Book Review: Queen Bee Of Mimosa Branch

Author: Haywood Smith
Title: Queen Be Of Mimosa Branch
Publisher: St. Martins Press
Publish Date:  Oct 13, 2003
Buy: Amazon
Book Blurb: Linwood Breedlove Scott's life has officially hit rock bottom. Her husband of thirty years has run off with a stripper. The IRS has taken everything but her coffee table. And her hot flashes are four-alarmers. The only thing that could make being flat-broke and fifty any worse is having to crawl home to her parents' house in Mimosa Branch, Georgia...which is exactly where she's headed.

Lin's barely prepared for the loony bin that greets her, from her controlling, eighty-year-old mother and shockingly blunt father to her long-suffering Aunt Glory and her deranged Uncle Bedford who is convinced a cannibal lives under the furniture. Nor is she ready for the instant love-hate attraction she feels for her handsome new next-door neighbor. Trying to navigate her way through the second act of her life with nothing more than a prepaid calling card, a broken heart, and plenty of Prozac, Lin's about to discover that it's never too late for old friends, new romance, the ties of family, and a second chance to survive it all on the road to becoming the person you were always meant to be...

Review: When I started reading this book, I wasn't sure I was going to like it. Lin annoyed me quite a bit. That changed as the book went on and you got to know her and her quirky family.

You may read the book blurb and think this is a romance novel, but it isn't. Its older chicklit, women's fiction, if you will. It deals with life, love and the most important thing, friendship.

When I read these kinds of books I usually find myself thinking two things.

1.  Why do I not have friends like this?
2.  How do you lose everything, get a low paying job and still manage to pay bills?

Then I tell myself, this is fiction, and in fiction, all things are possible...If I wanted reality, I wouldn't be reading a book!

This story was really Lin's journey into finding the self she never got to be, because she married at 19. It is also a journey to acceptance. I particularly loved that she had good relationships with her mother and brother by the end of the story.

I'm so sick of heroines hating their moms.

There were a few things that bugged me about the book. When she met Grant and they were arguing about a cat, and she said to use a B.B. gun to scare the kitten out of the yard.

OMG!

Seriously, Ms. Smith, what the hell were you thinking when you wrote that? That seriously pissed me off. It is something I won't forget about the book. Animal abuse is wrong, and even if it is written in a comic sense, it is still wrong!

Still, even though that part made me mad, I found myself laughing throughout the rest of the book. It is definitely a good read!

Rating: 4 flowers (would have been 5 if not for that B.B. gun thing)