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Book Review of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (Ya Yas, Bk 2)

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (Ya Yas, Bk 2)
reviewed on + 255 more book reviews


Reading group guide (and recipes) available at ya-ya.com. The 2002 movie starred Sandra Bullock. Ellen Burstyn, Fionnula Flanagan, James Garner, Ashley Judd, Shirley Knight, and Maggie Smith.

From Library Journal
When a reporter uses upcoming theatrical director Siddalee Walker's description of her mother, Vivi, as a "tap-dancing child abuser," Vivi casts her daughter out of her life. Sidda, feeling unloved and unlovable, postpones her wedding and retreats to Washington State's Olympic Peninsula to try to understand why she cannot sustain emotional relationships. Vivi's three lifelong friends (known collectively as the "Ya-Yas") persuade her to send Sidda the scrapbook filled with mementos of Vivi's life in the small Central Louisiana town where she grew up, married, and raised her family. Paging through the scrapbook, Sidda begins to glimpse the dark shadows in her mother's life. The narrative deftly switches between first- and third-person viewpoints, from Vivi's past as revealed in the scrapbook to Sidda's childhood guilt about failing her mother. Wells (Little Altars Everywhere) demonstrates that with knowledge can come forgiveness. She has written an entertaining and engrossing novel filled with humor and heartbreak. Readers will envy Vivi her Ya-Ya "sisters" and Sidda her lover, who is one of the most appealing men to be found in recent mainstream fiction. This entirely satisfactory novel belongs in public libraries of all sizes.