Rating: 
Summary: I miss them!
Review: I loved this book! I couldn't put it down! Now that I'm done I miss the characters.
Rating:
Summary: Bee Happy
Review: This book "fed my soul"--it is certainly refreshing to read a book that just makes you feel good all over!! The writer is plain talking, writes with added humor and great sensitivity and with an easy to read straight forward approach. I personally feel that it's a book that would make a great gift to almost anyone---it's delightful! Everyone would "get it"...unlike other books that ramble on and are filled with "not needed" sex scenes. Leaving something to the imagination is wonderful!! (and I'm no prude! Sue Kidd needs to do more of this and soon!! It's the best read I've had in some time. Hat's off to the author!!
Rating: 
Summary: The Secret Life of Bees.
Review: I enjoyed this book immensely. It was a simple story
about several different subjects. Which were handled
in language of a young girl trying to find love. With
a little bit of religious faith. I really liked
Lily alot. I also liked the characters of the men in
the story.
Rating:
Summary: A Book for the Heart
Review: The Secret Life of Bees
By Sue Monk KiddLily Melissa Owens is a 14-year-old white girl growing up in a peach infested County. Her abusing father T. Ray turns all her love and doting against her by punishing and making her kneel on grits, mutilating her knee caps, for the smallest things. Lily snaps and runs away with her black housekeeper Rosaleen. The setting of the story is very much the South Carolina, known for its segregation and violent white policeman.
When, Lily runs away to Tiburon, SC, the mysterious location written on the back of the only photo of her deceased mother, she finds the love she wanted for so long from the least likely person. Lily dreams up a world of integrated and loving lifestyles between both black and white people when she realizes what love can be received when given. Her snuff spitting nanny (per say) is taken in by the lovely Boatwright family while Lily is only accepted by August Boatwright, the oldest of the three sisters. June, a husband-seeking woman, looses herself in the dead world she takes as her occupation (she plays the cello for deceased people). May, the youngest of the three, is known for her temper tantrums as she has difficulty in differentiating between her sorrows and others, the remedy of this mental problem is the Wailing Wall, located outside the Boatwright home where she writes down her thoughts and sticks them in the crevices of the sorrowful hedge that keeps May in high spirits.
The Secret Life of Bees, the title both pulled me towards the book and also made it more interesting. The Boatwright family is a group of beekeepers, who sell "Black Madonna" honey. The picture of the black Mary is one of the small souvenirs that Lily's mother left behind. This black Madonna pulls Lily to the home of the Boatwright starting the tale of tales. August teaches Lily how to work with the bees and live with them in harmony. Most people believe that bees are horrid, painful creatures but to the Boatwrights they are the beginning and generation of life, August helps Lily by changing her prospect of bees and life.
Although the Boatwright family doesn't believe the stories of a dead father and an aunt located in Alexandria, their love and giving towards the young girl and older black woman is definitely a life-changing event. This book is one of the best fiction books I have ever read; Kidd is a great a writer and I hope for other great novels to come. I totally believe that both teens and adults should read this novel, as it is exciting, sad and full of emotional roller coaster rides that make life as it is.
Rating: 
Summary: Cliched
Review: Haven't I read this book before? No? Well, then it just feels that way. The Secret Life of Bees is another Civil Rights era coming of age story. Here it tells of how a girl on the cusp of becoming a 'woman' is taken better care of, and is better nurtured, by black women than she is by her white father. It is a book that furthers stereotypes while purporting to expose them. It left me feeling disturbed -- and not in a good way.
Rating:
Summary: a touching story
Review: Very few writers have the talent to find a true 'voice' in their writing-- this is one of those books. Kidd's imagery of the rural south in the mid-sixties is so vivid, that at times I felt taken out of the subway and transplanted on the Boatwright sisters' property with the rare gift of being an observer in this young woman's coming of age story. But to chalk up this book in terms of such a cliche'd sencence seems unfair-- yes this book is a coming of age story, but it is so much more and my writing is insufficient to describe the feelings evoked while reading this book. It's a coming of age story about as much as it is a civil-rights story, or a story of love-- in many different ways. Kidd touches upon so many issues with a candor that is unusual in writers. Ultimately, however, this novel is about forgiveness and redemption-- and how a little unloved, motherless girl finds everything she's looking for on a small bee farm in Tiburon, South Carolina. I like to measure how engaging a book is by the number of stops I miss on my way home on the subway. I went six stops in the wrong direction before I looked up from this book. You won't want to put it down either.
Rating:
Summary: I could not stop listening
Review: This book was one of the best audiobooks I've listened to in a long time. The book made me laugh and made me cry. I recommend this book to everyone! I can't wait to listen to it again.
Rating:
Summary: I'm looking forward to more from Sue Monk Kidd.
Review: This first fiction book from Sue Monk Kidd is marvelous. She has the golden talent of wordsmithing that is too often missing from current fiction. I was delighted by her turn of phrase, picture painting, character development and tone setting. I am hoping her future efforts will show us a worthy successor to the other wonderful Southern women fiction writers. Here's hoping she has a few more as good as this.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much Lily, not enough of the bees and Rosaleen
Review: Kidd's novel is a bit stagy in that the bees of the title don't contribute much to the plot. At the beginning of the book, honey bees invade Lily Owens's bedroom. But when she tries to tell her father about them they disappear. Are they imaginary bees? Does this bode instability? No, because Lily traps some in a jar. Apparently the bees are supposed to be some sort of motif providing object lessons. The factoids we learn about bees from the epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter and elsewhere are quite interesting; for instance, on very hot days the bees fan each other with their wings within the hive.
Outside of the bees, I thought the most interesting character in the book was Rosaleen, Lily's black nanny. With black nannies there's always a danger of the Calpurnia syndrome, with the character sounding too much like the maid in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. There's no danger of that here, as Rosaleen is part wise woman, part child. She also chews snuff, and when some rednecks hassle her on the way to register for the vote, she expectorates on their shoes. Lily has to break her out of jail and the two run for their lives, winding up living with the Boatwright sisters, August, June, and May, who run a bee farm. This is 1964 South Carolina, right around the time the Civil Rights Act was passed, and since the sisters are black, Lily and Rosaleen encounter more bias and friction with the white element.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around Lily's search for her mother, who was killed during an argument with her father when Lily was only four. Her father lays the blame on Lily. Although she has plenty of reason to mope, Lily is a whiny character who spends page upon page upon page brooding over what a rotten portion fate has given her.
All and all there's too much Lily and not enough of the bees and Rosaleen.
Rating:
Summary: The Secret Life of Bees
Review: Very good book. Had a hard time putting it down.
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