A rather flat coming-of-age story about a girl growing up in her spinster aunt's large country home. It's hard to imagine this one appealing to very many children, or even "young adults."
This is what it reminded me of. An elderly relative asks if you'd like to hear about her childhood, when she attended a one-room country schoolhouse. "Sure," you say, "that sounds interesting." You mean it, too. But then the elderly relative starts rambling on about the smelly mentally retarded girl she always had to sit next to, and how she and the other kids always tried to shun the stinky retard during recess, but later they all felt really bad about that because the poor dimwitted girl stepped on a rusty nail and died of tetanus. And then you sit there in awkward silence.
There's nothing wrong with historical fiction--however, this book tends to come across as merely outdated versus historical. Part of the problem: it's very hard to tell when exactly it takes place. 1930s maybe? 1940s? I'm unsure. And without a clear historical context, many of the lessons Julie learns--such as "a woman is never complete until she loves a man" (groan)--will probably strike most modern readers as simply odd vs. an accurate reflection of the times.
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