Book Review: Ya-Yas In Bloom

I wonder if Rebecca Wells is a Louisa May Alcott fan? One of the first Alcott stories I read was Rose in Bloom. (I confess--I have never read the complete version of Little Women.) The titles are just too similar.

Anyway...

Ya-Yas In Bloom is written as a series of vignettes, more like Ms. Wells' first book, Little Altars Everywhere. In fact, after I read Ya-Yas In Bloom, I re-read Little Altars. These two books add a little more background to the story found in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. But I was vaguely disappointed in this one--most of the stories were essentially re-tellings of stories from the earlier books. (I mean, how many times can we hear about how the Ya-Yas met?) It's not until the end, when the Petites Ya-Yas and their children, the Tres Petites, become the focus that I felt the story really began. Unfortunately, that's not until the second half of the book.

Oh, there is the story, told from Sidda's POV, about the family's trip to Houston to hear the Beatles play.

The tone of this book is quite as cruel as Little Altars, but it's also not quite as sympathetic as Divine Secrets. Necie, the most "normal" of the Ya-Yas, has a deep, dark secret; one she has never shared with her Ya-Ya sisters. But the secret is only hinted at, although much is made about how her husband, George, does not fit in.

This book is a quick read and the final chapter, where the Ya-Yas and Tres Petites put on a Christmas pageant is laugh-out-loud funny, but I'm glad I got this out of the library and didn't buy it.

On the March Hare Scale: 2 out of 5 Bookmarks