I’ve now read books five and six of the Molly Brown series — Molly Brown’s Post-Graduate Days and Molly Brown’s Orchard Home. And I think I’m taking a break for a bit. I don’t like anyone anymore. Or care about what happens to Molly.
Here’s what happens in the first two post-college Molly Brown books:
A bunch of people fall in love with each other. Everyone is super jealous of everyone else. Molly and Professor Green are much less entertaining than they were before. Molly’s aunt, for whatever reason, is evil. So is the mother of a girl they meet on their way to France in book six. The kind of people who were redeemable in the earlier books aren’t anymore. The humor is meaner. The friendships are less convincing.
I’m sure part of the way I feel about these two books is about my having run out of patience, but not all of it. So, I hope to come back to Molly Brown at some point and finish the series, but for now I am done.
Tagged: 1910s, girls, nellspeed, paris, series, the south
Do you think it might be because Nell Speed wrote at least three different series (Tucker Twins, Carter Girls, & Molly)? Maybe she got fed up with them. I haven’t read any of them myself.
I’m a little confused about which Nell Speed books are by Nell Speed and which are by her sister, but whichever of them it was, I sort of hope she got fed up. The alternative is too sad.
Since I’m one of the people who has urged you to read the Molly Brown books, I will admit that I have to agree with you. The first four are ever so much better than the rest. I’ll tell you right now–do not even pick up Molly Brown of Kentucky or Molly Brown’s College Friends. It’s quite obvious that they were not written by Nell Speed. Trust me, the last one in particular is pretty far-fetched and just not up to par with the earlier books in the series (even though the Tucker Twins’ father makes an appearance near the end). The racism in the later books also bothered me a lot (both the depiction of the blacks in Kentucky and then the Irish servant in the last two books–although I guess that’s not really racism, but whatever it is, I disliked it). But I could read the first four books over and over again–and I do, at least once a year.
I think anti-Irish stereotyping counts as racism well into the early 20th century.
So, I guess the current plan is this: Read the Tucker Twins series, read the Carter Girls series, return to the tail end of the Molly Brown series only if I’ve finished everything else and must have more Nell Speed characters?
That sounds good. One of the other things that bugs me in the very last book are the continuity errors, which pretty much prove to me that someone different wrote the book. But some of those things bother me way more than other people I’ve met.
I think I’m with you on that one. I guess continuity errors make more sense when a different person is writing the later books, but they’re still completely infuriating.