Customer Reviews

Miss Julia Takes Over

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really enjoyed the first book, Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind, so I was looking forward to reading this one. Ann Ross has hit the nail on the head again with a great follow-up. In this story, Hazel Marie and Little Lloyd have moved in with Miss Julia, and they have formed quite the family unit...much to the chagrin of the community and the church. The story has much of the same hijinks as the first one...Pastor Ledbetter trying to get Miss Julia's money for the building fund, Brother Vern trying to get hold of Lloyd and his inheritance, and gossip, gossip, gossip.

This story sends Miss Julia off on a search for Hazel Marie when she's been kidnapped by the crooked church fund raiser hired to make more money for the building fund. She hires a private investigator and demands to be part of the search. Mr. Pickens, the PI, can't stand to have her and Little Lloyd with him, but of course it makes for hilarious situations...one after the other.

Ann Ross has a way with words, and she's just as sharp with her tongue in this book. I just can't describe how hilarious she is. Miss Julia is a hit!

Obviously a sequel, this book should have just been called Miss Julia II. And I find that it lacks the charm and the "AHA!" moments of the earlier book, when Miss Julia was figuring it all out and learning to do things her way. This story was really more a Miss Julia meets the Keystone Cops kind of foolishness, and really found nothing especially interesting this round. The new family unit of Miss Julia, Hazel Marie & Little Lloyd is interesting, but descended into slapstick this go round. If you just loved the first Miss Julia, and really need another fix, go for it. But otherwise, I'd recommend waiting for the paperback.

This second book in the Miss Julia series is an amusing,quick read.Miss Julia is a fairly recent widow,who is quietly glorying in the freedoms that widowhood has brought. In defiance of her stuffy neighbours in a small Southern town, she has refused to be bullied into handing over the control of her quite substantial fortune to the elders of her church and also horrifed them by taking in her late husbands mistress,Hazel Marie and her son, Little Lloyd.Under her care, they have both blossomed and the three of them have formed a close family unit. When Hazel Marie's scheming uncle plots to have Little Lloyd given into his care,the better to gain control of the childs inheritance, Hazel Marie is kidnapped,forcing Miss Julia to hire a private detective to find her.It does tend to become a touch farcical at this point with plots littered with crooked racing car drivers,shonky church fund raisers and Miss Julia driving around a Nascar circuit and out- driving the professionals.I didn't think that this book was as good as the first,but hopefully, M/S Ross will be back to form with book 3.

There are enough other reviews here so that I certainly don't need to spend time summarizing the plot. I will just say that I was a little disappointed with this book. I read the first Miss Julia and enjoyed it quite a bit. Although there were a few improbable incidents in the first book, I thought that in general the author did a good job of fleshing out her characters (at least the main ones) and moving the plot along quickly. In this book, however, I found the emphasis to be on action, action, and more action, with very little attention paid to developing the characters. And yet with all that action, things actually seemed to move along rather slowly. There were so many times when the characters seemed to spend an endless amount of time talking about how worried they were and what they should do, without actually doing anything! And at some points, the action seemed slapstick and overly dramatic. There is a scene where many of the characters are gathered in Miss Julia's house and someone knocks on the door. You would think from everyone's reaction to that knock that a dinosaur from Jurassic Park was about to enter the room. There were many similar parts of the book which just seemed overdone and tiresomely melodramatic to me. I thought I was going to enjoy this series more than Jan Karon's Mitford series because initially I preferred Ms. Ross's writing style, but I'm now thinking that the quieter, more realistic, less frenetic pace of the Mitford novels appeals to me more.

As I read this second book about the misadventures of the widowed Miss Julia, I kept trying to think what it reminded me of, and finally it came to mind: Laurel and Hardy in one widow lady. There's slapstick aplenty and also jeopardy. Oh, Miss Julia is beset by troubles gallore and lots of naive grit to overcome them.

Little Lloyd's mother is missing, along with the fund raiser hired by Miss Julia's church. Two ministers are apparently in cahoots to snatch Little Lloyd to get his inheritance. And Miss Julia chases all over North and South Carolina's half-acre to try to put matters aright. She even ends up on a NASCAR race track, in winter, chased by bad guys in a Winnebago. But read it for yourself.

There is delightful humor in the plot and naive observations about auto racing, Wal-Mart, and a great many other topics to engage the reader. The characters are varied and self-contradicting, just the way I like them. The setting is good. The dialogue is first rate. I can't imagine how anyone could point to a specific fault. Deep literature? Nah. Not by a long shot. Just pure entertainment.

Miss Julia is as delightful a heroine as you can imagine. Prim, proper, and Presbyterian, she has an opinion about everything and does her best to oversee the sometimes unacceptable behavior of those around her. To her friends, though, she is as loyal as can be, as evidenced by her frantic search for her housemate, Hazel Marie, in this second book of the series. Hazel Marie is on a date with a church fundraiser and fails to show up back at their house. She manages to make quick, frantic phone calls to Miss Julia which fail to give adequate information as to where she is, and just deepen the perky Presbyterian's concern. Miss Julia decides to hire a private investigator, J.D. Pickens, and she joins him in searching for Hazel Marie. Throw in a race-car driver, an elusive lucky charm, and the crooked evangelist, Uncle Vern, and you get some idea of the kind of wacky story this is. It's all in good fun, and is recommended reading.

