also want more on Marmee!  Even in March, her character is always supporting and I really enjoy the depth Kantra shows for her in Meg & Jo.  We don’t get much from her, but what we do is so reflective of the Marmee I know and love as well as a more complete character.  

Who wins Meg & Jo though?  Eric Bhaer 1000%  I adore Gabriel Byrne, and I enjoyed Louis Garrel, but a considerate, self-aware chef who pours his heart onto a plate?  Be still my heart!  I was sold before Kantra added in the tattooed arm-porn aspect and had him tutoring me on the proper preparation of scrambled eggs.  (And, dear readers, I used some of my new-found knowledge last night when making brinner – breakfast for dinner – and I got compliments on the eggs!)  I have never wanted to be in a kitchen on the line (not even when I had to settle squabbles between the back and front of house staff in college), but I want to know more now!  I want to know about Costanza and Ray, oh that Ray has a story to tell.  Do I think we’re going to get it?  Maybe a peek in Beth & Amy, but not much, although I’d read that book for sure, and one about Aunt Phee’s past too!  (Characters like this are part of what makes me always want more epilogue and also love a long romance series – these supporting characters might just get their own book in a romance series!)  

I give Meg & Jo an enthusiastic four stars and pronounce it a great holiday read!  You don’t need the original story to appreciate this book, but you’ll appreciate it more if you adore the classic because it’s like coming home again.  I’m likely to re-read this, especially before reading Beth & Amy, which comes out in May, and I’m also very interested in Kantra’s backlist.  

What characters of a well-loved book do you need to know better?

~Nikki 

Meg & Jo was a top 5 book of 2019 for me if you remember way back a year ago when we were discussing our 2019 favorites. While scrolling through all my typical research mess before typing a blog post, I pulled open my Goodreads to make note of my highlights (62 of them!) and remind myself how long it took me to read it. Approximately 24 hours, because it was the Christmas gift I gave my reading life last year, as I read it from December 25-26. It’s not a surprise that this book is as good as it is. Virginia Kantra has written 30 novels, mostly romance: paranormal romance, romantic suspense, contemporary romance – which Meg & Jo definitely falls under, and women’s fiction. Her novels have won awards and nominations galore, including two National Readers’ Choice Awards and Romance Writers of America’s RITA Awards. She lives in North Carolina, married her college sweetheart, and her favorite thing to make for dinner is reservations. A woman after my own heart, bless hers.

Maybe the author herself would want to make reservations at the New York City restaurant where Eric Bhaer is head chef and at which Jo March finds herself employed after she was fired from the newspaper where she worked as a journalist. Maybe it’s because she’s read Jo’s food blog or followed her on instagram, which is the writing outlet she uses while trying to not become homeless in NYC. But, Jo returns home to Bunyan, NC (a real place, according to Google, but not on the Cape Fear River as Kantra imagines) for Thanksgiving after her mother fell down in her goat barn before her sister Meg found her lying in pain in the hay. Jo repeatedly compares her and Meg’s relationship as close as Jane and Lizzi Bennet in Pride and Prejudice with enough similar personality characteristics to receive sass on the regular from Amy.

Besides Eric Bhaer winning Meg & Jo, an assessment for which I seven thousand percent agree, John Brook is second place. Yes, there’s miscommunication in his and Meg’s marriage, but overall, he’s a much more hands on parent, excited to be a father to his 2.5 year old twins Daisy and DJ, than Meg remotely gives him credit for. I really enjoyed their relationship and how Meg tries to emulate Marmee in all things, doing for John and the twins what Marmee had done for her four girls, the goat farm, and her military chaplain husband turned veterans non-profit organizer. I didn’t highlight it and perhaps Nikki can confirm, but, I remember a conversation near the end of the book where Marmee states that she did all the things she did because her husband literally wouldn’t help, so she always had to be strong and accomplish the necessities of life for the entire family or it would fall apart. [Nikki here: I can’t confirm a quote, but that was most definitely the feeling, that everyone else not in his house was more “in need” of his attention.] Meg goes in expecting John to act the same way, but thank god his is a much more modern approach to marriage, where both partners do their fair share at home and at work to keep the household running. I fear that many modern marriages suffer the same paralysis of expectation, where the women feel like their spouse wants everything taken care of, dinner on the table, children handled, and house cleaned. But these husbands don’t care as much about the timing or thoroughness of the execution as long as one or both of them accomplish the household tasks and their wives just want it done perfectly. (Hi, it’s me, but I’m getting better.) 

One thing in Meg & Jo that really made me think was the character of Hannah. She is a close family friend of the Marches, rather than a live-in servant, and is a black woman whose daughter graduated from Howard University, an HBCU in Washington, D.C. and who attends Greater Zion Baptist Church, not Ashton March’s congregation. Alcott hadn’t described Hannah as much more than an extension of the March family and gave her a dialect unlike the educated Marches. I always thought Hannah’s accent in Little Women was decidedly Southern rather than the Irish brogue that other writers have described her dialect as. What if, as Kantra has written Hannah Mullett here, Hannah has always been a dark-skinned Southern lady? I don’t want to go so far as suggest that Alcott had written a stereotypical Mammy character in Little Women, but what if her Hannah was a formerly enslaved person who was granted manumission, made her way up North to a sympathetic family and ended up staying on literally for the rest of her life? And that we as readers don’t think of her as not white because she wasn’t described as one thing or the other?

But the clincher that earned Kantra a 5 star review for Meg & Jo was the subtle and giggle-inducing humor throughout the book. Jo’s reactions to Marmee’s attitude with her husband landed some hearty belly guffaws. And then, of course, were the several mentions of a Southern Woman Card and the possibility that it could be revoked, like by being caught outside of the house without at least mascara on. That is real and relatable and exactly how I speak to my sister and my friends that have become like my sisters. I’ve re-read large chunks of Meg & Jo, and really wanted to do an entire re-read before this blog post was to be written, but December’s been a mess so I didn’t have the time to complete a re-read. A cover to cover reread is on the table especially since I bought a digital copy after I loved reading the library copy last year. Additionally, I pre-ordered Beth & Amy so that I will have it ASAP at its release in May! Don’t you love these matching covers that include all four sisters on each one, but just the main pair as the center of their own cover? Yes, me, too!

I hope you have enjoyed our month long deep dive into Little Women this December. What are your favorite holiday-themed reads so that I can get a headstart on prepping for 2021?!

~Ashley

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