Rating: 
Summary: What are you gonna do with Miss Julia?
Review: She's the product of a "sheltered" life in a small Southern town, for 44 years the childless wife of a parsimonious upright banker named Wesley Lloyd - who dies suddenly leaving her the surprised heir to millions. Then she gets a jolt on her doorstep: the old boy left a mistress and a ten year old son.
I liked this book though there were times I wanted to smack the uptight old broad upside the head. But every time, she would turn around and show me her warm heart, fiery spirit, and sense of fair play. Except for a very strange passage where her avaricious Presbyterian preacher conspired with a sleazy "Christian psychologist" to frame her as a nymphomaniac, there were some hysterically funny scenes in this book as Miss Julia journeyed out of her complacency into self-knowledge and power.
There are some wonderful villains in this book, most of them being "men of the cloth." As between Miss Julia's own ordained minister, and Hazel Marie's slimy self-proclaimed televangelist uncle, the evil and greed are evenly distributed. Then there are the town and church gossips.
I enjoyed this book and am reading the sequels. Far as I can figure, Miss Julia is somewhere in her 60's as this book begins, but she seems an awfully "old" person for that age. I didn't know you could still buy Red Cross lace-up ladies' oxfords, much less that anybody under the age of 89 would actually wear them these days - but she says she does. And it's hard to believe anybody could live in middle class small town USA and get to the late 1990's, without ever having written a check - but Miss Julia says that's how her life was until old Wesley Lloyd died on her like that.
So here's what I'll do with Miss Julia. I'll swing between wanting to smack the old girl upside the head when she gets just too prissy to stand, and wanting to hug her when she admits to having been second-best to the men in her life (father and then husband), or when she stands right up to the avaricious hypocritical men (mostly preachers) in her life who want to steamroll over her and grab her money, or when her heart goes out to little Lloyd, her late husband's out-of-wedlock son, and little Lloyd's sweet-natured mother Hazel Marie (left by old Wesley Lloyd without a red cent), or when she warms up to Sam Murdoch, her good friend who's quietly carrying a torch for her.
Rating:
Summary: Try it, You'll Like it
Review: At least most southern women will like this book. I laughed till I cried reading it. Ann Ross has her finger on the pulse of southern living, and it shows.
Southern fiction has a new queen. Ms. Ross has us pegged, and it surely translates well in her novels!!
Rating: 
Summary: A Truly Educational Read
Review: When --light fiction-- makes me sit back and evaluate my own actions, what I myself believe, why I believe those things, what I have been taught by church, parents, spouse, etc., all my life, then that book just moved into the --life-changing-- category. I am clueless as to if that is what the author intended when she wrote the novel, but that is what happened in my case. All you hide-bound traditionalists out there, take a look at this one. It should make you sit up and question your own lists of personal taboos.
Plus, I laughed a lot!
Rating: 
Summary: MISS JULIA? NOT QUITE.
Review: A tad disappointing, this audio book doesn't quite capture the Miss Julia many have come to know and love. Yes, she is a prim and proper southern lady of a certain age, but she also has a backbone of steel. Authority doesn't register for this listener. Peripheral characters appear rather vague, a bit as if the reader is feeling her way through this story rather than in command of it.
Rating:
Summary: What a great book should be
Review: This book has a somewhat entertaining plot but very little literary value. Miss Julia's character is wildly inconsistent throughout. It seemed, for instance, that the author could not decide if Julia knew that her pastor was a creep or not. On one page she knew that clearly, on the next she was starting over at the bottom of that learning curve. The scene in which she is accused of being a nymphomaniac is unbelievable and just plain weird. It seemed like a really bad "I Love Lucy" episode where people that you have seen to be smart and of good judgement did really odd, stupid things. The resulting situations required more unwieldy events to get back to a reasonable, and predictable, ending. On the other hand, the overall plot provided enough interest to ensure that I finished the novel. It is easy, mostly positive reading for times when you need pure, low stress escape. I don't have much interest in the sequels, but I can concede that Miss Julia may have a place in the world of light reading.
Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining!
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Interesting and realistic characters, solid story line, happy ending. I've recommended it to several people who have enjoyed it as well. I just found out that there are three other "Miss Julia" books out in the world. Can't wait to read them!
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