Loved it! Especially the first half, set in 1913 London. 13-year-old Hazel becomes very interested in the suffragettes, as well as in her classmate Gloria, I thought. Which ends in disaster and her being sent to her grandparents' sugar plantation in the Caribbean the book here felt a bit bi-polar I thought, as much as I did love it. The two halves were two very different stories for a lot of the time! And as interesting as it was to suddenly be on the other side of the world, in the wilds, with [...]

Meh. This book was one big "meh". It felt like the author had read a bunch of other books about suffragettes, London, and sugar cane slaveryd wrote her own book without doing any further research. None of the pieces to this book felt real and fleshed out. The first half of the book was largely about Hazel being fascinated by the suffragettes in London after seeing one get trampled by a horse.but that whole story line gets dumped when she is sent to live with her grandparents on their Caribbean s [...]

Hazel’s life is not perfect.Her father had a breakdown.Her mother is infatuated with dogs.And Hazel’s teachers are trying to teach her Shakespeare—with all the interesting bits blocked out.Salvation must be somewhere.Perhaps in the American girl who drew the scandalous picture during the class trip to Kensington Gardens. Or in the suffragette martyr—trampled at the racetrack. Or in the Caribbean—which, apparently, is where young ladies who fail to behave as young ladies are exiled.Haze [...]

I really really enjoyed this book.The plot might have been lacking at times but overall the novel was very enjoyable.Hazel is a girl that I would say feels like she knows herself & where she stands in her life,but when she is sent to live with her Grandparents while her Father is recovering from a breakdown,she discovers a world of secrets & maybe also disappiontment.I really liked the ending & how things were left;With her Father not knowing about Tommy John or his daughter.It gave [...]

This book seemed like it should be two different stories to me. In the first half, spoiled, rich Hazel witnesses a suffragette jump in front of a race horse and around the same time she befriends a brash, new girl at her school - both give her new ideas and questions. In the second half, after her father attempts suicide, she is sent to stay with her grandparents on the family sugar cane farm in the Caribbean where deep family secrets are revealed. The linking thread in both stories is that Haze [...]

Another great Julie Hearn book :)

Originally published at: muggle-born/hazel-by-julieSweet and dull is not only how I would describe the protagonist’s life, but also how I would describe the entirety of HAZEL by Julie Hearn. The novel as a whole felt too disjointed – the first and the second halves of HAZEL by Julie Hearn are so different that it felt like two separate books.HAZEL by Julie Hearn is technically a sequel to Ivy by Julie Hearn. In HAZEL, the protagonist is Ivy’s daughter. HAZEL by Julie Hearn is more like a c [...]

Hazel is 13 in 1913 and is privileged to be the daughter of a gentleman In Sugar. She adores her Daddy, who tells her stories about how he met her beautiful, former artist's model mother at the Battersea dog shelter and fell instantly in love. Hazel is sheltered and comfortable in her world but on June 4, she tumbles into young adulthood when she witnesses a woman being trampled by the King's horse at the Epsom Derby. The woman was a suffragist, something had never heard about or thought of unti [...]

SynopsisIt is early in the 20th Century and the times are changing. For Hazel Louise Mull-Dare the changes are having a massive impact. She was there the day that Emily Davison was knocked down by a horse at the Epsom Derby and from that moment on she becomes obsessed with the rights and wrongs of the world.Having lived an extremely sheltered life, Hazel – the daughter of a gentleman – looks at the world with wide eyed optimism and ends up landing herself in a spot of bother when she befrien [...]

It's weird to me that even though this is a sequel and was published a few years ago it only has 3 or 4 reviews whereas the first book, Ivy, has numerous. Interesting. Anyway, I'm going to give it a go. FINISHED: Wow, this was not my cup of tea. The protagonist is a baby. The first and second halves have nothing in common and seem like two different books.The first half is an ode to Sufferagette's . but in a bad way. The second half is an ode to slavery also done poorly but at least with a hint [...]

