I did enjoy the casual entwinings of this book and the Traveling Pants series. She didn’t seem three-dimensional enough. I just never really got a grasp of who Polly was. Jo’s story also caught me, because who hasn’t desperately tried to fit in with those the world has deemed “popular”? Polly’s story. I loved Ama’s story as she struggled to adjust to a world with hiking boots and tents and without her beloved hair products. Without that foundation, the book lacks something. I didn’t really get a sense of the friendship and connection between the girls before they were off on their separate ways and drifting apart.

I enjoyed this book, but not as much as the Traveling Pants books. She is trying to get in with the “in-crowd”, especially since these will be the girls to know come the fall in high school, but she finds herself in way over her head. Jo is working as a busgirl in a restaurant by her family’s beach house. So incredibly far outside her comfort zone. Ama has gotten into a prestigious summer program – except she’s assigned to the one that involves hiking and camping in Wyoming. Her older sister has set the standards high, having entered college at the age of 16. Ama is a scholar, an over-achiever, someone who loves knowledge for the sake of achievement, rather than learning. She latches onto the idea of becoming a model because someone casually mentioned that her grandmother had been a model. Polly is desperate for a past, since she has never known her father.

Polly is the daughter of a single mother who spends all day in her art studio. The characters have just graduated from eighth grade and are trying to figure out who they are and who they will become. Of course I was hoping for the same sort of connection in 3 Willows.ģ Willows is written for a younger audience than the Traveling Pants books it’s aimed more towards middle schoolers. I desperately cared what happened to them in all of the ups and downs of their teenage lives. I felt like I knew Lena, Tibby, Carmen, and Bridget. I picked up 3 Willows because it was by Ann Brashares,and I devoured the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series in about two days a few summers ago.

3 willows the sisterhood grows