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Summary: This southern woman wants to be a ya-ya too!
Review: I've never read a story so heartbreaking and hilarious at the same time. I don't think you have to be a southerner to find humor in the book, but I do think you have to be a southerner to truly appreciate all the southern humor that Wells incorporates into the novel. I look forward to future ya-ya stories.
Rating:
Summary: I wanna be a ya-ya!
Review: This book was fantastic. I have decided I would make a perfect Ya-Ya, as I'm sure many others have felt while reading it. The characters were superbly written, and I loved the flashback scenes - I felt I was right in the moment. A wonderful story about friendship, mothers and daughters, life and love, and women. I have passed this book on to many friends who have loved it as well, Dahlin.
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Summary: Divine Secrets is truly a Divine Experience--Ya Ya
Review: Not since She Flew the Coop and Virgin Suicides has a book moved me to a new surreal and spiritual realm! From the vivacious Vivi to the soul-searching Sidda, these characters are not to go unnoticed. Grab a Bloody Mary, some rosary beads and indulge in some Divineness!
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Summary: A Wonderful Counterpart to Little Altars
Review: After reading Little Altars Everywhere, I was a bit reluctant to read this book. The first book, while very good, was depressing. This book not only changed my feeling on the first book, but also left me feeling incredibly exhilerated.
Rating:
Summary: Immensely enjoyable - colorful, emotional & pleasurable!
Review: I could hear the charachters' voices in this book. I listenend to their conversations and viewed their lives in person! Rebecca Wells has a gift for colorful description and character development. "Divine Secrets" left me uplifted and content, and prompted me to purchase "Little Altars Everywhere" immediately!
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Summary: absolutely divine!!!!!
Review: Divine Secrets is the latest selection of my newspaper's book club, and it is wonderful. The characters are unforgettable, the language beautiful, and all in all a great read. It's for anyone that loves a good love story, a friendship story, a mother-daughter story, a southern story, anyone who likes a good story!
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Summary: Don't Stop With Wells--Read On!
Review: If you like the ya-ya's,which is so-so, you will LOVE these wonderful Louisiana authors:
Michael Lee West--SHE FLEW THE COOP: A NOVEL CONCERNING LIFE, DEATH, SEX, AND RECIPES
John Dufresne--LOUISIANA POWER AND LIGHT
Shelia Bosworth--ALMOST INNOCENT
Rating:
Summary: An OK read, but not life-changing
Review: I am a member of a mother/daughter book club and, based on the reviews, thought this would be the perfect book for our club. I am sorry to say it wasn't. I keep reading it with the hope that the characters (and themes) would converge into a cohesive whole, and it never did. The author's use of flashbacks made the unfoldling of the story very forced, and kept me distanced from the characters. I was unable to identify with either the mother or the daughter, because the author herself was unable to make a decision as to who's story was being told. I applaud her effort at trying to show how a mother's past struggles can lend valuable knowledge to her daughter's present struggles, but overall this was not an effective device. The incidents in the present merely provide a framework for which to string together tales of the mother's past, and did not clearly show how knowledge of the mother's history provided the daughter with a clearer understanding of why her mother is the way she is. Additionally, I was not impressed with the depiction of the dysfunctional Southern family that is common in family melodramas. This book included all the stock characters found in such tales, but did not portray them as vividly as other novels about eccentric Southern families
Rating:
Summary: Southern women are a breed apart.
Review: Southern women understand a great deal about relationships." The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" says a lot about Southern women and about all mother-daughter relationships. Women everywhere can relate - with envy - to the Sisterhood, and women everywhere can relate to the conflicted heroine Siddalee as she struggles to establish herself as a 40- something 90's woman and comes to understand that who she is depends on where she came from. Unlike the males in some feminist writings, the men in this book are portrayed affectionately and realistically. This is a book which even speed-readers will read twice. Ms. Wells knows and loves the characters she portrays and they will remain in the reader's mind long after the book is done. She tells her story with candor, with great love and with humor. We should all be so lucky as to have friends like the Sisterhood! We should all be so lucky as to have a woman like Vivi -warts and all - as our mother. Ms. Wells' style - in spite of the somewhat irritating flashbacks - brings her characters to life. In the South, as in England, eccentricity is not just tolerated, it is celebrated.Vivi is too colorful for her small-town setting and she, as a child of her time, is unable to escape it. Her daughter Siddalee escapes, but finds herself drawn towards her roots - as we all are, whether we deny it or not. This novel has something to say to all overachieving daughters who are alienated from their mothers and to all women who hated the small towns they grew up in- even if those towns weren't Southern. It alternates between laugh-out-loud funny and reach-for-the-Kleenex truth. A book to recommend and pass on to one's female friends!
Rating:
Summary: Simply superb!
Review: I read this book and knew I wanted to be a Ya-Ya!
Not only did I want to be one of them, I wanted to know them all, and thanks to the author's spectacular characterizations, I felt like I did.
It is a book that should be read by every mother, and every daughter because I think that each would find a familiar voice somewhere in the text. I could not put it down, and once I finished, I wanted to go back and read it again.
You will laugh and you will cry at this lovely taste of the south and what it means to love biological family or family of choice. It's a beautiful statement of the value of lasting friendships and of forgiveness. Now pass the
pecan tarts.
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