3.5/5 stars. didn’t really like the main love interest and the whole thing seemed too much like the new four weddings and a funeral remake (but i don’t know which one came first, so). i went into it not really expecting to love it, since i really don’t love the “best friend’s boyfriend” trope, but it wasn’t handled terribly.

tl;dr: not the worst romance but definitely not the best

(4.5/5 stars)

the penderwicks was my favorite series to read as i grew up. i was so attached to skye, jane, rosalind and batty that reading the penderwicks at last—which is told from the perspective of their youngest sibling, lydia, 11—felt strange. lydia is a lovely character, a young girl filled with adventure and love and everything else 11-year-old girls are made of, but it was hard to have the main characters of the past four books be minor characters. lydia is kept out of a lot of the family discussions because she's 8 years younger than batty, who was only 4 in the first book, so we get to catch up with our old favorites in very minimal and confusing ways. only having lydia as a narrator was limiting, but also broke tradition because the other books normally switched narration between the four sisters. (this book has been out for years but the next part is a lil spoiler!!) while i understand people's frustration with how the romantic plot lines (which, let's be real, were very minor and not at all the point of these books) were wrapped up, i think that rosalind and skye's romantic stories represent how childhood relationships can end in all kinds of ways. the whole thing with batty and jeffery was a little uncomfortable for me because of the age difference, but in terms of who they are as adults, it honestly makes sense. also i can't remember if skye ever saw jeffery as more of a brother-type, anyways. (end spoilers) i'm glad the older sisters were given some sort of happy ending (is jane ok though?) and that lydia's ending wasn't an ending at all, but it definitely felt a little off to me. this story will always have a special place in my heart, but i don't see myself rereading this one as much as i do the others when i feel nostalgic.

i’m so happy and i love how diverse this book is :’)

I want to attempt a "shopping ban" like the one written about in this book, which is why I read it. I think the layout of her plan was helpful for me to plan out what I want to do and what I really need. However, this book got pretty boring about halfway through. the author talks about her problems with food and alcohol, which was a large part of the ban as well, but she also talked a lot about her work and her travel and her family problems a lot in the second half. Honestly, I skipped over most of that stuff just because it wasn't interesting to me and wasn't relevant to the reason I was reading the book. I got most of what I needed for my planning from the sample online before I got the book from my library.