Customer Reviews

Ya-Yas In Bloom

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(33)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

Ya-Ya's in Bloom is Well's third effort to place the quirky Southern ladies of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood front and center. With a bit of background gleaned from both previous books, Bloom is instantly familiar through the antics of four little girls who become lifetime friends. Reintroducing their unique friendship, the Ya-Ya's stick to their loyalties through good times and bad. Vivi, Teensy, Caro and Necie first show up as toddlers in 1930, later as their older selves, along with a familiar "petite Ya-Ya", Sidda, Vivi's oldest daughter.

In order to accommodate the plot line, a couple of strange characters, relatively speaking, are inserted into this rarified world, the prickly Mavis Spivey and her disgruntled daughter, Edythe. These two facilitate the plot twist that besmirches Well's Ya-Ya's impressive family album, so far filled with inter-family problems, untainted by the problems of others. Now Wells presents a quasi-mystery, one that tries to breathe life into the story.

Unfortunately, this Cajun stew doesn't have the joy and spice of the Divine Sisterhood, though Wells gives it the old college try. Charming at their most powerful and eccentric, very real women hid a number of serious issues behind the cheerful facade of their bickering and teasing. There was a real sense of generational connectedness that spoke to women, north and south, of the relationship between mothers and daughters and why secrets are kept to protect the innocent.

In their current Ya-Ya incarnation, the dialog, the story line and the characters have almost become caricatures, devoid of the soul that made them such fascinating creatures, warts and all. Even the element of suspense is Ya-Ya'd, turned into foolish ramblings and pale interactions. The once inherently charming now borders on the tedious as tales are rehashed in an effort to win a new audience. This is certainly a popular series that has garnered a devoted audience. But perhaps it is time for these Ya-Ya's to gracefully retire, making room for a new bevy of Southern characters. Haven't these ladies earned a well-deserved rest, permanent icons in a culture that has joyfully welcomed them? Luan Gaines/2005.

This book is less of a novel than it is a collection of vignettes about the Ya-Yas and those around them. I realize I am going against the grain of 99% of those who have written reviews, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Rebecca Wells recaptures the spirit and spontaneous craziness of the four life-long friends, and fills in a few blanks in our knowledge, such as how the girls met and became friends in the first place. It might have been better if this book had been marketed as a group of short stories because, although there are some ties between chapters, most of the stories stand alone. I laughed out loud at some of the adventures of the Ya-Yas and their progeny and the book evoked the same sense of enjoyment I felt at being let in on their world in the first two books. This is not a novel in the conventional sense, but it does bring the reader back to the world of these four unconventional women and the friendships which sustain them throughout their lives.

I read "Divine Secrets" after resisting its hype. I thought I was too above it all to read a fluffy tale about Southern women. I was a snob about it. But that book drew me in, made me laugh and cry, enfolded me like a blanket. And it resonated with me, which surprised me greatly. I also liked "Little Altars" because I thought Wells was rather brave to explore some of the more disturbing aspects of the Walker/Abbot clan.

So, I certainly did want to like this book. But I was disappointed. Like a bunch of loosely constructed afterthoughts, no substance, it bored me. A hilarious word picture or bon mot here and there does not represent a well-constructed novel. The Christmas play at the end--- ugh! I was actually fidgeting in embarassment.

Time for the Yayas to hang it up, cherie....

I won't bother with a recap of this storyline since it has been done by many other reviewers.

I would agree, however, with the reviewers who commented that somehow this book does not have the charm and wit of the previous books.

It is a shame as this book has been a long time in coming, but it may be time to retire the Ya-Yas or at the very least make them alot more entertaining than in this one.

Just finished Ya-Ya's in Bloom and I must say that it's the most disappointing piece of fluff I've read in a long time. She was too lazy to even come up with new stories, they were all the old ones with different people in them, like the woman who's daughter ends up kidnapping a petite ya ya's kid. She just totally lost the edge and emotions that made the other two books so moving and it just ended up a stupid and extremely corny bunch of drivel...two thumbs down!!!

This book is so bad she should be forced to return all of our money!!!

It's difficult to believe that this novel was written by the same woman who wrote Divine Secrets and Little Altars. I kept anticipating a turn from fluff into the twists and turns and quirkiness of the previous books but it never happened. This reads like one of those minimally plotted romance novels...without the romance. I'm really disappointed; I was expecting a lot more.

