My own thoughts...

I liked  this book because yes, it is about love and sisterhood (which truly is a great way to start our book club). One of my favorite parts was at the end when August tells Lily that the only purpose grand enough for a human life is "Not just to love - but to persist in love." That's so true. August was definitely my favorite character in the entire book. She was just so knowledgable, understanding, patient, thoughtful and striving for good. I liked that.

 I also liked the comparisons of the characters lives to bees and honey... interesting and clever.

 It was an interesting book regarding the Civil Rights movement as well. It is fasciniating to our generation that people treated each other with such contempt over a different skin tone and didn't think anything of it. I liked the part in the book where Lily mentions the world would be a better place if we didn't have skin tones at all. It would be nice if people everywhere and all the time could see people for who they are on the inside instead of what they look like on the outside.

However, the whole way through the book I found myself just wanting something to happen. It was all so discouraging and sad. I think it was a little slow. I didn't get into it like I normally do a book and found myself not truly enjoying the story line. I know stories can't always have those fairy-tale endings... but this book just seemed so depressing to me the whole way through...death, abuse, unjust accusations, suicide, abandonment, hurt. I guess it was kind of a story about overcoming now that I think about it. Yet, at the end of the story I found myself thinking, "they will still have so many hardhsips coming."

Also I thought that some of the descriptions were perfectly beautiful, while some of them I just thought, "what's going on here? What has this got to do with anything?" (For example when Lily and Rosaleen bathed in the river.) I really didn't think we needed so many in depth descriptions about their bosoms and thighs ect. I also did not like the swearing. I know it's the characters voice and it helps set a mood for the story and it gives us more of a feel for the character but I thought it was a little too much. She could have written those types of words once or twice in the book and it would have been vivid enough for me. There were a few pages where it seemed it was every sentence or paragraph.

All in all it was good. It's fun to think about and discuss things after reading. It makes a book so much more meaningful. I've realized I have a lot more thoughts about this book than I knew I had.

Happy Reading!