Rating: 
Summary: self vs. self
Review: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells was a successful book because Wells really expanded on the character's internal conflicts. Vivi beat her kids because she had problems. She was raised in an environment where her mother hated her and her father beat her mother for hating her. She was an alcoholic and when she was young the only man that she was in love with, died in the war. She didn't like her husband very much. She was fighting herself inside, because of her childhood. She had three children. The oldest, Siddalee, remembered most of this abuse and accidentally told a reporter about it.
Sidda was fighting herself because the reporter put false words into her mouth and made it seem like she had a completely horrible childhood. She grew up thinking that her mother despised her. The reason why Vivi treated her children so bad was because of the medication that she was taking at the time. Sidda remembered that her mother used to always leave and not come back for a few days. This was because she realized that she hurt her children and didn't want to do it anymore. Vivi's friends took Sidda up to a cabin and showed her a scrapbook that they had made of growing up together. This book explained a lot of bad things that happened in Sidda's childhood. She then went to her mother and apologized for everything and told her that she didn't ruin her life.
Wells has a unique way of having her characters overcome their fights against themselves. She is very good at explaining the self versus self conflicts with very much detail and explanations.
Rating: 
Summary: Amen, sisters!
Review: Finally another great book about women! I cried and laughed and cried and laughed all the way through!. A ferocious look at how Motherhood can be the most challenging, demanding and oneself annihilating job on earth and how NOTHING prepares a young girl for it.....I agree with Vivi when she wonders why they never show the Virgin Mary changing diapers but always smiling angelically!....a wonderful intrusion in the world of women's friendship and its importance to keep one's sanity. I am sure every Mrs. Proper has a "ya-ya" story to tell, so "a bas les masques" and make us laugh!!
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Summary: Excellent book about relationships!
Review: This book will pack an emotional punch and make you re-evaluate those parent/child relationships that you may have severed or estranged. This book digs into the characters' past and experiences to explain how they affect their relationships with their families.At first, you may make choices of whom you believe to be the good persona nd the bad person ubtil you read about the troubled childhood of the characters. The book isn't sappy by working on sympathy. It's almost true to life, especially to those who have experienced abuse or loss. Along with drama, there is also a lot of humor in the stories told. You'll laugh, you'll cry. You won't regret reading this book. Read and find out the Divine Secrets!
Rating:
Summary: better than expected!
Review: This book is not the sort of thing I normally read, but many people said the movie was more enjoyable for those who had read the book. I normally steer away from mass-market paperbacks, particularly if they've been converted to movies. I saw so many people reading this in public that I picked up my own copy at the supermarket. The story picks up quickly, and I have always been a lover of a) stories about women b) stories about The South and c) mother/daughter stories. This book covers all three, a mother-adult daughter relationship framing vignettes of the lives of four women - the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. That the book reads so easily is not a flaw. When a well-formed novel is written so clearly that anyone can understand it, it deserves to be a mass-market success. The author excels in the telling of the details, as well as characterization. Each character has her own voice, and by the end, you know each woman so well you could pick her out of a lineup. Indeed, sisterhood was present in this book. Each woman, distinctively portrayed, contributes to a warm friendship that is the envy of this Yankee. The Divine Secrets of these women’s lives reveal a rebellion against society, as well as a submission to, that makes for a fascinating read. A certain level of suspense keeps this from being a book of distinct stories, as you want to learn what events caused Vivi and her daughter Sidda to be estranged. The author slowly adds to the reader's knowledge, slipping in bits and pieces. At the end, you have heard both sides of the story in full. The book finishes with a valuable lesson about letting go of past hurts.
Rating: 
Summary: The power of true friendship = YaYa!
