Book review: Pies and Prejudice by Heather Vogel Frederick

The twenty-sixth book I read in 2018 was the fourth book in Heather Vogel Frederick's Mother-Daughter Book Club series, Pies and Prejudice.  The girls are entering ninth grade, and their book for the year (clearly) is Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. 

But the girls aren't all entering ninth grade together.  Jess already abandoned the public school last year when she moved into a boarding school dorm, despite living in the same town the school is in; this year, Emma and her family are spending the school year in Bath since her father sold the novel he'd been working on.  Technology to the rescue, as Mr. Wong hooks up videoconferencing equipment for book club meetings.

The Hawthornes work a house swap with a British family with two sons, one of whom is handsome and charming while the other is distant and arrogant ... and I'm sure you can see where this is going.  There's a lot of boyfriend stuff this time around, as Megan falls for Bingley, uh, Simon, Becca goes to the Spring Formal with Zach Norton, Jess and Darcy finally get together, Stewart breaks up with Emma, and the author rips off pays homage to The Cutting Edge with Cassidy and the Darcy-stand-in, Tristan.

Frederick sprinkles the background with Austen Easter eggs, like the choir director Mr. Elton, the teacher Ms. Bates, and Emma's Knightley-Martin School.  The rather ham-handed title is derived from a baking business the club begins to pay for an airline ticket for Emma to fly home for spring break (which, coincidentally, is the same week as spring break at Alcott High and Colonial Academy), which in turn follows a sudden and convenient passion to learn cake decorating on the part of Jess and her mom.  It's pretty out of left field.

The Sweet-Valleyism is a given with this series by now, but my main concern was mean-spirited actions of the girls seemingly being condoned by the author.  Megan finds her niche in high school by publishing an anonymous "What Not to Wear" blog, trashing the fashion choices of her schoolmates.  She is eventually found out, and her mom forces her to apologize; but she receives considerable positive affirmation for her exploits from a magazine publisher who implicitly tells her to wait until she's 18 and then she can make fun of others with impunity for a paycheck. 

Emma's father's novel (besides being awful -- Frederick really shouldn't have posted a supposed excerpt) contains thinly-disguised caricatures of people he knows, prompting a feud with Mrs. Chadwick, whose doppelganger is particularly unattractive.  (And I've read reviews of the series who point out that continually mocking a character for the size of her posterior is hardly a feminist undertaking.) 

And Emma herself has a story published in the Knightley-Martin school literary magazine mocking a group of girls at the school before flying back to the US consequence-free -- a public shaming for which her father and one of the girls' relatives congratulates her.  Emma (with Frederick) excuses herself with the assurance that no one but the girls being made fun of will know it's them and they deserve it, but given that the bad fairies in the story have the exact same nicknames as the four girls in real life, it's a ridiculous conclusion. 

For a series that has gone out of its way to redeem Becca Chadwick and Savannah Sinclair, it's petty to dump on Annabelle Fairfax and her satellites.  And for a series based on celebrating female characters, to condone mockery of (other) female characters for their weight and fashion choices is backwards.