Rating: 
Summary: A Great Critic's Pick
Review: Overall "The Secret Life of Bees" is a book that will find favor with avid readers of well crafted stories (to qualify this statement, I refer to "well crafted stories" to mean more commonly accepted "good books," critic's picks, and book club selections like "The Five People You Meet in Heaven", "The Amateur Marriage", "My Fractured Life", and "The Time Traveler's Wife.") This is not a Hollywood, high concept shoot 'em up. It is quaint. The civil rights era plot is right on target - interesting but not over blown. The accessible characters are easy to relate to and bond with. And, the dialogue is genuine and gratifying. I for one am certainly glad when I come across a piece of just good writing (interesting plot, interesting characters, periods at the ends of sentences), and "The Secret Life of Bees" fits that criteria splendidly.
Rating:
Summary: Richly Rewarding
Review: Secret Life of Bees is a richly rewarding books appropriate for most any age. Setting it apart from pure fiction, Secret Life of Bees blends certain life lessons of self-reliance, racial equality, and empowerment. The writing is flowered with beauty and meaning. In pure enjoyment, it holds its place with any contemporary novel in any genre - from The Five People You Meet in Heaven to The Time Traveler's Wife to Life of Pi to My Fractured Life. It is a pleasurable and fanciful literary delight.
Rating: 
Summary: Sickly Sweet
Review: Okay, I'm obviously in the minority here, but I found this book to be a huge disappointment (especially given all the hype surrounding it!)
The reasons I disliked The Secret Lives of Bees are probably the same reasons why so many readers loved it: 1) the characters were instantly recognizable as either good or evil (no confusing ambiguities here); 2) simplistic, easy-to-understand symbolism abounded (in my opinion, it was heavy-handed, but I suppose many readers don't mind that); 3) the author promotes a sugar-coated (sorry, make that honey-coated) brand of feminism that presumably makes some women want to shout "you go, girl!", without risking any real changes to the establishment; 4) the plot ends in a satisfyingly tidy and conventional triumph of good over evil, with no loose ends and again, no troubling moral ambiguities. (Why hasn't Hollywood latched onto this plot yet? I'm sure the rights to the feel-good movie of the year have already been sold to the highest bidder)
To the thousands of you who apparently loved this novel, I apologize. I'm probably just a cold-hearted cynic. And if all you want from a novel is a simple, entertaining read with a happy ending, then please run --don't walk-- to buy The Secret Life of Bees. Personally, I want more.
Rating:
Summary: I didn't want it to end!
Review: Superb writing, characters so captivating I wanted to join them in their daily life, their sorrow and their joyfulness. I have been reminded of the power of love and human kindness to heal, simple folks having the wisdom to let a child heal in her own way. I agree it has the staying power of To Kill A Mockingbird. I know the memory of Lily's finding home will stay with me always.
Rating: 
Summary: Judy Blume's Margarate Simon verses Lily Owens
Review: I laughed outloud and cried with Lily. I picked up this book only after hearing an interview with the author. I didn't read it until my sister, an avid classic novel reader, said she enjoyed it. The book was slow to captive, but hard to put down once the character's were clear. I fell in love with the character of Lily and admired the wisdom of August ("August chewed more than she bit off".). Lily was delightful. August is what every woman would like to be. Diana
Rating: 
Summary: What a wonderful rich story
Review: I thought the story was well done. The character background was fleshed out so well that I actually thought them to be real people. I thought the author caught the whole time frame very well. I highly recommend this book for a book club read.
Rating:
Summary: Superb story telling!
Review: Sue Monk Kidd has developed a cast of characters that invite you in. You become one with them and feel each of them intimatley. You get to know Lily the 14 year old struggling with the abuse of her father and the death of her mother, looking for some type of emotional relief.You are then are introduced to three beekeeping sisters who make you realize the beauty within yourself and within living. Truly an amazing novel that needs to be read!
Rating:
Summary: Who knew bees were so entertaining?
Review: This is a great read! Kidd manages to put the reader into a turbulent time (1964 SC), but pull you to the outskirts. The reader almost forgets how unusual the situation is (white girl living with African-American women in 1964 SC) because it just works. I feared the end, but walked away with a smile. I hear Hollywood is making the film. For once, I look forward to the movie version. If it's half as good as the book, it will be well worth the outrageous ticket price.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful debut
Review: Kidd's book is a lovely story set in the South of the sixties. Lily is a 14 year old girl caught in an unbearable life with an angry abusive father, and burdened with the guilt of having had a role in the death of her mother. T. Ray forces Lily to work on the peach farm, demands that she respond to his every whim, and isolates her from others her age. Her nanny Rosaleen's rash behavior in reaction to taunts by some whites lands Rosaleen and briefly Lily in jail, and Rosaleen's subsequent beating is the straw that breaks Lily's back.Believing that deep inside she is already a doomed criminal, Lily springs Rosaleen from the hospital and they head to Tiberon SC, the town scribbled on the back of one of the few of her mother's possessions Lily still has.
Lily and Rosaleen make their way to the home of August, May and June, three black sisters who become the real heroines of the story. They take Lily and Rosaleen in, and August teaches Lily the art of beekeeping; Lily in turn experiences what it's like to be loved for the first time. We know early on that the sisters have some connection to Lily's mother, and the suspense of waiting to find out what it is keeps the story moving. In the meantime we come to know a group of strong, eccentric Southern women, still struggling to escape from their chains a hundred years after the Civil War. Kidd gets inside the heart and mind of Lily and gives us a sensitive, delicate look at a 14 year old girl. We don't find out until the very end whether Lily and Rosaleen will evade the legal troubles they're in, what Lily's role really was in the death of her mother, and what connection the sisters had with Lily's mother. Several times I feared Kidd would veer in a soppy sentimental too-good-to-be-believable direction, but she avoids it. The ending is in some sense "happy," in some sense only realistic. I listened to the unabridged audio version of the book and I highly recommend it. The reader's voice was soft, girlish, and very definitely Southern, but at the same time she could give believable renditions of what Rosaleen and the others would have sounded like. It's a pleasure to see more and more unabridged readings of good contemporary literature coming to market.
Rating:
Summary: Another white hero
Review: This book is an idyllic model of white/black America. I don't understand why it is rated so high. In parts of the book it was so unbelievable, for example when Rosaleen spat on the white men's shoes or when the young black men threw a can at the group of older white men. Who would do that in the deep south in such a tumultuous time? I also feel disturbed that the focal point of the story is this innocent, white heroine. It is unsettling to me how many stories of that time focus on the white person: The Cider House Rules, The Power of One, The Secret Life of Bees. The book was somewhat entertaining to read, but very unbelievable.
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