Cute book! I liked the connections to Little Women. The characters were likable but I felt like they could have been developed a little more. I really liked how the book wrapped up at the end.

This book was an easy, lighthearted read. As someone who has never read or seen any adaptations of Little Women it was still very easy to follow. I do think some jokes would have landed better if I was more familiar with the Little Women story though. I do wish more of the characters had been developed a little further. It felt like a lot of the book was setting up the premise which made the ending, and Jo's growth, feel rushed/too easy.

I should have been the ideal audience for this book. It's a Little Women retelling/adaptation and it's set in Kansas. However, it felt a little too chaotic for me in a way that felt like it could have used a stronger editorial hand rather than necessarily a writing issue. In fact, there were several moments, particularly descriptors of Jo and David's friendship that felt so recognizable to me from my own teenage years that I thought were wonderfully written. The premise is excellent and promises many meta moments, but it all just felt like it was a hair off from achieving what it could have been.

My biggest issue with this book was that Jo truly felt like the only character who was truly complex and fleshed out. Meg and Amy in particular felt like caricatures and even when Jo feels like she comes to understand them better, they don't really feel anything other than two-dimensional. The layers that exist between this book and Little Women also felt hard to track at times and the way the characters bounce back and forth between referring to themselves and the characters that Alcott created just hurt my brain a little. Even a humorous attempt to try and address this complexity just made me groan especially given the humor that was employed (the joke of referring to Book Jo as BJ particularly did me in).

Another thing that bothered me, which to be fair is probably more personal as a Kansan, is the fact that this book was set in Kansas but didn't feel like it made any real use of the setting. It could have just been set in any small town anywhere in the country. I appreciate small town settings, don't get me wrong, but if a book is set in my home state I want it to feel like Kansas because stories set in small towns and rural places are even better when they feel geographically specific because place representation in stories is important too and it should be in more than name.

This is a ver cute take on the original Little Women. I enjoyed the ups and downs and the characters of this story. Amanda Sellet does this story justice! So cute and will definitely recommend to others

Just not for me, personally. It felt simultaneously overly shallow and over the top. It probably qualifies as a homage rather than an adaption.

Oh my goodness, I absolutely love Little Women and I was so excited to read this, but this atrocious adaption is so obnoxious that I couldn’t finish it. I know it’s meant for young adults, but I wouldn’t even subject my teenager to this garbage.

I received a copy of this from NetGalley in exchange for a review and opinions are my own.

Ahhhh I wanted to love this book. The cover is gorgeous and the premises seemed interested. Sadly, I could not stop myself from comparing it to little women and how this modern version didn’t compare. If you take that comparison away, the book was alright. The three daughters are named Amy, Jo, and Meg. The story focuses on jo and how she doesn’t want to be perceived by the way her family makes her out to be.. but rather on what/who she decides to be. This story focuses on Jo and her relationship with her family. Overall, it was a fun quick read but I felt like it was nothing new.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book! Obviously, the draw was the LW allusion, and I don't think a reader unfamiliar with the original will enjoy it nearly as much, even though it's a decent stand alone book. I appreciated the nods to the anchor text, as well as the diversions and modernizing Sellet did. I hope this book does well!

I would love to review this on pop-culturalist.com. Belittled Women is a modern day retelling of Little Women in which Jo hates the fact that she’s named after Jo from Little Women.

3.5 STARS
What I really liked about the book:
1) I liked the nods to history with Louisa May Alcott, and the similarities between this retelling and the original source material.
2) I thought that there were some witty and funny moments.
3) It is a fast and easy to binge book that feels nostalgic if you love Little Women

What I didn’t necessarily love:
1) I get that the characters in this book AREN’T actually supposed to be the original Little Women, but I couldn’t help but compare them and Meg’s portrayal was harsh.
2) The sibling back and forth “banter” felt a bit much at times. I had trouble staying invested in all of these scenes.

Overall I feel like it’s a fun and nostalgic read for fans of Little Women and it’s an easy book to binge in a night.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Jo Porter feels trapped in a novel, and not in a good way. Her mother named Jo and her sisters (Meg and Bethamy) after the characters from Little Women. When her mother inherited a house, she made her dream come true by creating Little Women Live! that Jo and her sisters perform in all summer long. Jo is getting tired of being constantly compared to Book Jo. When a journalist comes and wants to do a story on the production, Jo starts to see what a different kind of life she could have. When things start happening and Jo starts to feel that maybe she's ready to leave Little Women and possibly her family's expectations behind, she comes to realize that maybe things are quite as bad as she thought.

Belittled Women is a hilarious book about a quirky family of three teen daughters and their mother who have a longstanding Little Women Live! production they perform yearly for local school children (including their peers) and tourists. It is as campy as it sounds.

The three daughters are named Amy, Jo, and Meg, naturally, but the book focuses on Jo, naturally. Jo, a high school junior, is an unwilling participant in the family business at this stage and desperately wants to have an identity she has chosen for herself, rather than the one foisted on her by her family. Throw in the boy-next-door who dated her sister, a notorious author and her son looking for a feature story, sibling rivalries, financial insecurity, and you've got a Alcott-worthy setting for a teen girl to make mistakes and find opportunities.

This book had me laughing out loud many times, so now I've got to dig up all of Amanda Sellet's other works. It's billed as a romance, and there was some romance, but it was more about Jo's relationship with her family and her explorations into how to find her own identity and maintain closeness to them.