Lots and lots of books

The Little Women Letters!!by Gabrielle Donnelly.  This book was a feel good book all the way around.  I was once obsessed with Louisa May Alcott, especially the March family and spin-offs thereof.  You all probably remember that Jo and Professor Bhaer opened a school for boys, right?  I loved that book, Little Men, and of course, I loved Little Women, too.

So, in The Little Women Letters, the three great-great-great-granddaughters of Jo March are working through their lives and loves.  Their personalities correspond in a well-developed way to the three surviving March sisters.  Lulu is the central character and the middle Atwater sister.  She, like Jo before her, doesn't have a life plan or a boyfriend.  Her older sister, Emma is planning her wedding to the perfect man.  And the youngest sister, Sophie, is finally getting work as an actress on the London stage.  In a search for an old cookbook, Lulu finds a stack of letters written by Great Great Great Grandma Jo all about the things we loved to read about in Little Women.  Gabrielle Donnelly does a wonderful job of using these letters to help Lulu deal with her insecurities and questions.

Forget angst, serious dysfunction, meanness or crime.  This book is about families figuring out how to live together and love one another.  And it's not all happiness and light, either.  But it is hopeful and at times it's very funny.  Read it.

BOOK #2  How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend by Gary Ghislain.    Seriously, these two books have very little in common EXCEPT that they both have some very laugh-out-loud funny moments.  This book is FULL of angst, serious dysfunction, crime, meanness, superhuman strength and Amazonian girls covered in tattoos.  I think I will review it in my next post.  It's written for an entirely different audience.
Little Women Letters = grown women or teen girls.
How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend =Teens, in particular boys.

BOOK #3 Aliens on Vacation by Clete Barrett Smith.  Well, one alien book leads to another and this book is the first in a planned series.  David, known as Scrub, has been sent to stay with his grandmother for the summer.  She runs the Intergalactic Bed and Breakfast in the middle of nowhere in Washington State.  David expects that her clients are people who are looking for UFOs but it is almost immediately evident that these customers come from very, very, very far away - light years in some cases.  David is soon caught up in helping the guests "fit in" with the natives so they can enjoy their vacations.  A suspicious sheriff, some basketball playing wise guys and a noisy girl make David's summer "job" more and more difficult.  This book was a quick read and I'm glad there will be a sequel.  I have some pressing questions about how the bed and breakfast got started and I hope I'll get some answers in the next book.