finished the Montmaray Journals

[amelia_petkova]

Over the past week, my mother has come home with the rest of the Montmaray books and I tend to steal them the moment they make an appearance. I have just a few thoughts on The FitzOsbornes at War at the moment.


HENRY DIES OH MY GOD MICHELLE COOPER WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT JUST RIP OUT MY HEART WHY DON'T YOU

This is going right next to Code Name Verity on my brand-new list of "WWII Historical Fiction That Requires a Box of Kleenex". Henry in this book was so awesome. I loved her boarding school adventures and that Veronica completely took Henry's side when Henry was (mainly) expelled for telling another girl what a period was.

So do we have a Simon/Toby/Julia relationship at the end? It's hard to tell in the story because there's just these two tiny throwaway lines, about Davey having Simon's eyes and Julia's hair (or something like that) and that Simon is living with Toby and Julia. The family tree at the end shows that Davey is Simon and Julia's son. On the one hand I like this because Simon/Toby = yay! and Julia = awesome. On a writing level though, I'm kind of annoyed. Simon has never shown any sign whatsoever of liking Julia at all and now they're all living and sleeping together four years in the future? I need more of a basis for the relationship than just "they both love Toby".

Comments

[skygiants]

They are indeed in a canon threesome!

I actually do think we got hints that Simon likes Julia, they were just sort of gross hints - like, he gets really pissy about Julia's fast ways in a very specific fashion, and I think we are meant to take from that that Simon is attracted to Julia, and annoyed by the fact that he is attracted to Julia. Obviously this is not okay behavior (as a lot of Simon's behavior is not really okay behavior) so more exploration of that would definitely be a good thing . . .

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

It's a good thing that there's the family tree at the end of the book because otherwise it's mostly a blink-and-you-miss it relationship. And I'm totally on board with the idea of a canon threesome (how often does this actually happen and work out, must less as a happy ending?!) but I would have liked more concrete hints leading up to it.

I think Julia and Toby's developing relationship may be one of my favorite things about this book. Even though Julia was terrific in the first novel she grows up a lot in this one and becomes more of a rounded character. She and Toby always got along, so when he proposes it's not completely out of the blue. And he's doing it to help her! She's in a rough spot and Toby just wants to help, whether it's acting as the father of her baby or just being there for her, and then he leaves the choice totally up to her. I think that makes it even better when they do end up deciding to get married farther down the road, because they've both had time to think about it.

Daphne the Welder is awesome, too. I don't remember much of her from before the third book, just as a brief mention of one of Julia's deb friends. There's that bit when the American soldiers have turned up and she's talking about it, all experienced and proud, and then the American soldier is all shocked because we would never have our women do hard work like that! Daphne doesn't say this to him in words but I'm pretty sure her face said, "That's because we've been at war, dumbass."

I guess I had more to say about this book after all. :)

[(Anonymous)]

That mention of Davey having a resemblance to Simon--I assumed it was just a family resemblance (Simon being Toby's unofficial cousin) until the family tree came along and baffled me.
- I don't see that a relationship was being developed between Simon and Julia at all
-Toby relates to Davey as a son
-WHAAAT???? (General response)