Rating: 
Summary: Fabulous, Dahlin'!
Review: What a divine and delicious way to spend a few days! I loved the elephant/Lawanda scene where Sidda finds a memory through a "lost" key. A nice balance of the horrible with the beautiful. This and "Little Altars" are sister books to Michael Lee West's "Crazy Ladies". The characters come to life in these books.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than average escape literature with great stories
Review: I am enjoying reading this book, mostly from the point of view of the daughter, Sidda. After reading "Little Altars" I am not crazy about the mother character, Vivi, but I suspend my dislike of her in order to find out, with Sidda, what made her click. I am most impressed with the author's writing ability. She is a great storyteller in the flashbacks, vignettes, etc. that make up most of the book. The way Ms. Wells moves so skillfully and effortlessly back and forth between past, present, recent past, etc., and between the two main characters, is awesome. As some other reviewers mentioned, I find the title silly-- this put me off from reading the book for a long time. I also find the character names rather ridiculous and a bit irritating-- why can't they have regular names, but then this may be a bit of the Louisiana culture that I am not familiar with. The good of this book far outweighs the bad.
Rating:
Summary: You get sucked into the Southern insanity of family .
Review: "...Secrets...." is a penetrating look into the insanity of the Southern family; where our family members thought to be "eccentric" are flaunted openly rather than hidden in the attic. This book makes me ache for the kind of love Vivi had with her lifelong friends and cringe at the cruelty she imposed on her children. One page I was Siddalee and the next Vivi. Then I would reread it the same pages and the roles would be reversed. The laughter and the agony in each page touched a chord in me every time I've read it. The love of the YaYas for each other and the support they gave made me downright jealous, and I could identify with Vivi when she felt all alone without the YaYas. I could relate to Sidda with each cruel word from her Mother and her desperation to gain approval and love. As a southern woman, I gloried in the courage each showed the world. An glorious read. And Vivi's remarks "Try good manners", is not just a quote from a book. It is a truth we all should practice.
Rating: 
Summary: Ya-ya, yadda yadda yadda
Review: What a crashing bore. Rule no. 1 in fiction: make your reader care about your characters. Who cares about a bunch of self-absorbed Southern alcoholic pampered useless women like these, who think they are just the cutest little things! Skinny-dipping, disrupting the school play - using the word "poot" - oh my, aren't they just so adorably naughty! Please. I've seen soap operas with more easily identifiable characters.
Rating:
Summary: Overblown, Overwritten, Overperfumed
Review: I was disappointed. This book was sloppily written. For example on page 45 Wells writes "It was midway into cocktail hour in the state of Louisiana when the portable phone rang at Pecan Grove." On page 47 she writes, "How could she have forgotten it was cocktail time in Louisiana?" On page 66 Teensy says she will gule a pair of her mother's false eyelashes onto the statue of the blessed virgin. In 1937? In rural Louisiana? I don't THINK so. There's too many errors to cite here.
Rating:
Summary: So glad I read it...
Review: Recommend to me before spending Thanksgiving week at Lake Quinalt Lodge, I was caught up in the book for several reasons. One, I was reading it block away from Sidda's retreat and two, I spent 15 days in New Orleans and visited many plantations this past summer. The relationships detailed in the book between a mother and her children and the friendship between the Ya-Yas was entertaining, thought provoking and simple put "enjoyable". I recommend it be read before Little Alters and read over time so as to enjoy the experience.
Rating:
Summary: Humorous, witty, and endlessly intriguing.
Review: This book interested me as few books in the past have. I love Rebecca Wells' sense of humor, and although some may find the personalities in this book to be a bit over-the-top, I certainly did not; I thoroughly understood the objectives of each of the characters, and related to them easily.
Rating: 
Summary: Ya, Ya, I liked this one!
Review: A refreshing look at making the most of life, set in the deep south. I felt myself unwinding and settling in the lives of the outgoing Ya Yas. Every family has their ugly secrets, but the Divine Secrets encourages forgiveness and renewal. Our book club is excited to chat about this one. We're going to cook up some spicy Gumbo Ya Ya, play cards and delve into Vivi and Sidda's past.
Rating:
Summary: Slow, boring, mean
Review: I did not enjoy this book. It was a slow boring read. Vivi is a mean selfish woman as is her daughter. I was really looking forward to reading this book. It was recommended by so many of my friends. I was extremely disappointed. I didn't care how the book ended and didn't even care to finish it, but I pushed through to the end. It never got better.
Rating:
Summary: Wretched excess, accent on wretched.
Review: "Divine Secrets..." is another example of how popular fiction has never been particularly good at knowing what kinds of characters to examine. The book's single biggest problem is not the awkward structure or the stilted, mannered and rather trite writing (although those do pose significant blocks for a reader). The book's problem is that it is about some of the most insufferably self-absorbed twits to ever grace the face of God's green acres. They are not funny, charming, entertaining, or even interesting in their pathologies. They are a pain, plain and simple. What's worse is that the book doesn't know any of that. The author of "Divine Secrets..." would love for you to believe that these women are just the dearest things around, when five minutes of sanity would show that they're unstable alcoholic wretches who don't have ten words worth repeating between them. Amid all the wallowing in headache-making Suth'rin dialect jokes and tortured plotting that wouldn't convince a Barbara Cartland reader, there is probably a good story about how noisy public self-destruction is often misinterpreted as "free-spiritedness". But the book isn't anywhere nearly that wise about or ironically distanced from its material. "Divine Secrets..." is worse than merely sentimental: it's emotionally untrue in the uniquely horrible way that only popular fictions can be.
|
