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katekat's review against another edition
4.0
Camilla is a good read even if I hate the ending. I was never sure it had ended wrong until I read A House Like a Lotus and that book proved that Camilla did not end up with Frank, how annoying.
mlykins's review against another edition
5.0
The book was written in the 60s, making it feel, in some ways, a little outdated. However, I would recommend this book to anyone. She deals with big concepts such as growing up, finding yourself, and recognizing or seeking to understand God's place. While those concepts seem so oftenly discussed, she does it in a natural way woven into the young protagonist's life. It is not action based, but follows a small time in the life of young Camilla as she experiences first love and is thrown into the middle of her Mother's affair. The discussions in the book are quite intriguing and Camilla is a character that is easy to connect to as L'Engle is focusing on a period of growing up that we all face at some point or another.
cristela1502's review against another edition
3.0
So, I read this book when I was around 12 and loved it so much that I gave to every single one of my close friends and they all loved it too. I even still have my original copy somewhere in parents house. I read it again now being significantly older and...it's not that great. I think it was a better memory than anything. It's not terrible but I guess I'm not its target audience anymore. It was a bit boring and the characters lacked depth. The dialogues also seemed strange and a bit too formal even for the 50s. Some even sounded like essays, specially if they were coming from Frank. I would give it a 2.5 rating but I'm rounding it to 3 for the nostalgia.
sienaka's review against another edition
4.0
Okay I absolute loved Camilla but her love interest Frank is kind of the worst person ever??? Like I disliked him from pretty much the first second he was introduced, and I would have dropped his ass in a heartbeat! "A Wrinkle in Time" is one of my all time favorite books, and it features one of the cutest couples I've ever seen so I'm shocked that Madeleine L'Engle managed to produce such a trash boy this time around.
Everything else is wonderful and touching, so you can blame Frank for the 4 star rating instead of the 5 stars this book really deserves!
Everything else is wonderful and touching, so you can blame Frank for the 4 star rating instead of the 5 stars this book really deserves!
ellenw's review against another edition
4.0
I recently went back and reread this, which was an odd experience because I'm now much more familiar with A Live Coal in the Sea, which tells Camilla's story when she's an adult.
One thing I love about L'Engle's worlds is that people actually grow up in them, and also that they're all interconnected -- Frank Rowan, who appears as a secondary but important character in this book as a teenager, shows up as a minor character in A House Like a Lotus when he's middle-aged. Camilla grows up and has children in A Live Coal in the Sea. Meg Murry has several books of her own and then has children who get several books of their own. And then of course there are Adam and Zachary, going back and forth between two universes that ought to be more connected but otherwise aren't.
...which is all really about L'Engle's ouevre as a whole, and here I've stuck it into my review of a book that no one's read where no one will read it.
One thing I love about L'Engle's worlds is that people actually grow up in them, and also that they're all interconnected -- Frank Rowan, who appears as a secondary but important character in this book as a teenager, shows up as a minor character in A House Like a Lotus when he's middle-aged. Camilla grows up and has children in A Live Coal in the Sea. Meg Murry has several books of her own and then has children who get several books of their own. And then of course there are Adam and Zachary, going back and forth between two universes that ought to be more connected but otherwise aren't.
...which is all really about L'Engle's ouevre as a whole, and here I've stuck it into my review of a book that no one's read where no one will read it.
readlikefire's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Suicide attempt
meli65's review against another edition
3.0
I was disappointed in the ending but there was a lot to like -- the portrait of mid-sixties New York was intoxicating! I also appreciated how imperfect the characters were -- it does make you wonder how things would have gone on if there were a different ending.
terahreads's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting novel about the thought process of growing up. A lot of it resonated with me.