Really enjoyed this story of that awkward summer between graduating high school and heading off to college. Though the boys were a bit too good to be true, I certainly related to all the emotions surrounding moving on.

Delightful fluff, which is exactly what I needed.

Though not quite as strong as the first in the series, I still love these characters and the setting. The bonus of 19th century dinosaur hunters cannot be underestimated. Looking forward to learning more about Jenny's past in the next one--so many tidbits dropped with no actual resolution yet.

I really didn't want to like this book. I knew it was totally feeding off everyone's obsession with Kate and Will and copying their story and making a buck off it. And that felt wrong. And yet. . .
I couldn't put the darn thing down. It's totally over the top and ridiculous and gossipy, but I had such fun reading it. It's the true definition of a guilty pleasure, as I felt guilty the entire time I was reading it.

There's a certain genre of historical fiction where it hits all these big themes in a way that may or may not be plausible. So, here we have an extremely diverse group of young people heading west on the Oregon Trail. Oh, and two girls are pretending to be boys in order to escape murder chargers. There is action and adventure romance and some outlaws and well. . . you get the idea.
Nothing about this should have worked, and yet it kinda did. I enjoyed Sammy's Chinese perspective. And at least everyone realized that this whole love across racial lines wasn't easy. It ended very tidily, but I can live with it since I liked the characters so much.

If there's such a thing as an eagerly anticipated book in the history museum world, this would be at the top of the list. I know I had to wait for a second printing to get my copy. I've been following the Anarchist's work for a while, and I agree with a lot of what he has to say--but I certainly don't agree with everything.
The book itself is a great consolidation of his many blog posts, webinars, presentations, etc. I used a few portions of it for a recent staff training and have passed my copy on to other staff.
There is a decidedly New England bent to his examples, and I wish he had used some examples from outside the historic house museum world to inspire historic house museums. Though the pages on the research methodology help validate his ideas, I found myself skimming them.
This is an important book for the field, but I also don't believe his ideas are quite as revolutionary or outside the box as he leads you to believe. There were certainly several points where I thought to myself "we've been doing that for years." Worth picking up, will probably spark some new ideas, but it certainly didn't transform my museum philosophy.

Slow to get started (seriously, I thought "not another "world in peril, only one can save it" book), and yet. . .
Love the hints towards a bigger story. Loved the two main characters and the complications. Really hope we learn more about Cook. Definitely hoping for a sequel.
Another great FYA book club read.

I've spent more than a few years dabbling in Texas history--and at the end of this book, I realized I had learned so much. There just aren't that many books about the Republic years--and how incredibly chaotic they were. It's hard to think of Austin as the frontier, and yet it was.
Sam Houston doesn't come off as a saint here, which was also rather refreshing. Highly recommended--and it made for some really great conversations at the DHV book club.