As someone who sided with Alcott herself in believing that Jo and Laurie were not meant for each other, I believed that I may have had a hard time with this book. However, I’m happy to say that I have never happier to be so wrong. 

‘Jo & Laurie’ is a meta piece of fiction, both existing as a retelling of the second part of ‘Little Women’ (‘Good Wives’), and as a wider commentary on life at the time the book was written, drawing heavily from Louisa May Alcott’s own life to build this tale.

In this story, the ‘Little Women’ story is a canonically published book written by Jo March, and is loosely based off her own life, with many added differences and changes - very meta. This is the Jo March who features as the main character in this book - a struggling young novelist, refusing to follow what is expected of her when it comes to moulding her creation to include a sequel - similarly to Alcott’s own relationship with the sequel and refusal to marry off her characters. The Jo of this book is similar to Alcott in a lot of ways, just as the Jo of ‘Little Women’ was the equivalent of Alcott’s self-insert OC. The characters of the original novel were inspired by her own family, and Jo the front and centre - her.

And yes, for all you out there wondering by the title alone, this version of Jo and Laurie do end up together, but by the title, that is not meant as a surprise haha!

oh my gosh this was the canniest romance ever, this was so cute and i couldn’t put it down - everything wrapped up so nicely without being too fast, everything was just amazing, very rereadable! and i’m buzzing that this book had realistic teen dialogue!! 

also i’m 100% sure darcy is autistic - she spends the whole book not being able to read faces or read into phrases, missing social cues and obsessively researching her special interest to the point where it becomes her job. love this

this concept of this book is great, but the execution was not. the language was overly repetitive and simplistic

a lot of the inspirational women were great and i was glad to hear of them.

but some of these women highlighted as “role models” were horrific people, making this book feel like a bunch of “girlboss feminism” strung together for children. margaret thatcher is not a role model for anyone, let alone children. she starved so many children by cutting projects like free school meals, and ruined the lives of so many people. hilary clinton is not a role model either.

and pardon my language, but why the f*** was coco chanel (a literal nazi agent) highlighted as a role model?? if you want to show children that you can be a successful designer, there are so many designers to chose from as examples that were not nazis and nazi supporters.

AD/ gifted from Netgalley. 

i just wanted to clarify that i have nothing against modern minimalist poetry. however, i don’t think this collection is good on a technical or poetic level. there are no language devices, no deeper meaning, everything felt surface level and ‘shown’ not told

this was just the  thought or phrase stated with line breaks, with the occasional photo

i’m all for people using art to work through their trauma, hell, i do the exact same thing, so i don’t mean to disregard or disrespect the author or their motives but i just don’t think this is a good set of poetry. some of these feel like tweets or notes app rants than poems. some were just individual words like
“i don’t know
and that’s okay”
like that was one poem, directly quoted from the collection 

‘this is
a review
of this book’
if that sentence i just wrote about is a poem, this is a poetry collection. if not, i don’t know what to tell you. 

I was very kindly gifted a copy of this book by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not influence or alter my opinions of this book. 

In this book, sex educator Milly Evans discusses the topics that most school sex educations (I’mlooking at you, UK sex ed curriculum) don’t cover sufficiently, or at all, from safe sex to sexual health, from puberty to pleasure. 

As a young adult myself, who is extremely passionate about safe and accessible sex education for all, being given this opportunity to receive an ARC of this book was incredible. 

It is also written in a peer-to-peer format by “someone who isn’t thirty years older than you”, which means it doesn’t come across as being condescending or overly distant from real teenage experiences. It was also so refreshing to hear active conversation about disabilities and neurodivergencies within the context of sex and relationship education resource, especially from an ND author. Lastly, each chapter is full to the brim with contact information and external resources for those wanting to research further, or require any support or help.

Overall, I would recommend this book to any young person looking to educate themselves on sex and relationships. However, as Milly herself states in the book’s conclusion “this book is a good starting point, but shouldn’t be - and can’t be - your entire sex education.”

very amazing book! not as good as the first two, as it felt more disjointed and harder to follow at times. and you can definitely tell the idea was a rejected doctor who script. but still an enjoyable read and a great sequel. can’t wait to see what happens next!

paused the book, not in the mood for it right now

Thank you very much to the publisher for sending the second instalment of the ‘Essential Gorter’ series. You can find the first instalment ‘May’’s review up on my blog. 

Herman Gorter’s poems discuss humanity, politics, love, lust, and an idyllic view of nature, all fitting themes for the 1880s literary revival in which they were written around. This revival focused on the aesthetics of art, whether to its downfall or rise is down to the reader. I enjoy work from this movement, and Gorter is no exception. 

I did not enjoy this collection more than I enjoyed ‘May’, but I think that is down to my varying opinions on the different poems presented. Whilst ‘May’ is a continuous epic, this collection is, well, a collection of various poems, some short, some long, some amazing, some less-so. I felt as if a few of these poems were repetitive, souring my final thoughts of the collection.

However, that is not to say that this book does not have it’s merits. I throughly enjoyed reading this, and loved the continuation of Gorter’s mythological references. In ‘May’, we read of the Norse gods, and in this collection, the Ancient Greek god Pan is discussed. This excited me as both a classicist and a consumer of poetry. Continuation of themes makes delving into a poet’s work even more enjoyable.  

Another theme heavily discussed within this collection was love and desire, however, while many of poems and verse presented discussing desire felt simplistic and overly cliché, one thing that must be taken into account is the literary differences at the time they were written. From what I know of Gorter, however little it may be, I have gathered that his work was very influential, which suggests that these descriptors which he frequently uses weren’t necessarily used in a traditionally cliché way, and instead, appear to be so through the eyes of a modern reader, whose exposure to those metaphors are frequently through modern-day poetic clichés.

The last of his poems is political in nature. Towards the end of the collection, Gorter, who was a heavily political figure himself), mourns the famous murders of communists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. As I am not particularly knowledgeable on the situation surroundings their lives and deaths, I cannot critique the latter poem and verses with enough context, but I will be further researching the political figures and revisiting the poems when I have gathered sufficient context, as to be able to throughly understand them.

Overall, this collection of poems was enjoyable, and I am curious to see if another instalment of Gorter’s work is to be translated in the series, as I would be interested in reading it.

pardon my french, but holy shit. that was, incredible