Miss Julia, a Steel Magnolia, "of a certain age" finds herself enmeshed in another predicament that will test her faith and her spirit.

After Hazel Marie Puckett, who lives with her young son "Little Lloyd" & Miss Julia (read the boook MISS JULIA SPEAKS HER MIND to find out how that all came about, being that Hazel Marie is Julia's deceased husband's mistress & "Little Lloyd" is the offsring of that laison) does not return from a date, Miss Julia becomes alarmed, to say the least.

Hazel Marie seems to always fall in with the wrong kind of man & it looks as if she may have done that again. Although Hazel's date is with one Wilson T. Hodge, a professional church fund raiser, Miss Julia doesn't trust him. As she says, "nobody can be that uptight and pious without trouble going on underneath"!

Julia's concern for Hazel Marie heightens after Lillian, the housekeeper, receives a cryptic phone call from Hazel Marie. In the call she whispers franticallythat she needs help & that she is at the big........then the call is terminated.

Miss Julia decides that she needs to go to the police to make a missing persons' report but the police decline to do so until 24 hrs. have passed & even then, they seem totally unconcerned for Hazel Marie & have concluded that her date may have just extended into "another activity" that could have kept her out this long.

Meantime, Hazel Marie's cousin, Brother Vern, a seedy TV evangelist has sworn out an affidavit against her stating that she is an unfit mother. Brother Vern wants "Little Lloyd" given over to his custody so he can be the guardian over the fortune the little boy inherited when his father died. The police arrive at Julia's house to serve a "snatch & grab" order for the little boy. In order to keep her son, Hazel Marie will have to appear before a judge. If she can't be found, however, Brother Vern will get the child as he is next of kin. Do you think Brother Vern had anything do do with the disappearance of Hazel Marie?

Julia, after a frustrating appeal to the police, decides to hire a Private Investigator, J.D. Pickens, to find Hazel Marie. Much to the investigator's chagrin, Julia & little Lloyd tag along with him on his search. Julia has a twofold reason for doing this; one, she doesn't really trust J.D. Pickens and two, she has to keep Little Lloyd out of the clutches of the police until they can find his mama.

What follows is a great romp as Miss Julia & Little Lloyd watch J.D. operate, then proceed to ousmart him at almost every turn in their search for Hazel Marie; a search that leads them into the NASCAR racing circuit.

This is the second in the "Miss Julia" series by Ann B. Ross, and though this isn't quite as hilarious as the first book, this is still an funny, entertaining, and quite true-to-life story of an older Southern woman and her escapades in a tiny North Carolina town.

There is a whole crew of characters, both charming and quirky, who are very nicely developed. The story has some elements of a mystery, but is more funny than suspensful.

The protagonist, Miss Julia, is one of the most hilarious characters in Southern novels.

Ann B. Ross has written another masterpiece about Miss Julia. Bringing back some familiar characters from Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind and introducing us to some new ones, we are once again caught up in an adventure that quickly spirals out of control as the scheming Brother Vern tries to get his hands on Miss Julia's money, and Hazel Marie is quickly bamboozled by the man in her life. Miss Julia comes to the rescue with the help of J.D. Pickens, the private investigator hired to help rescue Hazel Marie. Miss Julia has her hands full, keeping the womanizing Mr. Pickens in line and focused on her case as well as keeping everybody else attuned to proper behavior.
I love Miss Julia, mainly because it's like romping through my mother's mind. I'm sure she has the same thoughts of propriety and decorum, and gets her feathers ruffled when people don't see things quite her way. Miss Julia is a joy as she valiantly tries to keep everybody on the straight and narrow while straying a bit from the path herself. Her manner of speaking and explaining things had me laughing out loud more than once, as I thoroughly enjoyed this page-turner.
A sequel to any book is never as good as the original, as the delightful surprise of discovering Miss Julia isn't in this book (unless you missed the first one), but Ann B. Ross's talent for creating a rip-roaring adventure and preserving the personalities of her characters hasn't diminished a bit. In addition to the fun of reading the story, there's a lot to think about, such as how colorful and dramatic women of the South can be, what gossip can do to a person's reputation, and how people can justify telling tales and not calling it gossip. I particularly enjoy the fact that it's still possible to write a ripping good tale with no sex and precious few cuss words.

I wasn't too sure about this book at first, and this being the second book in the series, I actually read it out of order. Now that I am reading the first book in the series, I am able to put 2 and 2 together. This was a humerous and exciting book that I could hardly put down. Miss Julia is quite a character and I find myself wanting to know what each day will bring her. It's as if she is a real person and when I'm finished reading, I'll still be wondering what's next. You are sure to enjoy this book for easy, relaxed reading.