Jo and Laurie

Jo and Laurie is a 2020 young adult novel co written by Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz, two well established YA writers who decided to write the love story Louisa May Alcott refused to give her readers. In the original Little Women, Jo March famously turns down Laurie Laurence’s proposal, and many generations of Alcott fans have spent the years since wishing the book had ended differently. Stohl and de la Cruz wrote this book for those readers.

The setup is meta. The Jo March of this novel has just published Little Women, the in story version of which is a slightly fictionalized account of her own life. Critics and readers are clamoring for a sequel, and her publisher needs her to give Jo a husband. Meanwhile, the actual Laurie Laurence, her childhood friend, has come back from his European travels with feelings he is finally ready to act on. The novel follows the two of them through the spring and summer in Concord as Jo wrestles with what she wants for her fictional self, what she wants for her actual self, and how those two questions are related in ways she has been pretending they are not.

The authors clearly love the source material. References to Alcott’s life and to other Little Women adaptations are scattered through the book, and the supporting cast of March sisters and Concord neighbors is rendered with affection. The romance, which is the entire point, takes its time to arrive and is earned rather than rushed. The prose is more accessible than Alcott’s nineteenth century original, which makes the book a good entry point for younger readers who have only seen the films.

For longtime Little Women fans, this is a guilty pleasure that takes its central premise seriously. For readers new to the world of the March sisters, it is a charming standalone romance that works on its own terms while pointing the way back to the original novel.