Review: Secret Keepers by Mindy Friddle

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press (April 28, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312537026
ISBN-13: 978-0312537029

Set in the small South Carolina town of Palmetto, we spend the summer with the Hanley family; Emma, 72 year old whose dream of a "Trip of a lifetime" has gone by the wayside with the recent unexpected death of her husband. Now she spends her days taking care of her schizophrenic son, Bobby, and helping her grandson, Kyle, in a mild deception. Emma gave up her longed for trip but fate may just have something even better in store for her.

Dora, Emma's daughter, is married to the overly controlling and religious Donny. Life is one constant financial struggle after another. Dora does her duty, both wifely and motherly, but looks back to her younger, more wilder days with nostalgia and pangs of regret.

When Jake Carey, Dora's first love, returns to Palmetto and starts his landscaping business, lives in Palmetto are turned upside down. The flowers he and his crew plant around town have the magical ability to bring back haunting memories to those who smell them. For Jake, it's the memories of Dora and lazy summer days. It may never be too late to find or reclaim love in the most unlikely places and when the characters least expect it.

Secret Keepers is a quiet story that just steals your heart. I was so taken with these characters right from the start. Southern atmosphere done to perfection with Friddle's beautiful writing:

"At Amaranth, precisely where Emma Hanley's grandfather once planted his beloved Animus mico in full view of an appalled audience of dour businessmen in the drawing room, tender green buds now clasped in folds, shy as virgins. Fronds unfurled like geisha's fans, flashing lacy pleasures."

These characters felt like friends I have known for a long time and their personalities will stay with me for quite a while. 4****

Disclosure: A review copy of the book was provided by Picador through LibraryThings early reviewer program.

Review: Roseflower Creek by Jackie Lee Miles

From the publisher: Thus begins the story of Lori Jean, whose short life and early death are woven into this worldly-wise novel set in the rural South of the 1950s. Told from the point of view of ten-year-old Lori Jean, a sensitive dreamer of a child who longs for a "normal" family, Roseflower Creek boldly explores the dynamics of a dysfunctional Southern family. Abandoned by her father when she was five years old, her world consists of a weak-willed mother and an alcoholic step-father who can't—or won't—keep a steady job. Yet Lori Jean is filled with the curiosity and hope common to all children.

After Lori Jean's step-father, Ray, begins attending AA meetings, he seems like a changed man, and Lori Jean begins to think that finally she and her mama are going to experience some long-overdo happiness—to be a real family and "git ourselves one of them futures, just like regular folks." But when Ray returns to his former ways and Lori Jean uncovers his secret, everything begins to spin out of control and she pays the ultimate price for what she knows.

My Thoughts:

I wanted to like this one a lot. Really, I did. Unfortunately, I found it slow going. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood for it even though I usually love southern lit or maybe it was the dialect the narrator used or the fact that none of the characters grabbed me or even the predictability of the plot. Granted it was a sad story, and the characters had pitiful lives but a lot of that was due to their own choices for which I had no sympathy.

Roseflower Creek is a short read, a litany of one tragic event after another, but at the end of it, all I felt was depressed. This is just how the book made me feel, please make your own judgements. One thing I did like is that Miles evoked the atmosphere of a small Georgia town quite well. 2**

Disclosure: A review copy of the book was provided by Sourcebooks, Inc.

Show Me 5 Saturday: Fireworks Over Toccoa by Jeffrey Stepakoff

Alipet at That's a novel idea started a new MEME called Show Me Five Saturday. Unfortunately, our host has been missing in action but Jenners puts up a Mr. Linky if you would like to play along. This meme will give each blogger an opportunity to give a brief description of a book they have read or reviewed during the week. It will work like this: Each Saturday you will post the answer to these questions.

1. Title of the book: Fireworks over Toccoa by Jeffrey Stepakoff
2. Words to describe the book: Southern romance
3. Characters you met or location:

• Lily Davis Woodward : twenty year old young woman who meets and falls in love at first sight with Jake. Although Lily's husband Paul has been fighting in WWII for three years and is due home in several days, Lily has no qualms about having a two day tempestuous affair with Jake. I found Lily to be a fanciful young woman with a bit of the rebel in her no matter how much she tried to kowtow to societal mores.
• Jake Russo: young Italian immigrant who is commissioned by the town of Toccoa to set up a fireworks display for the July 4th celebration. When Lily stops by to see his practice fireworks, he is immediately taken with her; so much in fact he writes the formula for a rare blue firework star that he names Stella di Lily. Even though Jake realizes Lily's husband Paul will be home soon, he pleads with Lily to leave Toccoa and Paul behind to follow him around the world setting up fireworks. One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the whole book involve Jake's flashback to seeing his father in an internment camp in Tennessee just because he was of Italian descent.
• Honey Davis: Lily's mother who keeps reminding Lily of her duty to Paul and to society. Honey is a formidable woman who rides roughshod over everyone else's opinions if they do not coincide with hers. She has definite ideas of what a woman's place is in 1945.

