First Quarter Outside Reading Book Review

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Penguin Books, 2003

Genre: Fiction

In the book The Secret Life of Bees the main character Lily Owens, a teenage girl, is growing up with her abusive father, T.Ray during 1964. Lily runs away from her South Carolina home with her house maid Rosaleen, and ends up in Tiburon, South Carolina. She goes to Tiburon to find out more about her mother and about her death that Lily caused. She ends up staying in a pink house with three colored, bee keeping sisters.

“Maybe it’s true that there are no perfect books, but I closed this one believing that I had found perfection.” –Book magazine

In The Secret Life of Bees Lily Owens has always been told that she murdered her mother. She remembers her mother going through the closet and kept telling her to hurry. Then her father came up the stairs with a gun and they started fighting. Her father, T.Ray, dropped the gun and she went for it the next thing that she remembered was an explosion. In this story Lily has only a few things from her mother. One unparticular is very important. A picture of a colored Virgin Mary that on the back says Tiburon, S.C..Lily has a house maid named Rosaleen and she got into some trouble and ended up in jail. That night Lily gets her out and they run away to Tiburon. They find the ladies that have the Black Madonna picture on their honey jar and they end up staying with them for a good amount of the summer. Lily gets to help bee keep and becomes really good at it. Through the book Lily has a strong feeling that her mother has been there and has her search for her. The author gives you a look into this topsy-turvy teenager’s world and really makes you feel like you are in the book. She makes you feel like you feel what Lily is feeling. I have never read this a book like this and this is just too good of a book to be compared.

“T.Ray sat in a chair and cleaned his nails with a pocketknife. I swayed from knee to knee , hoping for a second or two or relief, but the pain cut deep into my skin. I bit down on my lip, and it was then I felt the wooden picture of black Mary underneath my waistband. I felt the waxed paper with my mother’s picture inside and her gloves stuck to my belly, and it seemed all of a sudden like my mother was there, up against my body, like she was bits and pieces of insulation molded against my skin, helping me absorb all his meanness.” (pg. 24)

I really enjoyed this book. I think that it was good because a number of people can relate to or understand it. My mother recommended it to me and she said that she loves it too. I think that this is a perfect book for any adolescent and that the writing that she used was very good. In this book you were always waiting for more to happen. Kidd gave you more and more with every page you turned. I really enjoyed that it was about teen adventures because I always imagine things like that in my head doing crazy things like running away and almost everyone wishes that they could have a secret relative to find more about. This book was excellent and I would definitely read more by Sue Monk Kidd and I can’t wait to see the movie!!