The Tiara Club [Paperback]

Beverly Brandt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 2005

Grab your sparkliest tiara, blend your favorite fruity drink, and get ready to laugh and cry with the women of the Tiara Club.

Georgia Elliott grew up in a small Gulf town full of Southern charm---and a superefficient grapevine---so the few secrets she's managed to keep are precious, including that she invented TV's hottest new kitchen gadget, the Miracle Chef. A second-generation beauty queen, Georgia turns to women she knows she can trust to keep her secret from her controlling society mama: the Tiara Club. All the members are veterans of the pageant circuit, but they've just admitted one woman who doesn't fit in---a Yankee who's never taped her breasts or smeared glue on her butt to wow the judges. And this year the Tiara Club is determined to help this outsider win the coveted Shrimp Queen crown. Add in an impending wedding and the club's attempts to keep Georgia's secret, and the women of the Tiara Club have to do all they can to hold on to their poise, their friendships, and their senses of humor.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Southern beauty queens and dark secrets rule Beverly Brandt's whimsical fifth novel. Georgia Elliot grew up in the small town of Ocean Sands, Mississippi, where everyone knows a little about everyone. A former beauty queen who runs a gift shop and has a secret life as an inventor, Georgia finds solace in the Tiara Club, a small group of recovering beauty queens. They help conceal her identity as inventor of the hottest new kitchen gadget, the Miracle Chef, from her controlling, appearances-are-everything mother when Daniel Rogers, a TV show host, comes to Ocean Sands to tape a segment about the Miracle Chef. Intrigued by Georgia, Daniel looks into her past and uncovers hints of everyone's darkest secrets. As the love grows deeper between Daniel and Georgia, she begins to make amends with her past, while the Tiara Club survives an explosive wedding and sees its only Yankee member win the Shrimp Queen Crown. Though it does little to break out of the genre's constraints, Brandt's novel is as breezy as they come and consistently entertaining.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Georgia Elliot belongs to the Tiara Club, so named because the members are former pageant winners. All live in the small southern town of Ocean Sands, Mississippi, where everyone not only knows everyone else but also their entire family histories back to the Civil War and beyond. Nothing is secret, except that in her hidden attic laboratory, Georgia is an inventor. Now her Miracle Chef, created for a Tiara Club member who has no time to cook, works so well that the host of a cooking show, Daniel Rogers, challenges the Miracle Chef to a cook-off. Then, when he shows up in Ocean Sands looking for the inventor, Georgia's world begins to spin off its axis. She has no intention of ever revealing she's an inventor, but even as she tries to sabotage the cook-off, the attraction between her and Daniel can't be denied, and eventually all kinds of secrets are exposed. Funny and touching and full of wonderful characters, Brandt's inventive romance is as irresistible as a mint julep. Maria Hatton
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 356 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; First Edition edition (June 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312341229
• ISBN-13: 978-0312341220
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,422,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Southern Belle Book, July 6, 2005

By 

Sharon Katz (Brooklyn,, New York USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Tiara Club (Paperback)

Georgia Elliot has lived in her beloved small southern hometown, Ocean Sands, Mississippi all her life, as her momma and family before her. Though it's a bit like living in a fish tank, everybody knows each other's "people" and life's history, Georgia feels safe. Vivian, her mother, lives just across the street from her in the house where Georgia grew up.

Georgia has tried hard to live up to being the epitome of Southern genteel womanhood: she is a former beauty pageant winner, works in a fine gift shop and had a short marriage (well divorce is the norm nowadays) to the man who is now the mayor of Ocean Sands and who is going to marry Georgia's closest friend Callie. But Georgia has a deep dark secret - she's not just a beauty, she's an intelligent woman who has invented a cooking gadget that can save time and effort for harried mothers and housewife's the world over. It's called the Miracle Chef. But as her mother taught her, it's not proper for a woman to be too brainy to have done something so crass as to be an inventor, so in order to keep her mama happy, Georgia needs to keep her invention a secret.

But that becomes a big problem when a popular TV kitchen show receives a letter touting the Miracle Chef and sends its famous and fabulously good-looking host, Daniel Rogers, son of Hollywood legendary stars, to find out more about the product.

Sparks fly when Daniel meets Georgia. Afraid that her secret will be outed, breaking her momma's heart and will to live (though no one is certain why Vivian has such deeply ingrained feelings) Georgia cooks up a plan to keep Daniel out of her kitchen, by entertaining him in the bedroom.

Georgia and her circle of close friends all belong to the Tiara Club, a group made up of former Southern beauty pageant queens, and one Yankee woman who's new to town and in dire need of friends. At the same time, Georgia's oblivious to the fact there are others in town who also have secrets hidden from everyone - or so they think.

In turns wacky and slapstick, or sometimes poignant and heartfelt, and at moments heated with simmering passion, The Tiara club is the Southern literary equivalent to TV's Desperate Housewives!

Though the theme of the story is all about secrets not so well or necessarily kept, the heart of this book is the loving relationships between these ladies and their lifelong respect and affection for their town, their way of life and their families. The Tiara Club lets the outside world in to the southern belle's club, permitting the rest of us to get some understanding of the mindset of the women who would never dream of walking outside without their nails done properly, their bags matching their outfits and their inner lives very much secreted inside their always politely smiling faces.

5.0 out of 5 stars A FABULOUS READ!!!!!, July 9, 2010

By 

MeredithNCSU girl (Raleigh, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tiara Club (Paperback)

I am a HUGE fan of Mary Kay Andrews and I've already read all of her books and I was pining for something so similar and I found it! The Tiara Club got me hooked right from the start. It's full of EVERYTHING that women like to read: mystery, love, romance, laughter, and southern ways of life. I definitely was late several times getting back to work from my lunch breaks because I was so engrossed in finding out what happens next! This is my first read of Brandt, I hope her other books are just as good! Southern fiction stories are my favorite! I highly recommend this read!

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read, May 15, 2010

By 

Meili (Utah) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tiara Club (Paperback)

I love reading books that are light, fun, and have engaging characters. This book was just that. The plot wasn't like I expected and had some neat twists throughout the story. I thought the concept of the Tiara club was really cute and the book was written well with a mix of romance, humor, and suspense. I can't wait to tell my friends about this cute read. It's definitely a pick me up on a bad day!