4. Things you liked/disliked about the book:

• I very much liked the southern setting of Georgia and the WWII time frame. Stepakoff really put me in the scene in the small town of Toccoa with his characters and their mannerisms.
• The relationship beween Lily, her granddaughter Colleen and her parents was very well executed. I could feel how close she was to her father and granddaughter and how she felt intimidated by her mother. Even though Colleen was a minor character it was easy to see that Lily had a good realtionship with her; probably one she wished she had had with her own mother.
• Descriptions of the time and the area were extremely well done. It was easy to feel the heat and humidity of the summer days.
• The torn feelings Lily experienced about her decision to leave Paul or stay and do what was expected from her; adherence to responsibility, duty and vows made. She swore she loved Jake. I'm not too sure I belive in life changing decisions of this magnitude based on a two day affair but Stepakoff does know how to write a tender love scene. I'm just not sure how believable it all is.

5. Stars or less for your rating: Due to some doubt on my part about Jake being her true soul mate I gave the book 3.5 stars as I did enjoy the story. The time frame, the setting, a lot of historical facts about fireworks and Georgia (who knew Georgia had a gold belt ?) and the descriptions probably contributed to most of the rating. Definitely worth a read for a debut novel. I would certainly read another one of Stepakoff's work.

Disclosure: An ARC of the book was provided by St. Martin's Press through Shelf Awareness.

Show Me 5 Saturday: Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

Alipet at That's a novel idea started a new MEME called Show Me Five Saturday. Unfortunately, our host has been missing in action but Jenners puts up a Mr. Linky if you would like to play along. This meme will give each blogger an opportunity to give a brief description of a book they have read or reviewed during the week. It will work like this: Each Saturday you will post the answer to these questions.

1. Title of the book you read: Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman.
2. Words that describe the book: Southern fiction
3. Location or characters you met:

• Aunt Tootie: CeeCee's great aunt Tallulah who rescues CeeCee from a neglectful father after the death of her psychotic mother. Aunt Tootie travels to Ohio to pick up CeeCee and take her back to Savannah to live with her permanently.
• Oletta: Aunt Tootie's faithful, long time housekeeper/cook who comes to love and care for CeeCee very much. She has a wealth of homespun wisdom which she shares with CeeCee when she needs it the most.
• CeeCee Honeycutt: 12 year old emotionally starved girl who goes to live with her great aunt Tootie in Savannah, Georgia. Under Aunt Tootie and Oletta's care and the influence of the next door neighbor Thelma Goodpepper, CeeCee not only blossoms but she manages to indulge in some hilarious capers.

4. Things you liked/disliked about the book:

• I loved the simpler, slower way of life in Savannah back in 1967. Makes me nostalgic for those years. *sigh*
• Absolutely adored the two next door neighbors as characters: Thelma Rae; a bit of a free spirit who likes bathing under the stars in her backyard tub and who detests the mean neighbor, Violene, who lives on the other side of Aunt Tootie.
• I really enjoyed the humorous incidents in the book, especially when Aunt Tootie gave CeeCee an instamatic camera and when Violene and Thelma had it out once and for all at the garden party. Laugh out loud moments!
• I would have liked to have seen CeeCee's new friendship with Dixie actually developed and not just mentioned.

5. Stars for your rating: 4 **** stars as I did enjoy the book for a debut novel. If you read this one and liked it, you might try Toni Teepell's A Truth Worth Tellin'.

Disclosure: this book is from my personal library.

Review: A Truth Worth Tellin' by Toni Teepell

In Toni Teepell's debut novel, A Truth Worth Tellin', the reader is introduced to Maggie: a child wise beyond her years and with resposibilities no pre- teen should have to have. Right from the start, I was drawn in by almost 12 year old Maggie's narration of her family coping with life in the '60's in the small town of Pearl, Louisiana.

Riding her bike to the store with her friend Sam, eating oatmeal cookies with the next door neighbor's housekeeper and visiting the library make up a lot of the summer activities. As Maggie a voracious reader tells us , the library consists of a couple of bookcases on Miss Annabelle Whitney's front porch.

Unfortunately, there are other matters that are paramount to Maggie's life. Maggie and her father have a lot to deal with as her mother is a schizophrenic and this makes for a difficult time growing up. The following passage, so poignantly written, seems to sum up the essence of Maggie's and her father's life.

"We do all our living when we have the well Mama. Monopoly games or cards take over most evenings. Some nights we lie in the backyard and look up at the stars. Once we played hide and seek in the house. Ran like we were out in the fields, laughing until our bellies hurt, tears rolling down our face. Her laugh is better than anything in the world."

Too often there is the reality of the sick Mama. Maggie tells other people if they ask about her mother simply that "she keeps busy". Although Maggie does not like to lie, sometimes as she tells God, the truth ain't worth tellin'. But through it all, Maggie loves her mother more than anything. It's the times the family deals with the sick Mama that will tear at your heart.

The book is not all sadness, there are so many moments of light heartedness and joy; even some humor is interjected as Maggie is consumed with things most eleven, almost twelve, years old girls are. Along with Maggie's family story, there is another plot line of Maggie's friend Sam and the story of her relationship with her single, alcoholic mother. Overall, another theme of unconditional love and faith so very well written.

If you are a fan of books that magically evoke images of another time and place and show you inside the characters' hearts, then this is the book for you. A Truth Worth Tellin' is an endearing and emotionally compelling read with likeable, believable characters that I found very difficult to put down. Southern charm at it's best. I'll be most anxious to read another of Toni's books. A very promising new writer! 4.5*****

Disclosure: A review copy of the book was provided by the author. Thank you so much, Toni!