Rating: 
Summary: Read the Book, Hear the CD
Review: As joyful and inspiring as "Divine Secrets ..." is, so is the companion CD "GaGa For Ya Ya: Zydeco Madness." The CD has all of the cajun/zydeco spice of Buckwheat Zydeco, Terrence Simien, and others. It is in a special-edition type case that pays hommage to this great work by Rebecca Wells!
Rating:
Summary: A Great Piece...Funny, Real, and from the heart
Review: Rebecca West has an incredible command of language, situation(s), involving the reader in such a way, that the YA YAs become part of their lives...It's hard finding such a wonderful read!!! Congratulations, Rebecca!
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: An unbelievable read. This book hooked me right away and kept wanting more till the end. I, like others, did not want it to end. If you have ever had a real relationship with someone, friend, mother, whatever, this book gets into your soul. I don't usually recommend many books, but I do recommend this one!
Rating:
Summary: THE BEST BOOK I HAVE EVER READ IN MY LIFE!!!!
Review: This book gives you every thing you would ever expect in a book. You'll cry, you'll laugh and no matter where you are from or how your family relationships are or how closely knit you are with your friends, this will help to realize that there are people in your life that truely care for you and love you. God blessed Rebecca Wells with great talent and anyone who does not read this book is a fool. Friends come and go in your life, but there will always be the few you can count for anything and I hope everyone has friends as good as the ya-ya's. I believe that everyone should question life according to their friendships, those you know the most about you, love you the most.
Rating: 
Summary: This book was ridiculous!
Review: After hearing so much about this "fabulous" book, I decided to treat myself with a good dose of "female" fiction this summer, starting with The Divine . . . My god, what a struggle to get through it! I kept reading on hoping that at some point I would get it. I never did! I thought this book was trite and ridiculous. All of the Ya-Ya's were unattractive and contrived. The episodes in Vivi's life went from the ridulous to beyond incredible. Are we supposed to believe that any of these incidents are even remotely plausible? I found this lead character to be unappealing and distasteful - no sympathy vote from me - or admiration - or respect. I know it's called fiction, but really . . . I felt like the author kept mindlessly searching, after the fact, for a way to tie this altogether! I will not be passing on my copy of this book to a friend, I have already trashed it. What a major disappointment. It makes me wonder about all the Ya-Ya hoopla. These women should get a real life.
Rating:
Summary: A fabulous account of the intricacies of being female
Review: Rebecca Wells' novel Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is a wonderful account of what it means to be female. The Ya-Yas may drink too much, smoke, play cards and cause havoc in their small Louisiana town, but they are ladies in the true sense of the word. Wells takes us through the story of Sidda, her mother Vivi, and Vivi's best friends, the Ya-Yas. It is hilarious yet at the same time bittersweet as we learn why Vivi is the way she is. But most of all it is a celebration of mothers and daughters and those girlfriends that none of us can live without!
Rating:
Summary: Yucko-Yucho
Review: I found this book and its characters annoying. I am fascinated that this book about insecure, childish adults is so popular.
Rating: 
Summary: When's the movie coming out?
Review: If anyone has ever watched The Golden Girls and loved Blanche Devereaux you start to get an inkling of what this book is like. Blanche as an alcoholic mother (in a manner of speaking) but more complicated as her adult daughter tries to make sense of her life and move forward no longer chained to the past. A quick read with lots of humour, anger, depression, and joy.
Rating: 
Summary: Very contrived and convoluted.
Review: A book supposedly showing the strength and tenacity of Southern women. Hard to relate to characters who were psychotic, self-absorbed, indulgent alcoholics who beat their children. Maybe I don't appreciate the allure of the South because I'm a Yankee.
Rating:
Summary: I was surprised by this book
Review: Instead of loving the Ya-Yas, I was surprised by how much I disliked this book. Wells can get specific vignettes just right: a small-town contest that falls into disarray, or girls out on the sleeping-porch on a hot summer night, are wonderfully drawn. The framework for these vignettes is a problem, though: how can a person's, Vivi's, memories be invoked in her daughter when that daughter simply holds a memento from Vivi's scrapbook? Some divine or magical agency? ESP? Who knows? A loving group of women who help their friend's daughter understand her mother better by *telling* her stories would be more mundane, but also more credible and involving. That may be a problem that only I have with the book, but why spend leisure time on a character who is as completely toxic as Vivi? I recommend it if it rains on your vacation and it's the only book you've got.
|
