Thank you to NetGalley, Delacorte Press, & Penguin Random House for the opportunity to read and review this book before it's publication date! This in no way affected my review, opinions are my own.

DNF @ 25%

I love the ideas of retellings, but they are SO hit or miss for me - and unfortunately this one was a miss. Think I'll just go watch the 2019 film adaptation ... yet again.

I love Little Women and this new retelling, Great or Nothing, is wonderful. I liked that it is set in 1942, and I LOVED that there is LGBTQ representation. I enjoyed following along with each of the March sisters and I thought it was interesting that each sister had a different writer. The different authors meshed very well together.

Of the four authors who wrote this book, I was only familiar with Tess Sharpe to start. I'm happy to say that I now have three more authors I enjoy! I did feel like this book was much sadder than the original, mostly because the sisters are separated, and even worse, one is dead. It brings you right into the sadness instead of the joy of childhood like in the original. I did appreciate that Jo is queer in this, as I feel like that's an unspoken part of the original that goes under the radar.

This book was not for me. I love little women and thought I would like this new version, but it just wasn't what I hoped for.

Thank you Netgalley and Random House Children's for this ARC. My opinions are my own. I adored this book. The retelling felt fresh and gave us a unique perspective of each sister. I especially liked the format of having a different author write for each sister. You were able to distinguish the unique voice of each sister. Even though there were multiple authors, the whole story fit together beautifully and flowed well. I love the timeframe jump from the original Little Women to 1942 during WW2. Little Women has a special place in my heart, and I was able to appreciate this story.

My favorite sisters are back! Jo is Rosie the Riveter! Meg’s character has more personality! Amy is still ridiculous! It was a fun ride to get to revisit these beloved characters. I found Beth’s poems speaking from the dead to be distracting and odd and took me out of the story every time.

This is a great retelling of Little Women. It is set in the WWII time setting. Beth has already passed. Jo and Amy take off to deal with their grief and help the war effort. Meg stays home with Marme. Laurie makes his presence known too. Overall this audiobook was a great retelling and having all the different narrators really added something to the novel. Thank you to @Netgalley and @penguinaudio for the gifted review copy.

I really tried to read this one, but it just didn't work for me. Although I like variations on classics, I just couldn't do it here- in my mind, the relationship between the March sisters is the core of Little Women. By keeping them apart, it just sit well. Also, I love Beth and hate that she's already dead when this begins. Oh well.

Honestly, I didn’t like this at all! Beth, if not my favorite Little Women character, is my special interest at the moment, and when the story starts she is already dead, and the grief that the sisters experience drives them apart rather than together (which is very interesting). Jo is queer in this retelling, which is just barely an aside, and it feels like everything exciting and Little Women Traditional Canon happened before the events of the story. Also, everyone is very sad but nobody is very exact on what impact Beth had on their lives. Which is traditional Little Women canon but I’d like to see something different! Three stars. I’d check this out of the library but I wouldn’t buy it.

I am always here for a classic retelling. Little Women in WWII? Yes, please.

It makes so much sense to have Jo working in a factory, and Meg teaching high school, and Amy working for the Red Cross in London with Beth watching over them all. Their grief, their anger, their sense of purpose, and their love for each other - it’s al here. A delight.

I loved the idea behind this book, as an extended version of Little Women. I loved seeing most of the characters from that book, but missed some that were not included. It pained me to read about how estranged the sisters were after Beth's death.

Not for me. I had high hopes but unfortunately I was just so bored. The only chapters I even liked a little were Amys.

I will be purchasing a copy for my library though.

From a librarian standpoint, McCullough generally puts a solid work out on the market. The gimmick of retelling Little Women from four author contributions is a can't miss on your new release shelf. As for personal opinion, I did not find this retelling objectionable and the points that did bother me were subjective, tied in with a youthful love of this American classic. The story does not linger in the magical bits of childhood, those character building points that ensnared the reader in the original, it drops you into Jo's sorrow. This took a bit for me to roll past and I am not sure I ever truly moved on into the story. The depressing start shifted into an overly maudlin collectively built plot - which, if one thinks about it, was true to the cinematic releases during the World War 2 time frame as well. The poetic insertions were odd, took away from the quality of the story and did not do Beth's postmortem narrational presence any favors. As I mentioned first though, it is not objectionable, it will divert and there were moments of reader's delight in here... I just wasn't hooked.
#NetGalley #GreatorNothing

2 stars. My thoughts are a little mixed and convoluted, so stick with me the best you can. The book was okay, but I definitely think YA is the wrong target audience. I don't think teens would be familiar enough with Little Women to fully embrace this retelling and I felt like it was aimed at an older audience.