I really liked Hazel, although I was not too pleased with the ending which seemed to put everything in a tidy box and call it a day. The first 300+ pages were wonderful. The last three, pretty meh.What I enjoyed most about Hazel though, is that Hazel is a 13 year old in the first half of the twentieth century just learning about race and women's rights and she acts like it. Too often historical fiction that hits on the "tough issues" puts a modern, twenty-first century girl in the body of a girl [...]

Hazel--who turns 13 on Friday, June 13, 1913--has led a privileged and extremely sheltered life at the Kensington School for Daughters of Gentlemen in London, but she loses her naivete over the course of this story. First is a woman who marches in front of the horses at the racetrack, allowing herself to be trampled to draw attention to her suffragist cause. Soon after, a rebellious schoolmate points out that their teacher is skipping words as they read Shakespeare, words like "womb" and "bosom" [...]

I think I've discovered a pattern in the Julie Hearn books that I've read: They are all easy to read, and they all develop rather slowly.I loved Ivy and was glad that she made a reappearance here, but she was the only part of this book that I really liked. Hazel herself was irritatingly naive, the plot moved as quickly as molasses in January, and the subplots just didn't feel as expertly executed as in Ms. Hearn's other novels. The first half of the book is all about the suffragette movement, ye [...]

Hazel is an enjoyable coming of age story that seems a bit fractured at first, but comes together wonderfully in the end.Hazel has two different sorts of adventures in two different parts of the world. In the beginning Hazel lives an incredibly sheltered life and is very naive. After unknowingly making a nemesis of Gloria Gilbert she begins the first half of her journey, which is based in London. This half of the book gets a little long, especially considering the protagonist has yet to learn an [...]

I might have liked Hazel or at least given it another star if it had a different title,(Why does every book with a main character with an interesting name have to use this name as a title?!)I didn't have to trudge through 200 pages of boring text punctuated by the aforementioned inspiration for the title making incredibly stupid mistake after stupid mistake(nobody's perfect, but seriously, I'm starting to think there's somthing wrong with her brain)before reaching the very short climax, if the i [...]

Forget the sweet part, this book was dull. And dissapointing. And weird. It's like there's this weird girl who lies to Hazel, and she's trying to get Heather (whoops, Hazel) in trouble like a child, but it's a lot of trouble? It doesn't even cover why the girl is against Hazel in the first place. It's just like she sees her and is like "Oh, I'm going to make her life miserable by pretending to make her life better." It was really weird. And the summary was completely decieveing. It talks about H [...]

This book didn't really stand out to me. Don't get me wrong, it's enjoyable but it really didn't hook me like 'Ivy' did.That said, there seemed to be something very authentic about it. Hazel's life in London, which wasn't the largest chunk of the book, was well described. On the island, there were some neat characters and interesting developments. There's this thing about a ghost or something which goes nowhere.I honestly didn't think it should have been a sequel. Ivy was only featured in it onc [...]

The sequel to Ivy (actually it's Ivy: the Next Generation) It's an interesting story set in 1913, just before the war and England is a fairly Victorian world. Hazel is in a small school for young ladies and she's being taught to be a wife, to expect that she should marry well. She knows little about her mother's past.Her world changes when a sufragette steps out in front of the King's horse, dying later from her injuries. Hazel's father had a lot of money riding on that horse and now things have [...]

Well, the historical representation was interesting the rest didn't really flow.For the first half, it's about sufragettes, and her obnoxious/evil friend. We think this will be useful, we hope that Gloria will return in the ending and be vital to the story, but nope. She never reappears.Around page two hundred, Hazel's sent to the Caribbean, and deals with slavery. I'd rather she was dealing with Pirates. See, pirates are awesome, and talk funny, and chug rum, and wear funny hats while debating [...]

