Rating: 
Summary: Honey for the soul
Review: If you liked Kaye Gibbon's "Ellen Foster" then Lily Owens will capture your heart. When her father, T. Ray, punished her by making her kneel on grits, I immediately knew that she was a survivor and he was a coward. May, June, and August Boatwright, the beekeeping sisters, and their Black Madonna honey were exquisite. May's tortured soul taught me about empathy gone awry. Sue Monk Kidd's strong southern storytelling skills are reminiscent of Reynolds Price and Harper Lee. In this her first novel, the writing isn't perfect but it tugged at my heart the way Barbara Kingsolver's "Pigs in Heaven" did. The characters, the time period and the small town setting made it similar to "To Kill a Mockingbird." This novel should be read by parents and teens together. I hope Kidd plans a sequel. I care so much about the characters that I yearn to know about their future lives.
Rating: 
Summary: YA reading disguised as an adult book
Review: This book is really a young adult novel which is being peddled as adult fare. And it follows the same tired formula that we've all read a thousand times. The main character is an outsider, unpopular, shunned by the popular crowd. She is very smart, in fact, smarter than most adults. She observes everyone around her with a sense of dry humor. And she wants to be a writer. Now, how many stories have followed this plotline?And Kidd doesn't seem to know where to take it. Her rendition of race relations in 1964 South Carolina is a jumbled mess of views--and not very realiztic in most cases. Imagine any black woman with an ounce of sense spitting snuff on the shoes on the 3 worst racists in town. Come on, Sue, what were you thinking? We also have the same tired plot lines of the lost mother, the abandoned child, the mean Southern father--and of course, there has to be the interracial relationship. And amazing at how all of the plot lines are neatly tied up at the end. Kidd has real writing talent, and perhaps she should concentrate on writing young adult fiction. Or non-fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Just How Hard DO African Americans Have to Work?
Review: I found this book to be repugnant on so many levels it's difficult for me to begin. Giving new meaning to the term "magical Negro" the book follows the misdadventures of a motherless white girl as she meanders through the deep south of the 60's. She is rescued from her personal history of a depressed mom and abusive dad by the most stereotypical African American women this side of Gone with the Wind. I guess cleaning houses, getting denied decent jobs and dealing with virulent racism isn't enough of a challenge for these women in Kidd's eyes. They get to work overtime to harbor a teenage white girl as she searches for her "inner mother". This book left me wishing that MY inner mother had spoken up soon enough to save me a wasted $12.95.
Rating:
Summary: Flu inspired reading ¿ but pretty cool!
Review: My sister and I have very different tastes in books. While I was visiting her for vacation, I got home bound with the flu for a few days and was going crazy trying to find something I liked in her collection of books. The two books that I found that I actually enjoyed were "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd and "My Fractured Life" by Rikki Lee Travolta. You don't have to be a girl to like these books. They're pretty cool.
Rating:
Summary: Filled with Emotional Breath
Review: Touching? Elegant? Inspirational? Enlightening? Any one of these words could be used to describe "Secret Life of Bees" and yet none of them alone would do it justice. It is a uniquely touching story that takes you on a journey. Like "My Fractured Life" and "Time Traveler's Wife" there is a perfectly executed emotional journey in the words of the story. The author allows us to feel for and with the characters. She breaths an emotional life into the story. The result is stunning.
Rating: 
Summary: A Taste of Honey For The Eyes That Touches The Heart
Review: Actually 3.5 stars Author Sue Monk Kidd delivers a slower pace but enjoyable novel about a young girl Lily Owns who is driven to reconcile the past with a mother she never knew who died under very mysterious circumstances. Escaping a horrific life from her father, T. Ray and with her maid and only mother figure, Rosaleen. Lily and Rosaleen arrive at the Boatwright Sisters (Africian-American sisters who are named by the months of the calendar) May, June, and August. Lily and Rosaleen settle in and set up a home at the Boatwright's Pink House, they learn about the nurturing power of women through the spiritual moving lessons regarding the Black Madonna (also a symbol on the Boatwright Sister's honey jars) and a obviously a little bee keeping in the process as Lilly slowly reconciles her mother's past and sudden mysterious death as ( which the Boatwright sisters hold a key to her past) and welcomes a friendships with a young African-American man, Zach.
Set against a racial tense backdrop of the south (Tiburon, SC?), after the runaway success of "The Da Vinci Code" is it really any surprise that finally readers are acknowledging and celebrating the Divine Feminine ideals? "The Secret Life of Bees" may slowly plod along in spots but the sweetness of it lingers on the tongue long after the last page is turned.
Rating:
Summary: Expected More
Review: This book was okay, but it's NOT great writing as the reviews on the first few pages suggest -- it is, very simply, brain candy. Take it to the beach. If you want a Southern, teenage voice in a work that is truly LITERATURE, read Sheri Joseph's "Bear Me Safely Over" or Heather Sellers' "Georgia Under Water." It's a shame this book has gotten the readership it has, really, when there are so many better, more complex books out there on the same subject.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written, but too feminist for me!
Review: Passages of this novel are simply poetic in their beauty. It was a joy to allow the imagery and personality of the prose to wash over and sink in as I read. The story is interesting and involving, even for a middle-aged male like I am. However, why do so many female writers seem to feel it necessary to create such unbalanced stories? There's not a single positive adult male in the book. Yes, there are minor male characters--the lawyer, June's boyfriend--but such minor personalities cannot compete with the hateful T. Ray and the racists in both towns. Meanwhile, all the women are flawless in their character. So June is hesitant about accepting two more into her household, she eventually comes around. I wish a talented writer such as Ms Kidd obviously is would turn those talents to presenting more balanced views of the world.
Rating:
Summary: What a great surprise
Review: This book was chosen as our book club book this month. I didn't think it sounded real good from the back cover description, but I couldn't put it down. I laughed and cried as I read this book. I could see this 14 year old girl as she did these things, learned about herself and her mother, and fell in love for the first time. It was a true surprise to me.
Rating: 
Summary: Simply written, nice book
Review: All the hype about this book made me go to the library to find this book and devour it, and I must say the first 150 pages were quite enjoyable. It is the story about a southern girl who supposedly accidentally shot her mother when she was four years old, and she must live with her mean father T. Ray. She calls him T. Ray because he was never much of a father to her, making her kneel on grits as a punishment. Rosaleen is a black housekeeper who is basically the girl's second mother. She knows that Rosaleen loves her even though she has a tough shell around her warmness inside. Rosaleen brings the girl to town one day when she goes to register to vote and spits snuff juice on the three most infamous racists in town, ending up beat up and in jail. The girl gets her out of jail and bring along some of her belongings to run away, including a picture of the Black Madonna plastered onto wood and a photo of her mother. They meet the calander girls, whose label looks exactly like the black madonna. The girl assumes that the calander girls (called so because they are named May, June, and August) must have known her mother. The book drags a bit in the middle and towards the end, so I took away one star. It's not a bad book- it just isn't as good as I thought it would be. Many of the occurences in the books are not possible and the characters are flat and stereotypical. Worth a read if you are out on the beach and want to read something that won't take much thinking (that's not a BAD thing!).
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