Secret Life of Bees #100books

I’ve had lots of support from book companies and publicists for my 100 books challenge, but this book comes from a different source. This one was sent over by a fellow blogger, Liz from Me and My Shadow. I’m really grateful for her help – as well as sending these books, (yes, there are more), she put me in touch with Top That! publishing, who also sent some books over (reviews to come very soon).

And now to the bees.

Once again, I’d been slightly taken in by the title. The book does mention bees – they are fairly central in some ways – but the plot is much more involved and centres around America around the time of the Civil Rights Act. The lead character is a 14 year old white girl and she ends up running away from home with her black housekeeper. Obviously there’s rather more to the whole thing than just that, but I don’t want to blow the plot for anyone. I will say that there is rather more incidental death than makes for a particularly light read – the main character is trying to understand precisely how her own mother died when she was only 4, and that’s not the only grim moment.

But overall, it’s not a sad book. I wouldn’t call it uplifting, but I did enjoy it, and I rather think that it’s a book that would benefit from repeated reads as I think there are lots of layers to the story. One to revisit over time.

Book 14 of 100.

The boring small print…If you don’t want to miss out on any of the news on the challenge, please sign up to my rss feed – there’s an email link over in the side, or you can sub with a reader. I’m also on twitter using the hashtag #100books and facebook.

If you want to donate, please feel free, there’s a link in the sidebar or you can use this one. If you’d like to join in with your own version of the challenge, please leave me a comment to let me know so that I can link to you. And also, the booklink above is an affiliate link, but it’s set up with its own tracking id, so anything bought via a 100 book challenge link is separate to those usually on my blog, and I’ll be donating that money through to Oxfam as well.