Okay, I finished this book in about two days, and I have to say, I did like it, a lot! The Ya-Yas are so readily identifiable, and I loved the story Sidda told about going to see the Beatles. I laughed out loud!

Why, though, were Myrtis and Edythe brought in to the story? The abduction thing, why? What about Lulu? What about her point of view? We've heard from Sidda, Baylor, and Little Shep, but where's Lulu?

I really hope Rebecca Wells writes another installment, and if so, I can't wait!

YaYas in Bloom is the disjointed story of the friendship between Vivian (Vivi), Genevieve (Teensy), Denice (Necie) and Caroline (Caro). They meet in 1930: in a doctor's waiting room; in church; and in a movie theater. We've seen this story unfold before: in Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood and Little Altars Everywhere. By the time one reads YaYas in Bloom, the story becomes a trite rehashing of the old. And, as a matter of fact, the stories told within are more like unconnected vignettes, uninteresting and standoffish at best, and lacking the poignancy of the other two books in the series.

One other thing I didn't like about this book was the way in which the stories were told. The largest chunk of the book takes place in the 1960s, when Sidda, her brothers Little Shep and Baylor, and sister Lulu, are young children. For example, there's a rather touching (albeit maudlin) story of how Baylor, aged five and half, goes to the local television station in order to appear as a "Little Buckaroo." We get all these little, fragmented stories, but never hear about these people as adults. And, for some reason, all the stories are about the Walker family, not the other Yayas. Even though there's a very funny story about Vivi running over a statue in front of the church, in which Caro is involved, we never hear Caro's side of the story. How did she feel when she found out her husband was gay? Is a question whose answer I would love to have had explored further. The children of the YaYas, called the Petit YaYas, are mentioned, but don't play a prominent role in the telling of the YaYa story.

YaYas in Bloom is confusing because it switches points of view; when the narration is first person, one can never tell who is speaking until several pages in. Is it Vivi? Siddalee? One of the other children? The book constantly switches from the present tense to past; and although I believe Rebecca Wells was trying to give the present tense sections a sense of immediacy, the attempt fails miserably, leaving the reader to wonder what on earth is going on. Also, I did not like how simple the text was: sort, terse sentences. I know that Wells was trying to write as though she was a five-year-old, but again, she fails miserably in the endeavor.

YaYas in Bloom is also badly edited- as several other readers have pointed out already. It was little, simple things which made me wonder if the editor (or, come to think of it, the author) was doing her job. For example, in one scene, Vivi makes herself a G&T; but at the end of the scene we are told that the drink was a bourbon and branch. Also: in Divine Secrets, we know that Vivi owns a fur coat; however, here it is stated that she is the only YaYa who doesn't own one, because she'd rather eat animals than wear them. While this is a neat little comment that one might expect a character such as Vivi to say, I find the lack of fact-checking (or fiction-checking, as the case may be) to be rather appalling.

Another discrepancy I found in the text was the use of the contraction "y'all." As anyone can tell you, even people who are not from the south, "y'all" is a contraction of "you all," and therefore should have that little mark in between "y" and "all" to denote such. Yet in this book, whenever a character says it, the word is spelled "yall." I'll say it once; I'll say it a thousand times: poor, poor editing. And I thought the author was southern herself!

In sum, I would not recommend that you buy this book. Check it out from the library, because it is not of the same caliber as Wells's previous books. The movie Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood was based upon a combination of the book Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood and Little Altars Everywhere. God forbid that YaYas in Bloom should ever be made into a film. There just isn't enough material to make a second YaYa movie all that interesting or worth seeing.

Oh,well, fame does change people-including-apparently-writers! I so loved the first two "YA-YA's" written when this writer was a relative unknown and no fame-trips going to her noggin---but this here is a let down. And I don't believe it's because I had built-up huge expectations. This read is just a dud-and it feels as though it were written under duress (Rebecca Wells has Lyme's Disease--) from the publishing crew...well if you can't buy a thrill, ya certainly can't fake the muse. Eh?

I am reading this now, and quite honestly, if I had something else in the house to read, I would throw this over! I was looking so forward to this book. It seems that each book in this "series" is weaker than the last. I find the characters annoying, not charming as I did in the original book. I guess there is such a thing as too much ya ya....