TLC Book Tours Book Review: Bee Summers

Author: Melanie Dugan
Title: Bee Summers
Publisher: Upstart Press
Publish Date: May 15, 2014
Buy: Amazon

Review Copy Provided By: TLC Book Tours

Book Blurb: 
The spring Melissa (Lissy) Singer is eleven years old her mother walks out of the house and never returns. That summer Lissy's father, a migratory beekeeper, takes her along with him on his travels. The trip and the people she meets change her life. Over the years that follow, Melissa tries to unlock the mystery of her mother’s disappearance and struggles to come to terms with her loss.

Review: Melanie Dugan's Bee Summers is a beautiful and sad read. It is a story of a girl, who has lost her mother and her father, a beekeeper.

I loved Melissa, as a young girl and was frustrated with her father, when he wasn't forthcoming about the reasons her mother left. In some ways, I also understood him. Both characters were so real. You could feel each one's pain and frustration, especially as life moved on.

I also loved the  people Lissy met as she traveled that first year with her father, Earl, Chance, Opal and Les. All of these people played a huge part in her life, as well as Aunt Hetty. (I wish we would have been told who she really was in relation to her father)

I felt Lissy's pain as she came home and went back to school and had to deal with the repercussions of her mother's leaving. I wanted to choke some of the kids and their parents.

I felt her pain when her father remarries several years later, but this is where I stop liking Lissy. As things about her mother are revealed, she becomes more selfish, in my opinion, especially when she goes off to school and has a book published.

Her treatment of her father made me want to shake her and by the end of the book, when most everything comes out, I just want to slap her and tell her, "I told you so." I also hated her treatment of Opal, who did her best by her from the very beginning.

Even though my feelings for the characters fluctuated throughout the book, I loved the story. It was full of emotion and a great summer read.

Rating: 5 flowers