This final installment in the Penderwick saga ends with a wedding, another wedding, and a hint at future wedding possibilities. The Penderwick clan gather back where it all started at Arundell from far and wide, Skye flying in from California, the others driving in from closer points east, west, north, and south. Jeffery is coming from Germany to manage the music for the wedding, and Cagney and his wife live on the premises at Arundell as caretakers. So all the old crew is back for this last hoorah—as well as some new characters.

Ten year old Lydia Penderwick, in the Penderwick tradition of the first four books about this family, is both innocent and precocious at the same time. Lydia, who loves to dance and who almost likes everybody she meets (with only a few exceptions), is a joy and a delight as she dances through the chaos of wedding preparations and a new friendship with Cagney’s daughter, Alice. The girls encounter spiders, ghosts, and the fearsome Mrs. Tifton—all with the same courage and adventurous spirit that made the other Penderwick children so much fun to read about in the other books in the series.

I must say that there were a couple of jarring notes to the whole book, which is mostly a paean to love and marriage and and family and friendship. Lydia’s friend, Alice, has a brother who spends most of the book in Canada, visiting relatives. Alice, however, is jealous of her brother’s trip to Canada and spends a great deal of time texting him competitive photos and challenges as to who is having the best summer vacation. I guess it’s realistic, but not as much fun as the feisty but good-natured family teasing and joking and encouraging that goes on between the Penderwick siblings. Then, Skye’s and Jane’s attitudes about marriage are aired, and I just wanted to tell them to grow up. Skye insists that “marriage is an outmoded social contract,” but her actions seem to belie her words. And Jane says she’s too busy becoming a novelist to think about marriage or boyfriends, as if one precludes the other. It all feels so twenty-first century and so-so feminist and liberated and pretentious. In a book that’s celebrating marriage, it’s out of place.

However, those are minor false notes in a book that’s mostly a lovely finale to the Penderwick symphony. If you haven’t read the first four books in the series, I would suggest that you begin at the beginning. You’ll appreciate it more that way. And if you enjoy the first book, do read through to the end of The Penderwicks at Last.

The other Penderwick books:
The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
The Penderwicks on Gardam Street
The Penderwicks at Point Mouette
The Penderwicks in Spring

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This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.