A review by juliacsmith
Pioneer Girl by Bich Minh Nguyen

3.0

This is kind of a quiet book – not much dialogue, a *lot* of detail about the Ingalls/Wilder/Lane authors, and (despite having read the Little House books a lot as a kid, or maybe because I had and because I feel so differently about them now) it took me awhile to get engrossed. But quiet is good sometimes, and the right-this-moment contemporary details—the banh mi place taking off in the Chicago suburb, the Vitaminwater in the fridge at the medical marijuana startup's office—helped keep me in it. Now that I think about it, that's kind of the way the descriptions of food used to hold my attention in the Little House books. [Spoiler alert] I'm also a sucker for things that seem like they're setting up for rom-com endings but then end with the lady-protagonist finding herself and paving her way without a makeout scene with her prince at the end.