This was a really good book. I cried near the end simply because I knew the book was going to end. It was the type of crying that is right for an ending and a new beginning, growth & change.This was a really complicated story. It followed the book "Ivy" by the same author, which I did not read because I didn't realize it was a series sort of thing. I can attest to "Hazel" being an excellent standalone volume. On the other hand, I definitely intend to read "Ivy" now and everything else by the [...]

As a student at the Kensington School for the Daughters of Gentlemen in 1913, Hazel Louise Mull-Dare has lived a privileged life - albeit a sheltered one. She experiences a state of shock at the Epsom Derby when a suffragette throws herself in front of the king's horse, and dies days later. When fellow student Gloria cooks up a way for some of the girls to become suffragettes and honor the memory of this woman, Hazel jumps at the chance without giving it a second thought. The plan backfires, and [...]

Hazel is intrigued by the suffragette movement in England after a woman throws herself in front of the king's racehorse and dies in protest of women being denied the right to vote. She and some girls from school decide to participate in the movement, but Hazel is tricked into being the fall guy and is arrested. Because Hazel obviously needs to learn proper behavior for a woman in order to marry up, she is shipped off to live with her father's parents in the Caribbean and learns about other disen [...]

I normally LOVE Hearn's work. I loved "Ivy," but found the sequel to be a bit lacking:1. Ivy--what the heck happened to her personality? Where did this spitfire GO between book 1 and book 2? You see a tiny flash of her at the endbut she's just not what she was. That was a disappointment to me2. I couldn't LOVE Hazel as a characterI know I was meant to. But something about her was just not all the way there. Hearn's heroines have always been delightful, but this one was just not up to snuffHoweve [...]

I enjoyed most of this book, but was so disappointed by the last line. The thing I liked most about the main character was her unfailing honesty. She was just such a nice, honest, clean girl - so innocent and naive at times but always trying to do what she thought was best. It greatly saddened me that the author chose to have the last line of the book be a lie, spoken by her.This book covered ground and went places that I really did not expect it to go, and for the most part I thought it was wel [...]

Great book set the past it's about a girl Hazel Loiuse Mull Dare she is young and she learns about suffragates and decides to be one with her bestfriend (so not!) Gloria Gilbert and a few other girls. So she does something and finds herself being shipped off to her Granparents in a tropical Island with her teacher which was really unexpected for her so her father wont find out what she did because he had a breakdown and tried to hang himself. She unravels a family mystery and finds out about a h [...]

meh, it was fine. Hazel wasn't as compelling to me as Ivy, and it seemed like the book was too short for the scope- either pick the slaves in the carribean or the problems with people who don't fit into a prim and proper education or the dad loosing all his money or any of the other plot lines there was just too much happening in this book for me, and i think it meant she couldn't really deal with any of it all that well. Also- one down, 99 to go! i don't know why i set a book challenge again th [...]

Hazel seems like an incredibly ignorant spoilt brat, particularly in the first half of the book, plus this seems like two separate stories: one about a gentleman's daughter living in 1913 London and learning about suffragettes, the other about a girl in a plantation learning about slavery. Hazel indeed seems more of a character study than a story and is somewhat anti-climatic. However, I did enjoy this book nonetheless.

Sweet but dull. This story has several interesting themes, but they all crash into each other with no real sense of purpose. The latter part of the book, in the Caribbean, is definitely more interesting than the first half that takes place in London. In several instances, just when the story gets to a good part, the author skips over it and tells about it as a past event, when it would be much more effective told in present tense.

I started this book on my cruise to the Caribbean, but just couldn't get into it. Once I did sit down and started reading it, I liked it. I do wish the author would have spent more time in the Caribbean, and less in England. Hazel's life on the island was much more exciting and a better story to me.

Surprised I actually finished it:I now read that this is historical teen/young adult fiction - so I guess I shouldn't be too harsh, but it certainly didn't feel like the research was done well and the storyline was weak. Language used was simplistic and I only kept going because I felt I ought to finish it. I have given up on too many books recently.