Customer Reviews

How Dolly Parton Saved My Life: A Novel of the Jelly Jar Sisterhood

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Incredibly hilarious! this book is full of old southern charm and witty as can be without mocking southerners. i lived many of these episodes or similar ones anyway. In fact, it reminds me of many of my relatives! It's humerous with a little bit of romance thrown in. Go get 'em girl!!

This was a very enjoyable book about four high-spirited women in the south who get together to create a catering company. While each of the women have very distinct personalities from each other, they were all very relatable and you get to know about their families, their relationship, and their lives. All of them make sacrifices to make the business work and it's fun to see the "rules" they come up with as a business model in order to do so. While there are some references to religion and church, none of it is over the top or preachy and the importance these women place on family is endearing and refreshing in this day and age. Overall, it's a fun read and you'll come away thinking you never knew Dolly Parton was so wise.

I have yet to find anyone else who is as amazed as I am that there is a Dolly Parton song for my every heartache and triumph. No matter the situation, Dolly has been there already and wrote a song about it: new lust that might be love, humiliation by a lover, or beating back the blues. So, I adored the character who quotes Dolly likes she's Dali Lama.

Other than the Dolly-adoration, I'm not sure I can recommend this book to a non-Dollyite. It has a limited audience: southern christian women trying to balance work and family. Nevertheless, if you are in that boat, HDPSML is cheaper than therapy, wine or chocolate.

I'm not from the South, but loved this book. It is full of fun people, and has real heart. I saw a little bit of myself in each of the four main characters, and the family relationships would resonate with anyone. Not to mention it gave me new appreciation for the wisdom of Dolly! I'm sure you will enjoy it, too ...

Entertainment Weekly and Southern Living OL both gave this new ChickLit an excellent review.Funny and poignant.The Jelly Jar Sisters are true Southern girls caught up in Cosmopolitan Atlanta leading to lots conflict and fun. I loved the scene at Christmas with the call to Santa. Was a great read. The Jelly Jar Sisterhood Rules were the best! I spent a wonderful day curled up with a light hearted fun book. You'll love it!

I took this book with me on my summer vacation and absolutely loved it! With a single mom, two married ladies and a single gal, How Dolly Parton Saved My Life has a character everyone can relate to. Definitely pick up this book and throw it in your beach bag!

Just add my name to Erica's post, because I agree with everything she said. What a waste of time and money.

I started this book last night, but honestly, the dialogue in the book was so bad I really couldn't read further than page 50 or so. I may have not given it much of a chance, but i didn't think i could read much further given how much I was already rolling my eyes...

I just read this book (How Dolly Parton Saved My Life: A Novel of the Jelly Jar Sisters by Charlotte Connors) and it was absolute poop.

The worst part was when one character who's trying to have a baby took a pregnancy test. It was negative. Then she went out to dinner with her husband and decided she'd "seduce him because according to her charting, she was ovulating that day."

Seriously?!? There are so many things wrong with that that I don't even know where to begin. For one thing, if you're ovulating that day, it's probably too late. Make with the baby dance a day or two before, so that the little spermies have time to get there and be waiting for the egg to pop out. Spermies can live for up to seven days; eggs live maybe 48 hours if you're lucky. Better to have the sperm lying in wait for the egg to release, assuming you're really charting properly and really know when you're ovulating.

And if you're ovulating that day according to your charts, why on earth are you taking a pregnancy test?!? If your period is two weeks late, then you're probably not going to ovulate that day and your charts would say so. If your chart is right and you're ovulating that day, then you're not pregnant.

At first I thought I must have mis-read. It must have said somewhere, "and a few days later" or "the next week" or something to signify time passing between a pregnancy test and ovulation, but no. No. This book really said that. Not surprisingly, neither character gets pregnant in the course of this book.

I don't know if this is the sign of a bad author or a worse editor, but I'm gonna be fair and blame both.

This is not to mention that the rest of the book was pretty bad, also. Two of the characters are nearly identical and it was really hard to tell them apart in their stories. There were several inconsistencies (a Caucasian woman was enaged to an African-American man, both living in the deep South, and race was never mentioned as an issue between the couple, which I frankly find hard to believe; the women set up a new business, despite none of them knowing how to run this business; their business goes from no clients to being frenetically busy overnight and yet they're still making no money; it's a catering business and only one woman knows how to cook, so what are the others doing to earn their salaries?) that any decent editor should have fixed. Or, you know, just not published in the first place.