Poor Rose Campbell! Tired and ill, she has come to live at “The Aunt-Hill” after the death of her beloved father. Six aunts fussing and fretting over her are bad enough, but what is a quiet thirteen-year-old girl to do with seven boisterous boy cousins? And with a guardian uncle who has the strangest ideas about how to raise a young girl?
Okay, that synopsis was really, really cheesy.
It’s more like: Rose Campbell is a sickly girl who has come to live at “The Aunt-Hill” after the death of her beloved father. Between her six aunts all trying to raise Rose her own way and the boisterous boy cousins she has kept trying to avoid, Rose is getting tired. But then her father’s brother, an uncle she has never met, comes to take care of her and Rose begins to see changes in her life that she would have never suspected. Her uncle has the strangest ideas about how to raise a young girl, her aunts are letting her into his care and most shocking of all–Rose finds herself spending more and more time with her cousins.
So maybe yeah that synopsis isn’t that great either, but still.
I used to love this book actually. Louisa May Alcott wrote one of my favorite books, Little Women, and then I started reading her other books. Eight Cousins was really fun to read, but there were some parts to it that were kind of weird. Like the trip to China. At first, I wasn’t sure if Louisa May Alcott was kidding or not. I was like, what the heck? And then when I found out she wasn’t kidding, I was still kind of incredulous.
Being written for the first time nearly 150 years ago, the ideas on health, class, manners and race can be seen as kind of bigoted, but as you read it you just need to keep in mind that the times were different and that’s not hard, considering the world that Louisa May Alcott is capable of creating. If you’ve read Louisa May Alcott before, the characters, setting and general ideas were feel familiar. All of the characters in this story are very proper, high-minded and concerned about appearance, manner, morality, relationships, etc.
I love the feel to Louisa May Alcott’s writing, and this book was no different. I love all the characters and especially how Rose grew as a person. A great story. 4.5 stars.
pg count for the paperback: 320
Series: Eight Cousins
Tweens Read Too 