Beth is Dead by Katie Bernet

Sarah Barley Books/Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1665988698

Available: Hardcover, Ebook edition, audio CD

Buy: Bookshop.org

Beth is Dead is a modern, original take on Louisa May Alcott’s classic children’s novel, Little Women.

I will start by saying that I have read Little Women many times, and most teens today are probably coming at Beth is Dead fresh, which will make a dfference in how it hits. The original novel takes place around the time of the Civil War and is about four sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March, as they grow up, while their father is with the Union Army. Beth is a fragile “angel of the house” character who dies tragically from illness near the end.

Beth is Dead not only brings the story to the present day, but remixes it. This time, the story starts with the discovery of Beth March’s body by sisters Jo and Amy, in a nearby park on New Year’s Day. Bernet name-checks a lot of minor characters from the original book– Amy and Beth had gone to Sallie Gardiner’s yearly party, and had a fight, after which Amy left. There are plenty of secrets about what happened that night.

But the story really starts much earlier, when the March sisters’ father published a bestselling novel detailing their private lives, Little Women, that became controversial because protesters objected to a man exploiting women’s lives for money. Threats caused him to leave home, and he hasn’t returned. In the fictionalized book, Beth dies at the end in a tragic car crash, and since the book is loosely based on their lives, most people think she is dead until she does an interview with Teen Vogue: now everyone is waiting to see what she does next. Beth’s boyfriend, Henry Hummell, is supportive and caring and doesn’t care about the book, and she is a gifted pianist. Life is looking up for her. After the interview, their Aunt March offers to pay for Beth to attend Plumfield, an arts boarding school: she just has to decide if that’s what she wants. I liked Beth a lot in this book– she grows past the “angel of the house” stereotype into someone more complex and independent. able to speak up for herself.

The story is told in alternating first person points of view by Beth (in the past), and Jo, Meg, and Amy (with different chapters set in the past and present). First person gives the reader a much different and more immediate view of the remaining three girls than a third person perspective. I really disliked Jo, who comes across as attention-seeking, selfish, naive, and only interested in picking up social media followers. I was less impatient with Amy, a wannabe artist, because it quickly became obvious where her story was going. Meg didn’t really have a compelling storyline, although it was nice to see that she had big dreams and was going after them while she worked out her feelings about John Brooke, which doesn’t happen in the original. Race plays a more obvious role: Jo’s friend Laurie goes from having olive skin and “Italian features” in the original book to Black in this one, and John Brooke is also Black: this affects their encounters with law enforcement, as both are suspects at some point. The least compelling element of the book to me was the Jo-Laurie-Amy storyline. Bernet didn’t have the opportunity to develop the relationship between Laurie and Amy convincingly, or resolve the hurt feelings between Jo and Laurie. Unfortunately, most conflicts in the book felt forced, and many secondary characters were flat, as there simply wasn’t space for character development.

Bernet does an effective job of depicting anger and grief, and the way sisters can be there for each other even at their worst. But the mystery didn’t feel very original, although there were a few surprising moments. The book moves along at a fairly fast clip, with plenty of accusations, missteps, and betrayals, so teens who like a mystery that moves along, with a dash of romance and family drama, whether they’ve read the original or not, may enjoy this book.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski