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Summary: Throw away characters in a throw away book
Review: Clearly written in the hopes that Hollywood would pick this up. Its full of fantastic, larger-than-life characters. Of maybe soemthing Lifetime Television (for Women, you know) would dramatize.
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Summary: Loved It! Loved It! Loved It!
Review: This was the best book I've read in years! I'm recommending it to everyone I know. It'll make you laugh out-loud. It'll bring tears too. I want to be a Ya-Ya when I grow up! Read it and give it to your best friend.
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Summary: Spectacular Study AND Story
Review: If you really want to know about the complicated, but rewarding, nature of women, read this and believe every word. The Ya-Yas and their petites (children) are honest and fascinating. These women made me grateful for my mother, grateful for the girlfriends I am blessed with, and gave me a longing to be more connected to even more women in my life. Our husbands might not get it, but we will.
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Summary: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Review: I found this book simply wonderful; very humorous and honest. I enjoyed reading about the Ya-Ya's and found their outlook on life very refreshing. This book made me examine my own relationship with friends from both the past and present and also my own relationship with my mother and sister. It was also comforting to read a book that did not fall victim of the sins of the modern world - I find it difficult to find books that do not reek of sexual indiscretions, foul language and dishonesty. I have recommended this book to several others.I am now beginning "Little Altars Everywhere" - I am hoping that Rebecca Wells hits her mark with this book as well.
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Summary: I need more ya-yas!
Review: I got sucked right into the ya ya world and when it was over I missed all of the characters for weeks. It was like withdrawls. I highly recommend this book and Little Altars Everywhere. I find the world of the Ya Ya's so real in that they have hardships and problems just like the rest of us but it still seems like a magical place.
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Summary: Run away
Review: This is one of the few books that I haven't finished. I couldn't go beyond page 90 because I found it extremely dull and annoying by the superficiality of the lives of the characters. The insipid characters weren't making me care about them or the story line. Or wait, there wasn't a plot up to where I left it. Just remembering the past full of too ideal childhood memories of the ya-yas and the daughter Sidda sugar coating the neglect of the ya-yas towards the petit ya-yas. Perhaps I just couldn't get into the lives of women who just seem bent on having fun and doing absolutely nothing worthwhile with their lives. I wish I didn't sound so harsh but I have to vent when I pick up a book expecting it to be good and couldn't even finish it. I don't like leaving books unread. I have given it one more star than I wanted to because it could have gotten better if I had given it more of a chance.
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Summary: Still makes me smile!
Review: I loved listening to this book on tape...such a hoot! I dont know who read it but she was superb! I plan to barrel through any stories of the Ya-Ya's I can find.
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Summary: The Joys, Sorrows and Hardships and Families and Friendships
Review: By peering into the hearts of a mother and daughter and their complex relationship in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells' tells a story that will touch and change a reader's life forever. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood captures its readers deserved attention from the start. Humorous stories about four "southern belles" growing from young girls to women of their sixties in Louisiana will entice people throughout the novel. The excellent character building, social significance and heartfelt story in Divine Secrets has readers in hysterical laughter and tears throughout the entire novel. Wells, being a native of Louisiana, reveals her southern characters in an amazing way. The plot and settings of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood was constructed so well, due to it's beautifully intertwined settings of past and present. Which helps depict the characters personalities by introducing them at all ages. The interesting showings of the past and present also help tell Rebecca Wells' theme and meaning of life. Due to Wells' interesting expression of purpose on Earth from the view point of family and friends, social significance plays an important role in this novel. Little Altars Everywhere, Rebecca Wells' sister novel to Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood also tells of The Walker Family, and their struggles with alcohol and abuse, along with their strong bonds of love for one another. Each reader will come away from this novel with a different way of relating these stories of amazing characters to their relationships with family and friends. Different loves for characters and meanings of this book will come about from every readers mind but a strong relation will always be present. The readers shall always find themselves so closely bonded to the stories of the Ya-Yas. At one point Wells disclosed, " I was once doing a reading in Texas when someone asked, in a very aggressive sort of way, 'Are you Siddalee and is your mother Vivi?' Before I had to answer, another woman stood up and said, 'No, I'm Sidda and my mother is Vivi." This shows the connection every reader feels between the characters and the stories in this novel. Throughout The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, a felling of love holds the reader. Love for the characters, learning of them from Wells' amazing characterizations. And also a love for the lessons of life and joys brought from one novel. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood holds the laughs, sorrow and hardships of all families and friendships.
