Ten years on the boys have grown up. What happened to them? We find that even the worst of them have some redeeming features. ( )

Another great book by Louisa May Alcott! Jo is my favorite character and I enjoyed her story! ( )

An undoubted classic, but was spoiled by the horrible editing job done by MonkeyBone Publications. Throughout the entire series, there are places where pauses, restarts, and even the clicking marking said disruptions in the reading were not edited out. ( )

Little women; Classic, I think based on the strength of the main characters, Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy, all likeable in their way. The supporting cast is also very good; Marmee, Lauren et al. Little Men; not as good, too many characters, too episodic not enough overall structure. Jo's Boys; the same thing, some individual stories are very good, riveting accounts. But goes on pedantic asides telling not showing what constitutes good moral character in boys and girls. Not that the advice isn't good, maybe she was running out of ideas or space. ( )

This picks up ten years after the events of Little Men, mostly focusing on the kids of that story figuring out their adult paths.

While Louisa May Alcott is one of the easier classic authors to read, the writing style here isn’t my favorite. There’s a very episodic quality to this which is probably why of all the books in this series I favor Little Women as it did to a greater degree (though not entirely) feel like it had an overarching story continuing from chapter to chapter. Also, this book, like Little Men and to some extent Little Women has a tendency to tell rather than show, many of its potentially compelling moments were somewhat muted by the fact that you’re told about it afterwards instead of being in the moment when the event occurs.

I stumbled at times with the characters names, having to occasionally pull myself back and be like nope, that’s that person not this one as there are a number of names that somewhat echo each other, Dan and his dog Don, Tom and Ted, Nat and Nan, Demi who also goes by John (his dad’s name), and Josie who also goes by Jo (her Aunt’s name). I definitely had some confused moments over the names, partly my own fault for waiting too many years after Little Men to read this one, but also, it did feel like this really could have employed a bit more variety in the names.

Certain storylines held my interest more than others. The only Little Woman we truly spend time with is Jo and I found it disappointing that the scant time devoted to her mostly saw her complaining about being a successful author, it doesn’t seem like much of leap to conclude that dealing with her fandom was something Alcott found to be a nuisance so she wrote that into Jo’s story but it’s a high class problem that isn’t nearly as emotionally engaging as I wanted for the character.

I was also disappointed that although Nan had different goals for her life than the other females in the story, we don’t spend much time actually with her working towards those goals, when she’s in a scene it’s more about the guy crushing on her than it is about her.

The shipwreck, the aspiring actress, and the kid living beyond his means, each had moments that caught my interest, but the prison stuff pulled me in most, it felt like the emotional stakes were better established for that character than anyone else and I liked that it had a bittersweet tinge to it even if in order to achieve that bittersweet tinge it compromised how I saw the March sisters (I know their actions to shield a certain someone from ending up with the “wrong” sort of person were era appropriate but I guess I always thought of Jo and Amy as being somewhat rebellious women who wouldn’t be as married to appropriate as say, Meg or Aunt March). ( )