"Pies and Prejudice" by Heather Vogel Frederick

Since today is the 200th anniversary of the first publication of Pride and Prejudice, I figure it's the perfect time to review this book, which I finished on Friday and then never managed to write about over the weekend.

Pies and Prejudice is the fourth book in the Mother-Daughter Book Club series, which, as you might guess, is a bunch of mothers and daughters who are all friends and have formed a book club.  I have never read one of these books before, and at first, it took me a while to get into the swing of it, possibly because I'm no longer a fifteen-year-old girl.  There are four girls in the club, and they take turns narrating, chapter by chapter.  The book covers basically an entire school year and mirrors much of Pride and Prejudice as far as the various girls' budding romantic relationships go.  This book is not only told in first person, but also present tense.  If you're not a fan of present tense as a rule, don't let that deter you from reading this -- I was about four chapters in before I realized it was in use. 

When Emma and her family move to England for a year, they swap houses with a British family with two sons.  The other girls start a pie-baking company to raise money to bring Emma home for spring break.  The book club as a whole read Pride and Prejudice.  And the girls go through various problems in their own lives, making good and bad decisions, dealing with requited and unrequited attractions, figuring out what they want to be when they grow up.  By the end of the book, I was friends with all four, and I definitely intend to read the other books in this series (especially since the latest one involves Jane Eyre).

Not only was this book engaging, well-written, and thought-provoking, it was squeaky clean!  It's sad how rare really clean young adult books are, isn't it?  But there was nary a curse word here, no one engaged in any boy-girl activities more serious than a bit of kissing, and the children have good relationships with their parents!  Not only that, but there was mention of church-going, and a Bible passage got quoted at one point.  Not an overtly Christian book, but not anti-Christian either.  I may end up having to buy these to read with my own daughters one day!

This is my first entry into the "Pride and Prejudice Bicentenary Challenge" over on AustenProse.com.