Review: Vivi and Siddalee Walker have endured a rocky mother-daughter relationship. The final straw in their relationship is when Vivi denounces Sidda in an an explosive blowout stemming from a New York Times interview Sidda gave which portrayed her mother as a "tap-dancing child abuser,". To escape the hurt and anger, Sidda retreats to a cabin in the woods to think about her life, her upcoming wedding, her own shortcomings and to come to terms with her and her mother's somewhat dysfunctional relationship. At the cabin, Sidda receives and pours over a scrapbook, "The Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood". The YaYas are a group of four women, including Sidda's mother Vivi, who have been the closest of friends since childhood. Through the scrapbook Sidda unlocks some of the questions and mysteries of her mother's past and learns how to forgive, forget and love again. The scrapbook is filled with the hilarious adventures of the YaYas including their Shirley Temple look-alike contest and their arrest for skinny dipping in the town water tower. The scrapbook is also filled with heart warming and heart wrenching stories and memories of the women's past. Rebecca Wells novel is full of Southern flavor and dialect, and the power of an unstoppable group of crazy, wild, zestful women, the YaYas.
Rating: 
Summary: boring, bad book
Review: I found this book boring, very badly written, full of annoying characters and ridden with cliches. I stopped reading it a bit past the first half; I couldn't bear to finish it, and this has happened only four or five times in my whole life. Save your money and your time.
Rating:
Summary: Keeps you laughing ...
Review: I haven't seen the movie, but the book is great. Once I started, I couldn't put it down. I became more and more intrigued with the characters, and wanted to know what would happen next before I put the book down! A light, funny, and touching read.
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Summary: What a wonderful audiocassette.
Review: I listened to this in 2 days driving to and from work, I would really take my time driving home too! It was a wonderful audiocassette and I will listen to Little Alters Everywhere, I will also read the books. Rebecca Wells really captured the essence and personalities of all her characters, they were magnificant. Don't miss you, grab them, listen to them, you will be so glad you did.
Rating:
Summary: Not So Devine Secrets
Review: Not So Devine Secrets
Adriane Vosmik
This book is about the relationship between a mother and her daughter. Sidda, the daughter, is trying to find out why her mother is the way she is and why she has don the things she did. Her mother, Vivi, is mad at Sidda for saying bad things about her in an interview. Vivi's lifelong friends decide to show Sidda the scrapbook they have kept so she can see why her mom is a nut ball and what really happened during Sidda's childhood.
I really liked this book. It didn't really have a hidden meaning like some books and there wasn't a psychologically changing book. It was very well written. It makes you laugh at things like getting arrested for skinny-dipping in the water tower and cry for an abusive drunk mother. It makes us wonder about a mother daughter relationship like Vivi and Sidda's. An overall good book.
Rating:
Summary: Less Sidda - More Vivi
Review: I always find myself attracted to novels that weave through generations, digging up colorful stories of the characters' pasts - allowing the reader to see them at different stages, thus making their present stage more understandable. Thus, when Divine Secrets took this route, I found it to be an engaging novel, leaving me almost breathless in some scenes, opening up tear ducts in others. The lives of Vivi and the YaYas takes shape immediately - luring us in, keeping us close as we move from page to page. We want to stay close to them. However, I felt my heart sink when each of those chapters concluded and we were back on over-contemplative Sidda, dissecting her life to the point that it brings nothing to the reader but complete and utter boredom. I understand there is a certain amount of introspective discovery that needs to happen in characters, but Sidda's two weeks of solitude and self-discovery felt like years. I was beginning to wonder how Wells could actually justify Sidda's fiance maintaining any kind of interest in her - as much as she analyzed, she still came out a very flat character. Vivi, on the other hand - shines through the book just as she shone in her life within the book - completely fascinating to the reader as we watch her through her highest and lowest points. If Wells had taken 3/4 of the pages she spent on Sidda playing Nancy Drew with the album, drinking tea, and staring at the moon and instead offered that space to Vivi and/or the YaYas, then she would have herself a much more compelling and readable novel. What occured in Sidda's head over the course of 80-something pages could have easily been shrunk down to a chapter or two - instead, the reader has to drudge through it with her, making the book far less of a delight to read than it would have been otherwise.
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