This just scraped a three-star rating for me. I much prefered the first 'Little Women', despite its saccharine sweetness.

Unlike most readers though, I didn't mind that Jo (spoilers ahead) ended up with Mr Bhaer rather than Laurie, although it did mean poor lovelorn Laurie suffered for a while. But then he ended up with Amy, which I wasn't too happy about. I never liked Amy, and would have much prefered Laurie to end up with my other favourite character Beth, and for Beth to have survived obviously.

I still can't get over the trouble I had to go to to track down a copy of 'Good Wives', and really think it ought to be published in the same volume as 'Little Women', as they are in America. Even though the gap between reading them both was just a few short weeks it took away from the experience somewhat. The two go hand-in-hand with each other, and should be read one straight after the other.