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Summary: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Review: A fabulous book about a grown woman, Sidalee Walker, and the lessons she learns while thinking about the most important people in her life. Born and raised in Louisiana, Sidalee(called Sidda) was raised by her mother Vivi, with two other siblings: Shep and Lulu. The book talks about how Sidda was raised and her up bringings in a sociable Louisiana small town. Aside from being brought up by her part alcoholic/abusive mother Vivi, Sidda was also raised by her mothers three closest friends. Together, Vivi and her soul mates comprised together to form a strong bond of friendship known as the Ya-Ya sisterhood. These four women Vivi, Teensy, Necie, and Caro grew up alongside each other in Louisiana and have stayed that way, even while now they are grown/older adults. In reading this book the reader discovers what it means to be a mother, daughter, and wife, and the importance of love. In the novel, Sidda has strained relations with her mother which is why Sidda is not compelled to marry future husband Connor yet. She feels as if she needs to understand her mother and get her approval before she spends the rest of her life with this man. Sidda goes to Washington state for a while to retreat and be by herself and think her life over and try to patch up the torn relations that she has with her mother. Most of the book is based on looking on the past..to a scrapbook about the lives of the Ya-Yas and the influence that they had on Sidalee Walker when she was growing up. The Ya-Yas have been with each other in thick and thin, and that kind of support is exactly what Sidda needs right now.. and she is not getting it from the person she needs it from the most..her mother. The Ya-Yas and the scrapbook of their lives help to patch the strained relations between Sidda and her mother. The sense of closeness that the Ya-Ya sisterhood display is a positive aspect of the book. Rebecca Wells writes with such description and with a funny charm that keeps the reader interested and involved. When reading this novel, the reader feels like they are a part of the Ya-Ya family in small town Louisiana. You can almost taste Vivi's brandy during her daily cocktail hour and hear the distinct laughs of the Ya-Yas in the distance. You can hear the crickets in the bayou at sunset and feel the warm summer heat. To read this novel is to escape into a fantasy with the Ya-Yas with exciting twists and turns that keep the reader wanting to continue. The reader relates to the novel because it brings back memories of childhood and silly things that kids do. There is not a dull moment within Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood; once you feel as if you are about to cry, you start to laugh. You follow the emotions along with Sidda and the other characters and you feel her pain of short time rejection from her mother. You get a sense of how the only way that these girls carry on through thick and thin is through the love that they have with one another. You want to be like the Ya-Yas. But during those summers, my mother was a goddess of the creek bank with her girlfriends. Some days I worshipped her at her feet. Some days I would have split her wide open just to get the attention she gave to the Ya-Yas. Some days I wished Caro, Necie and Teensy dead. Other days, from their spots on the picnic blankets, Mama and her buddies were the pillars that held up the heavens. (Wells,. 42) This book is absolutely wonderful. However, one minus to the book would have to be the fact that there isn't much mentioned about Sidda's siblings. It is obvious that they played an important role in Siddas adolescence, yet we don't hear about them very much. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is a book that any reader is able to enjoy. Rebecca Wells writes with such passion, and through that passion of her writing,reminds people of the importance of love through the bond of the Ya-Yas. Lessons about life are displayed through humor, wit, sensitivity, and sadness. This is a definite must to read.
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Summary: Long live the South!
Review: I loved this book on many levels. First, it was absolutely refreshing to pick up a book and know that sometimes you CAN tell a book by its cover! How much clearer could Ms. Wells have made it, than two of the Ya Ya's playing leap frog? As a mother and a daughter, I could relate to all the emotions, good and bad. Apparently, so could my daughter since she's the one who gave me the book, insisting I had to read it. When I asked her why she said it reminded her of me with two of my friends when she was a little girl (no, I did not beat her and no, I do not have a drinking problem- she was referring to the silly pranks the Ya's Ya's pulled.)I don't condone Vivi's beatings of her children, but nevertheless, I loved her character. She was quixotic, full of life, sometimes desperately sad, loyal to a fault, a pillar of iron, gracious, angry, and oh so human. I didn't want this book to end.
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