Rating: 
Summary: Overrated
Review: If you like "Lifetime" television, you will love this book. It follows the basic formula of rich Princeton student falls for poor (but beautiful) southern girl. They get married. Her mother-in-law detests her, but Maude (poor little southern girl) survives. Of course her husband turns out to be a weak sap. Anyway, I had to read it for a book club that I am in. I was bored to tears. Yes, her descriptions of Maine were wonderful but you have to bear with these stereotypical characters to get to the good parts.Check it out at the library. It is not a book you will want to read twice.
Rating: 
Summary: The Southern Journey From Miss to Miss
Review: It has been many years since I have read Colony and it still resonates. Ms. Siddons illustrates well the tension between Yankee and Southerner played out between the misfit daughter-in-law and her matriarchal daughter-in-law at the family's Maine Cottage. It is a universal story, in some respects, the story of a reluctant Ruth. That it occurs in a natural utopia is almost beside the point. By the novel's end, we certainly realize it is the women who are responsible for carrying on tradition even if it is not one to which they were born.
Rating:
Summary: The Southern Journey From Miss to Miss
Review: It has been many years since I have read Colony and it still resonates. Ms. Siddons illustrates well the tension between Yankee and Southerner played out between the misfit daughter-in-law and her matriarchal daughter-in-law at the family's Maine Cottage. It is a universal story, in some respects, the story of a reluctant Ruth. That it occurs in a natural utopia is almost beside the point. By the novel's end, we certainly realize it is the women who are responsible for carrying on tradition even if it is not one to which they were born.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful--engrossing
Review: My grandmother lent me Colony to read, and after 6 months of looking at it on my shelf, I finally picked it up to read. I was hooked within the first few pages. It is similar to The Thorn Birds as far as the depth of the characters. I loved it--laughed and cried. It is happy and sad. All emotions are touched. A must read.
Rating:
Summary: Impressive character development
Review: Not since Meggie danced into my heart in THORN BIRDS have I so enjoyed a female character
Rating:
Summary: my review
Review: Once again, I felt completely absorbed in the characters portrayed in this novel. I like the way the author describes the characters, she always makes them so real, with real emotions and frustrations and feelings, be it hate or love or simple ignorance.Every single novel written by this author, carries something very different from the previous. In this case, the author combines a southern girl who marries into a very affluent New England family, and her struggles to feel included in it. Great plot and great description of places.
Rating:
Summary: The Jewel in Siddons¿ Crown.
Review: That is the way a friend described this book to me and I have to admit it is certainly a diamond among the stones. This is an author who takes you to the place that lies deep between the pages or soul of her book. The main character is reflective and strong with undiminished courage. Maude is one of the most memorable characters I have ever come across. The book begins as she arrives at Retreat, also know as The Colony, her in-law's summer home in Maine. A staunch and uppity "Blue Blood", the matriarch Mother Hannah, is not quick to take to a southern belle of the French persuasion. Maude with her husband Peter by her side, is going to show these Bostonians her strength for decades to come. The book covers nearly 70 years of her life along with the family and friends that grow close to her heart as well as yours. There are times where the author's language is shear poetry. I place this book on my best books of all times list. It's not one to be missed. Kelsana 10/29/01
Rating: 
Summary: Hated the husband
Review: The character of Peter Chambliss, the love of Maude's life, is one of the most unsympathetic lovers I've ever read. He is selfish and self-absorbed. He never should have had children - he provided little or no emotional or moral support to his children. When his family needed him, he abandoned them. When his father died, Peter went sailing, leaving a pregnant Maud alone. When his mother died, he left Maud and rejected his daughter. When his grandson died, he wanted to go sailing and leave his family to bury the child. When his daughter was in psychiatric counseling and needed him, he rejected and abandoned her. And the night of the party, when Maud really needed him, he bailed on her by driving over a cliff. I found myself feeling disgust for Maud, a strong woman, for not...telling him to grow up, be a man, and stop running away.
Rating:
Summary: One of her best!
Review: The main character of "Colony," Maude Gascoigne Chambliss, is one of the most beautiful I have ever encountered in a work of fiction. Her life-time love affair with her husband Peter, her trials with Mother Hannah, Peter's domineering mother, the tragedies and triumphs of her family over the decades, her growing obsession with the colony of Retreat in Maine, and her final relinquishment of Liberty, her home in Retreat, to her troubled granddaughter Darcy made a story that is impossible to forget. My husband and I read this book aloud to each other and it moved us both to tears and laughter. This will always be one of my favorite memories, for it became more than just a book in the reading of it.
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous! One of the best books I have ever read!
Review: This book has to be to date one of the best, if not the best, book I have ever read- it is so outstanding! It brings you through a woman's life and how she changes and creates change in the world around her. It makes you see through the eyes of someone else about aging and the things your mother tells you about life and disregard. You experience it through this woman! I cannot say enough how wonderful this book is- a definite keeper!
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