In a retelling there is a fine line between copying the story and events so closely that you wonder why the authors bothered to do a retelling and changing things so much that the book purists start screaming about it. I felt this stuck a little too closely to the original plot and events. The problems were the same but instead of the Civil War setting it was WWII.

Other cons......
The argument. Get over it already! Halfway through the book I was just wishing they would get to apologizing already. I was tired of reading about it and the resentment. It was repetitive. Plus, the argument wasn't that bad. I've definitely had worse with my sisters.

Jo's character being queer. This is the biggest change from the original, but to me it didn't feel authentic. I felt it was thrown in there just because and it was so vaguely referred to that I wondered what the point was in including it. Maybe there was more to it and since I was skimming the book at that point I missed it.

Amy's character is the only was who showed any sort of growth. The others just felt stagnant and what the heck did they do to Marmee?

The Pros...
I loved the WWII setting.
Hmm.... I guess that's it.

A retelling of Little Women but in a whole different time period. Set in 1942, during WWII.

Little women is such a classic - and it’s hard to touch such a powerful and fantastic story like this. But, as a former history teacher, WWII was always my favorite subject to teach so I knew I had to get this.

Things I liked: the different perspectives, the time period, and the attention to detail.

Things I didn’t like: it was boring. Like, plain and simple. There wasn’t anything wrong with this except that it was hard to finish because I got really bored in between each chapter.

A WWII retelling of the March sisters following the death of Beth, Meg, Jo, and Amy have a tumultuous fight that has them scattering to different places to mourn and process their grief. Meg stays home with Marmie to help with the homefront, while her beau, John, and Father are overseas fighting. Jo leaves for another state so she can work at a factory and room at a boardinghouse. She makes new friendships, including one that seems to have a romantic possibility. Amy lies to achieve adventure, running into Laurie in the process.

Rotates perspectives between the three sisters, and includes Beth's perspective in verse.

A good fit for any Little Woman, historical fiction, or family fan.

4* A very well-written 4-author collaboration on a WWII version of Little Women, with each author in charge of writing one character’s chapters. At this point in the story Beth has already died, and her chapters are poems addressed mostly to her sisters, though some just seem to be musings. Vague reviewer thoughts, no-spoiler edition: Jo’s character won’t be a surprise to some readers, but I felt that it wasn’t true to the original or necessary to the story.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Great or Nothing has been on my TBR since the moment I saw it on Goodreads. A book with Joy McCullough about some of my favorite literary characters is an immediate win for me and it certainly didn’t disappoint!
Great or Nothing is a retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women but reimagined during World War II. We are privy to the narrative of each of the four March sisters each of whom is written by a different author. The characters held true to the outline of Alcott’s characters while exploring the opportunities that a new time period and setting provides.
This book had so many strengths it’s difficult to know where to begin. The choice to utilize different authors for each of the different sisters added an element to this book that could not be recreated by a single writer. Each author had a distinct enough voice that the narratives didn’t blend together or get too confusing. Joy McCullough’s verse as Beth was particularly powerful and really encapsulated the strengths of her writing.
Another strength of this book was the clear research and work that had been done to make it historically accurate. The addition of pop culture references from the time period and significant events and mindsets worked to ground the reader in the time period. The way that these authors handled issues of racism and sexism of the time period was both graceful and powerful. The dissatisfaction of the women who were underappreciated was clear without being overbearing as they emphasized the importance of both leaving home to work and staying home to comfort. The commentary on the racial prejudices against Black soldiers and Japanese Americans was handled very well. It demonstrated imperfect white characters who needed to grow and change, and did, without creating a white savior complex.
I think the biggest flaw of this book is its pacing. The beginning moves slowly sometimes including details that seem unnecessary. Because of this, it feels like the end of the book ran out of space and had to end rather abruptly without a full resolve. I can totally understand the literary strategy of the way this book ended, but for me, I would’ve preferred slightly more resolve.
Overall, I absolutely adore this book and it will be one that I think about long after I have finished it. The end of it had me nearly in tears. It is a beautiful and powerful novel that revives and reimagines Alcott’s characters in powerful new positions.

Great or Nothing is a Little Women retelling set during World War II.

I went in loving this idea, I know the Little Women story even though I have not actually read the original. This was such a cute read. I have a feeling that if I read this when I was in high school I would have loved it more. Some of the writing just felt very boring. I truly did not care for Beth’s parts at all. That could be because they were in verse.
Amy however was my favorite character, I loved how the authors wrote Amy’s portion of the retelling.

I would definitely come back to this at a different time to reread. I think a reread, for me, would bring a higher rating. I enjoyed my time though well enough.

3 stars

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed reading this version of Little Women that is set during one of my favorite time periods in history.