REVIEW for Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott

A big thank you goes out to Lydia at Penguin for sending along this book!


TITLE: The Lost Summer of Louisa
May Alcott

AUTHOR: Kelly O'Connor McNees

GENRE: YA

RATING: 3 Stars





I am a big fan of Louisa May Alcott and even had the chance to visit her homestead in Concord - it, therefore, made reading this book all that much fun - trying to imagine her in this home, living this story, as told by Kelly O'Connor Mcnees. This is a "what if" novel - which intrigued me. What if Alcott had owned up to her true passion for that "special" man - the one she is truly rumored to have been in love with? Would she have died lonely and single as she did? after all she did for the various members of her family?

I think the author wrote this book, in part, to answer this question that I believe many Alcott fans have. The Lost Summer is a fun read because it gives us the "right" to go through her life and to find out more about the person, especially the "woman" side of her - which, let's face it, we have not really read or heard all that much about in the past. I liked this book because it was a great way to escape and go back in time to another time, with an author that I really like. It was almost like "invading her privacy" and reading Alcott's own thoughts - I am always a big fan of books that answer the burning "what if" questions and this one certainly did.

So, why the 3 stars? This YA was a tad too simplistic for me - I was hoping for something with a little more bite and intensity - a little too vanilla at times.