The story follows Jack Minot and Janey Pecq, who are best friends who live next door to each other. They are always seen together, so Janey gets the nickname of Jill, to mimic the old rhyme. The two do go up a hill one winter day–and then are involved in a terrible accident.

3.5 stars ( )

Louisa May Alcott wrote great books and she also wrote middling books that appealed to the popular sentiments that probably helped her to keep her family afloat(the gothic tales are another story!). This is clearly in the middling class, it is Garland for Girls turned into a full-length novel. Rather too full of mid-Victorian Christian piety for my tastes and I had trouble keeping track of who was who amongst the teenagers around Jack and Jill. No one really stuck out as an interesting character and the adventures were more moral tales than adventures and larks.

Cute, sentimental, rather preachy. There are some excellent bits - a lot of what the kids get up to is great, and the funeral is amazing on multiple levels, _despite_ the preachy bits in it. She does spend an awful lot of time talking to the reader about how kids should be good and compassionate and keep their promises (even if it's silly - Jack and the money, yes (though poorly handled), Jack and the boat just silly) and how religion and temperance are wonderful things and and and. I don't disagree with most of what she says, but I kept having to remind myself of that when her sententious tones rubbed me the wrong way. It's possible that if I had first read this as a child, as I did Eight Cousins, I would love it and disregard the preachiness; reading it for the first time now, it's only tolerable. I doubt I'll reread. ( )

I have always loved Alcott's Little Women series and I also like the Rose in Blood duology, so I was very excited to find this never-heard-of novel in a second hand bookshop. But it was disappointing. So preachy! I mean, all her books are, but they generally have a good story too. Sort of. This one was just boring preachiness. I know it was set a long time ago, but conversations in particular seemed very stilted and unrealistic. ( )