From the Bookshelf of Clean Reads…

The Hired Girl

Laura Amy Schlitz

Why we're reading this: Recommended by a group member in a discussion thread.
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What Members Thought

Feb 16, 2018 Angie rated it really liked it

Shelves: angie

This book is rather lengthy for the YA genre at 400 pages, but it never felt long or uninteresting. Something about the main character, Joan, reminded me of Anne Shirley, which is always a good thing. She is certainly flawed but heartwarmingly genuine, so I couldn’t help but like her, and even root for her. A rather large portion of the latter half of the book is taken up with her intense but immature crush on David, the son of the family she works for. I rather enjoyed reading about her associa ...more

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Apr 16, 2018 Heather rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult, audio-book, historical-fiction

I loved this intelligent, spunky, 14 year old (who ends up telling people she's 18), Joan Skraggs from a small farm in Pennsylvania. Her mother has just died and she is left to do all the work her mother had to do with her verbally abusive father and two brothers. Life is miserable and she would like to at least get some egg money for all her hard work, and having to drop out of school. Her father will hear non of that so she comes up with a plan to leave the farm and go to Baltimore. The train ...more

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Mar 08, 2018 Heather rated it liked it

Shelves: read-ya, book-group

Jane Eyre, Junior. That's what this book felt like. I really enjoyed it; I pretty much sat down and read it in one session. I had to remember that the main character is 14; sometimes I wondered at her choices -- until I remembered she really was young and not the 18 years she pretended to be. The ending felt especially right because of that fact.

This is a book that reminds me to not take things for granted. Books are treasures.

PG ...more

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