The Mother-Daughter Book Club

           The book that I read this six weeks is called The Mother Daughter Book Club by Heather Vogel Frederick.  The books first copyright date was 2007; it's a fiction.  The setting was in Concord, Massachusetts.  The story has four girls and in each chapter one girl gives her perspective.   All the girls are different from each other.  Emma loves to read and is made fun of by others regularly. Cassidy is a tomboy who loves sports. Megan is the popular fashionista.   Jess is very smart but some mean girls call her "goat girl" since she lives on a farm. All of the girls are forced to join a book club, run by their mothers. None of the girls would prefer to be there though. The overall theme of the book is to follow your heart, because all of the girls have dreams and desires that they all want to achieve.

They book has many chapters and in each chapter a girl gives her point of view (first person point of view).  At the beginning of the book all of the girls were starting their first day of middle school, they were all very nervous. Emma went to school and saw Megan (follower), Becca (queen bee), Ashley (follower), and Jen (follower). The four mean girls made fun of Emma and other people as usual, and Emma knew it was going to be a rough year. Megan went to school and fitted right in with her four friends. Jess went to school and was with her best friend Emma, and Cassidy went to school as a new kid/tomboy, and hanged out with all of the boys. All of the girls came home to their mothers making them go to a book club meeting. At the meeting they were given the book “Little Women”. In the middle of the book Cassidy try’s out for the boys hockey team. While at the tryouts Emma and Jess are watching Cassidy and Darcy (Emma’s older brother) try out for the hockey team. While watching Becca Chadwick and Megan steel Emma’s journal and reads it out loud in front of Emma’s crush. Megan gets in big trouble and doesn’t speak to Emma for a while. Cassidy and Darcy make the hockey team at the end of the chapter. Later in the middle part of the book Jess gets the main role in the school play and plays Belle, while Zach (Emma and Megan’s crush) plays the beast in beauty and the beast. Megan and Becca get really mad that they didn’t get the roles they wanted so they played a prank on Jess during the show. Megan and Becca got Jess’s pet goat and put it on stage in the final number. Megan got in big trouble and the book club was disgraced. At the end of the book Megan realizes that her true friends are and becomes close friends with Emma, Jess, and Cassidy. They have a sleepover too. The end of the book shows the true meaning of friendship. I believe that the author wanted the readers to be in middle school. The author kept me interested by incorporating many different settings and characters. The author’s style is intended for the audience of younger girls because she wants the girls to relate to it.

The book affected me by showing me that a lot of other girls go through what my friends and I go through. I think that the book was showing the typical lives of girls in middle school, so I knew a lot of what was going on and I could relate to it. It did not change my own personal world view.

The book is good at some points, but then it gets boring. I feel like I’m on a weird roller-coaster while reading it, because it gets interesting and then it gets boring… and so on.

Quinn Skarnulis
11/6/13
RATING: *** 3/5