Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - The Secret Life of Bees

Reviews tagging 'Abandonment'

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

34 reviews

hannahes0423's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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ryleee's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

This book was an easy read. Nothing groundbreaking, but a pleasant experience nonetheless. I think I liked it because I felt like it wasn’t trying to do too much, or be pretentious. I enjoyed reading about the bees, and thought it was a novel concept to centre the story around. Some of my family members have bees, and it made me think of them.

I feel like some readers may think that Lily is written in an unrealistic way for a 14-year-old girl, and that may be true. Certainly in parts she displays a lot of maturity and insight that probably isn’t typical for a teenager, even one with her background. But I prefer young characters to be written in this way. I think it helps us as adults to go back and think about why we had a lot of those feelings as teenagers, and helps us to connect with younger characters. This is a fine line and even at some points in this book I found myself distracted by Lily’s self-reflection. For the book club - I feel like Lola and Lily are two sides of the same coin. Lola was extremely self-assured but lacked insight, whereas Lily spends a lot of the time feeling confused or wrong, but probably thinks a little too much about it. Both girls are discovering their identity and both of them are on the run!

I think the story did get lost/stuck in a few places. The third quarter of the book felt a bit stagnant, and there were a few little sub-plots that were good to read but I feel they could’ve been woven into the overall story a little better

(e.g. Zach getting arrested)

. Similarly, while I liked the story about Mary and the Daughters of Mary, I think it went on a little bit too long in that part of the book.

As for the ending, I do wish it was a little clearer why T Ray was the way he was. I suppose that the author wanted us to infer or project onto him, but as a character that I couldn’t really relate to, I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for him or just dislike him. But out of caution I think I’ll dislike him.

2001 seems like not that long ago but it was certainly a different time for literature! Despite potentially being historically accurate, I did find the slurs quite jarring, so thankfully there wasn’t too many. The themes of racism and segregation would probably be challenging for POC to read.

Overall, I thought this was a good read. I would recommend it to people looking for a good story, set in an interesting time and place, that isn’t overly existential or difficult to follow.

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