haha, I feel vindicated for not finishing! :) And yeah, I liked Calculating Stars better, though I never did make it to the other books in the series.

Oh interesting -- the only McDonald I've read is (a long time ago) King of Morning, Queen of Day which in retrospect I was much too young to read at the time, but I liked it and (what's perhaps more impressive) it did stay with me. And the library has Hopeland! Excellent.