Closer to a 3.5, as I did enjoy this one more than Little Men but still not as much as Little Women.

I definitely felt more attachment to these boys and girls as young men and women then I did when they were school-age children in the previous book, most likely due to their age and the things happening in their lives. In this book, they’re all attending college, finding jobs, maybe falling in love… and learning some of life’s lessons the hard way along the way.

However, I think part of the reason I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the first is because of the number of characters we are following. In Little Women, we follow the four March sisters and their neighbor Laurie as they go through adolescence and enter adulthood. In Jo’s Boys, we again follow adolescents and young adults, but there are fourteen different characters to follow! It’s just a lot to keep up with and I think that was the main reason I struggled with this book.

Overall, it was a satisfying ending to this series and if you’ve read through Little Men I definitely recommend you read this one to see how the boys’ stories ends. But if you’ve only read Little Women, I leave it up to you whether or not you think this story will be to your liking or not. The second and third books focus more on a new cast of characters and less on the March sisters themselves, so it’s a matter of if you want to read about these new characters or not.