Book Review: Great or Nothing

 I have been waiting to read this book for months. I wanted to read it so much that I bought it the day that it came out. 

So, I read it and here are my thoughts on it. 

Great or Nothing is a Little Women retelling set during WW2. Each sister's POV is written by a different author. Tess Sharpe writes Jo, Jessica Spotswood writes Meg, Caroline Tung Richmond writes Amy, and Joy McCullough writes Beth. 

Overall, my opinions of this book were mostly positive. I'm going to review each of the girl's perspectives and then review my thoughts as a whole. 

Meg

To be honest, Meg's never been my favorite sister. I like her, but I don't love her. I actually liked the way Jessica Spotswood wrote her. You could almost feel her frustration at being the only one left at home, as well as wondering if she's doing enough with helping the war. In this story, Meg works as a high school English teacher, which fits really well with her character. John Brooks is a math teacher at the same school, who's off fighting the war. Jessica Spostwood does a good job writing all of Meg's feelings. You can feel her frustration at being left at home while all her sisters are gone, and you can feel her longing for John to come back. You can really feel her loneliness, and how much she represses her anger. I understand her as a character, and I think she develops a lot over the course of the story. One thing that I think Jessica Spotswood did particularly well was keeping the spirit of Meg's character while also doing her own thing with her own interpretation of her character. 

Jo

As always, I'm impressed with Tess Sharpe's writing. Her writing is always pretty, while being blunt and not overtly flowery, which, I think, works especially well with her writing Jo. 

We see a more......almost tired Jo in this version. She's grief-filled and she's angry. In this version, she's building planes and other weapons for the war, which fits really well with Jo's characters. All of the women who work with her are also well-developed characters in their own right, and I like them so much. 

I also think that Tess wrote the feeling of being deeply angry at everything very well. 

I also loved seeing her and Charlie [another character in the book] just talk about writing together. It was one of my favorite parts of the book. 

Also, she's queer in this version, which Tess writes very well. 

She writes it as if Jo knows there's something different about her, but she doesn't know what it is and then over the course of the book you sort of slowly see her develop a crush on this girl and realize, ''Oh. This is what having a crush is like.'' It's kind of cute and I thought it was relatable. 

Beth

Is it creepy if I say that Beth's passages are told from beyond the grave? Because that's kind of what it is. 

Her story is told through poems, injecting commentary into her sisters lives [from heaven, I assume]. It's a very different format, but I really enjoyed reading it. You get to see her desire to just fix everything that's going on with her siblings. You also get to see a little bit of her anger, in addition to just her kindness. I'd never read anything that Joy McCullough had written before, but she's good. Again, she just conveys Beth's emotions and her feelings of being the invisible sister really well. 

Amy

Amy's story might have been my favorite. In this story, in order to prove she's not just a silly, little girl she goes off and joins the Red Cross in England. I like the way this Amy is more adventurous and less bratty----she's a more grown-up Amy. I thought her annoyance with being thought of as immature and her trouble with standing up for what she thinks is right. I also lover her interactions with Laurie [who is a soldier in this version] in this book. They had more of a slow romance, which was nice. 

Thoughts On The Book Overall

As a whole, I really liked it. I think that giving it a setting update and having it written by multiple different authors was really cool! I also think all of the authors did a really good job keeping their writing consistent with the original characters, while also keeping their stories unique. 

I thought it was very well-written, I thought all of the romances were really cute, and I feel like all of the authors captured their characters essence really well. 

Would I Recommend It?

I would recommend it if you like Little Women and retellings. Obviously, it won't be everyone's cup of tea. but I really liked it and I thought it was good. I liked it a lot.

So, let's talk. Have you read Great or Nothing? Do you want to? Have you read Little Women [or watched any movie adaptations]?