Seventeen Against the Dealer

Dicey Tillerman is 21, and ready to start her own business... or so she thinks. The plan: make enough money on boat storage and repair to cover expenses, and then build dinghies to sell, and eventually larger sailboats. Unfortunately, things begin to go wrong almost immediately...

There’s a lot of stress in this book. In some ways, it’s even more stressful than Homecoming, because Dicey’s work separates her from her family, and they’re all better off when they are working things out together. Voigt does a great job with the characters, of course — Cisco, in particular, is a perfectly balanced mix, charming and offensive by turns. Though the earlier books will always be my favorites, I have a deeper appreciation for this one now show more than I did as a teen. show less

Better than the last few books in the series, but still nowhere near as good as the first three books. There was so much space wasted on unnecessary landscape descriptions, and the themes or "lessons" throughout seemed thin and stretched just to make a buck—I mean book out of them. The ending did not at all have the satisfying weight of finishing a seven-book series. What I liked most were the side character dynamics with Sammy, Maybeth, and Gram, though Sammy and Maybeth's subplots were introduced and then in Sammy's case unfinished and in Maybeth's case completely dropped.

3.5 stars. In some ways, this was a nice wrap-up to the Tillerman cycle. I was frustrated with some of Dicey's choices, but the warm family interactions that I've come to expect from Voight's storytelling were present through the book. A huge frustration was the appearance of the Cisco character, who I assumed from the beginning was Dicey's father. I still think he must have been, despite the fact that he stole from her and disappeared. I really wanted more from this storyline.

The last (waaah!) novel in the Tillerman cycle. Dicey's an adult, trying to run a business; James is at Yale and Sammy and Maybeth have various high-school struggles. This would not be a terribly remarkable book (although Dicey's business struggles are heart-rending) except for an INGENIOUS sub-plot so subtle that I would never ever have picked up on it if I hadn't been told about it. BRILLIANT. It changes an ordinary story into a -- wow, a brilliant one.

Dicey Tillerman is now 21 years old. After working minimum wage jobs for a long spell to save up enough money for her dream, she has opened "Tillerman's Boats," her own boatbuilding business.
If you have read the other books in the series, you will not be surprised that Dicey has two setbacks for every one step forward.
In the end, as is the case in the other books in this series, Dicey's problems are not all resolved, but she has learned lessons from them, and knows she can move forward with her life.
Most of the books in this series feel more like they are written for an adult audience than YA or teens, and this is no exception.

#1377 in our old book database. Rated: Good.
#321 for Adele. Rated: Good.