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What pairs well with a Little Women retelling?  A calm tale of a Christmas after the war, and the story of a passionate woman finding her own path amidst all the pressures of family!  Am I talking about Meg & Jo and Beth & Amy or A Court of Frost and Starlight and A Court of Silver Flames?  Both /and, except if it’s the former two, we’ll need a different retelling to pair with them.  Keep reading to enjoy our review of Beth and Amy, and SIGN UP HERE to join us on Friday, July 16 at 7:30 pm CST for More Maas at virtual book club when we’ll discuss all things Nesta and Cassian!

Again, Virginia Kantra, RITA Award Winning Author of more than 30 novels, has forced me to lack respect for tomorrow. This girl, she read the entire book in one day, really one sitting, but who’s marking my time card except for me? No one. I’m my own boss except when it comes to my Reading Life and these authors, well, they are demanding bosses. If you want to know more about Kantra, please click over to our December 2020 post about Meg & Jo where you can get all the important deets about the demanding boss who kept me up until 2:30am on Monday. Thank goodness I was on vacation.

You know what happened in Beth & Amy? WE GOT WHAT WE ASKED FOR IN THE Meg & Jo POST!

That’s an entire paragraph by itself because, dearest readers, Nikki and I were both so excited about this book and had some pretty high expectations stated in the December post. We wanted: 1) More Marmee 2) Aunt Phee backstory 3) laugh out loud moments and 4) solid, growth-oriented male characters. Ask and ye shall receive! But, before I discuss the highlights of these four points, I want to mention that just as Meg & Jo is set during the holidays and reading the book in the winter is appropriate and comforting, Beth & Amy is set in the spring and summer approximately 2.5 years after the events in Meg & Jo. It’s just so good to read books set in the same season that you as the reader are experiencing. A summer read can be many things, but set in summer is one of the best things in my opinion.

I love Amy as a character more and more with every retelling I watch and read. She was the star of this book, trying to figure out her future, both of her blossoming handbag business and her relationship with Trey – Theodore James Laurence III, while being true to herself. She stood up for herself, asked for what she needed, both from Aunt Phee and Trey, and supported her family members and childhood friends with kindness, love, and sass. So much sass. We reconnect with the sisters at Jo and Eric’s wedding and Amy is determined not to be a cliche and engage in Drunken Wedding Sex. The amount of times I read that phrase was truly miraculous, especially when it was applied to Marmee (and her separated husband, Ashton!) the morning after the wedding. She gets to be the young, cool aunt to all her niblings, especially Eric’s middle son Alec who spent a lot of time with Amy helping Aunt Phee downsize from the big house to the carriage house. During that process, we find out who took Aunt Phee to prom with a pink corsage! Quelle Surprise!

Now, let’s discuss those solid, growth-oriented males for a minute. My favorite one, oh that’s gotta be Dan, Marmee’s hired hand on the goat farm. He’s a quiet, bearded veteran who listens and pays attention to Beth as she figures out her life and problems, both personal and professional. My second favorite male was Ashton, because not only does he try to reconnect with his estranged wife, he also steps up in his relationship with Beth. I’m always, always here for Eric and John, but they’re only mentioned a few times as supporting characters in this book. Trey, he grows as a character and in my heart, too. It’s not my favorite growth process, but he figures out, with SO MUCH help from Amy, who he needs to be professionally and in his personal relationships, bless his heart. Kantra gave me a favorite moment of the book with the men at the wedding that I could just see as if it was happening:  

John and Trey exchanged glances. No one would ever mistake them for brothers. But something in the way they stood, assessing the newcomer [Beth’s boyfriend Colt], linked them together and marked them as family. The artist in me admired the picture they made: Eric, big and dark, bearded and tattooed; Trey, lean and golden, elegant in Armani; solid John, with his blond cowlick and appealing dad bod.

I have been having an excellent Summer Reading Life this year. Beth & Amy is another five-star book filled with the types of people you want to fill your reading life and real life. I have been waiting to read it since my pre-ordered kindle copy automatically downloaded in May, but I was patient for Nikki to get it from the library. I’m glad I waited. It was just what I needed.

~Ashley

Ashley talked about loving Amy more with every new movie and retelling and I co-sign that.  When we had our Heart.Wants.Books outing to see the new Little Women movie way back in February 2020 (you know, in the before times), I LOVED the way Amy’s character was FINALLY dimensional.  It was such a delight to watch Meg be the flat character instead (yes, I said it).  I’ve since listened to a couple of podcasts talk about this film adaptation and we are all in agreement – Amy’s character isn’t really developed in the book, but Flo Pugh + Greta Gerwig and, separately, Virginia Kantra make her come alive (more Virginia Kantra, but you’ll almost always find me on team books are superior to movies). 

All this is to be expected because in Meg & Jo we had the elder two sisters in alternating POV, and in Beth & Amy we have the younger two.  We get a glimpse at just how much these two (perhaps in contrast, or perhaps not with Alcott’s sisters) have grown up in their sisters’ shadows and have struggled to be their own people in the midst of that.  And really, how could they not?  Meg and Jo grew up in Marmee and Ashton’s shadow, then Beth and Amy grew up in the shadows of them all.  All the daughters, and Ashton, go away to find themselves, and then, end up coming home to finish the work.  It seems like a cliché Hallmark movie, but there’s some truth in it too for a lot of people.  Some of us have to come to grips with our monsters in order to more fully be our authentic selves, and for many those monsters were a big part of growing up, so it makes sense that we have to face them at home, and also that we’re more prepared to do so among the people who push us and support us. 

Like several other fantastic books I adore, Beth & Amy gives you a glorious story on the surface, but there are so many layers to dig into if the reader is interested, or just can’t look away.  There’s family of origin issues, the trauma of war, the trauma of being left behind, struggles to fit in, and the more serious issues of eating disorders and how to acknowledge and address privilege gained from the enslaved labor of others. This isn’t a book of social justice issues though, it’s a book of life, family, and coming of age times two. 

I’m giving Beth & Amy an emphatic four stars for this warm hug of a book (legit what I texted Ashley when I finished).  I’m not scoring it higher because it needs more epilogue because I need more of Dan’s story. [Ashley here: I concur, we need more Dan.]  He doesn’t have a counterpart in the original, but I’m here for him and what he’s got going on in this title.  He’s quietly doing his work, supporting others in doing theirs by just being present and holding space, and that is the best gift of all! 

What is a layered book that you adore?

~Nikki

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