Book Review: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Sue Monk Kidd's 2002 best seller, "The Secret Life of Bees," is a tale of 14 year-old Lily Owens and her search for her late mother's past.  After fleeing from her abusive father aside Rosaleen, her family's maid, she serendipitously stumbles upon the home of May, June and August - three black sisters who manufacture honey in South Carolina.  Lots of strong female characters, lots of racial tension, and a little bit of southern Civil Rights Act-era American history.

This book was almost a mixture between The Help (which I swear I've reviewed but can't seem to find my write up right now)  and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  Thankfully more of the former, as we all know I can't say enough about how much I disliked Guernsey.  The Secret Life of Bees was sprinkled with slightly-too-silly moments that rang of the Guernsey characters' giggly traditions and ceremonies- very red hat society and devoid of meaning and creativity.  But aside from some silly hats and a few weird chain gang reenactments, Kidd's themes were sincere and her story was a quick, lighthearted summer trip to the land of honey and cotton. 

I'll leave you with Lily's first taste of love as a young girl:

"The whole time we worked, I marveled at how mixed up people got when it came to love.  I myself, for instance.  It seemed like I was now thinking of Zach forty minutes out of every hour, Zach, who was an impossibility.  That's what I told myself five hundred times:  impossibility.  I can tell you this much:  the word is a great big log thrown on the fires of love."*

*Now to be honest I'm not sure what "fires of love" are aflame at the ripe age of 14...