So close to 5 stars except…

This book needed more. To reach full emotional resonance, we needed to see a few more scenes.

We needed more scenes of Hugh and Jessie’s life together. We needed real examples of Jessie feeling discontented or dismissed. Jessie tells us that she feels these things, but we don’t see concrete examples of it, at least not enough for me. In the scenes between Jessie and Hugh, he appears to be a loving and supportive husband. Later, Jessie explains that she felt suffocated by that support (like he was in a father role for her) but I did not see examples of this in the scenes of their actual life together. We need to know more! Did Hugh tell Jessie her art wasn’t important or imply that it wasn’t? Did Jessie feel pressured to marry Hugh or have Dee earlier than she wanted or take on the majority of the parenting for Dee? I can well imagine that all of these might have happened…but we didn’t see it! And based on what we actually see, Jessie’s discontent and eventual affair seem more unhinged than anything else. Perhaps this is the intended reading. Perhaps we are supposed to see Jessie’s actions as a psychotic break more than a legitimate emotional response. If so, then so be it, but I think the book is trying to make the point that it is a legitimate emotional response and one other women in Jessie’s place might feel. It could have gotten there with more exploration of Hugh and Jessie’s marriage over those 20 years before we meet them.

Similarly, we need more scenes between Jessie and Brother Thomas (Whit). It doesn’t make sense that they fall in love so quickly. Their attraction to each other starts off strong and I can absolutely understand a physical affair starting quickly. But the emotional affair did not make sense, at least from Jessie’s end. She is suddenly not only attracted to this man but fully in love? To the point she will leave her 20 year marriage that to the reader looks pretty good and which she admits is pretty good? She’s a 41 year old woman! I would think she would have more wisdom to distinguish between love and lust or love and the imagination of “what if.” The emotional affair would have made sense if we had access to scenes from Hugh and Jessie’s marriage better illustrating her feelings of confinement and discontent and a slower paced relationship between Brother Thomas and Jessie showing how Brother Thomas offers to Jessie the romantic and spiritual connection that she believes Hugh cannot give her.

Nevertheless, this is a good book and all the more frustrating because it is good and could have been so much better with this additions!

Horrible new age romantic schlock with a side of southern gothic. On the plus side, it makes a great hate read, and your eye-roll muscles will get a fine workout.

Love this book

I loved "The Secret Life of Bees" so I was excited to start on this book of Sue's.

I was so disappointed. Half way through I had to just quit reading this. Not only do I care not a whit for the characters, and the affair with the monk hasn't even truly begun, but this whole catholicism centered around a mermaid/saint is just irritating to me.

How did Sue get this one so wrong? Nothing is happening and I just want the husband to come and carry his wife home, after committing his mother-in-law (minus one finger) to a secure facility!

Save yourself the time and don't bother reading this one.

After I'd learned how my father had died, there was a lifting away of sorrow. I can't explain that, except to say there's release in knowing the truth no matter how anguishing it is. You come finally to the irreducible thing, and there's nothing left to do but pick it up and hold it. Then, at least, you can enter the severe mercy of acceptance.

I think beginnings must have their own endings hidden inside them.

Whit knew it. I could tell by the way he'd slid his hands inside the sleeves of his robe, the sadness caked in his eyes. I could see he'd already made the sacrifice.

I stood still with the waves cascading against my thighs, elongating as they flowed beyond me toward the shore.
Jessie. I take you, Jessie...
The wind moved sideways past my ears, and I could smell the aloneness in it.
For better for for worse.
The words rose from my chest and recited themselves in my mind.
To love and to cherish.
I took the longest string and tied a knot in the center of it. I gazed at it for a minute, then flung it into the ocean at roughly one o'clock in the afternoon, May 17, 1988, and every day of my life since, I return to that insoluble moment with veneration and homage, as if it possesses the weight and ceremony of marriage.

I felt amazed at the choosing one had to do, over and over a million times daily - choosing love, then choosing it again, how loving and being in love could be so different.

Forgiveness was so much harder than being remorseful. I couldn't imagine the terrible surrender it would take.

At first it was difficult for me to go back to the hermitage, to remember you there, to realize I would know you only as a memory or a longing. But finally I'm able to think of our time together without regret. You brought me deeper into life - how could I regret that? I want you to be well. Please be happy.

I should know better than to pick up a book whose back cover blurb begins "Forty-two, and married for half her life, Jessie Sullivan honestly believes that she is happy...."

Ummm okay, let me see, without reading any more or opening to the first page... I'll guess: A crisis of some magnitude or other will occur, the result of which will find "Jessie" re-analysing everything she's previously taken for granted about her life, most particularly about herself. She'll realise she's been stifled all her adult life, denying her own happiness and passion in order to ensure that the dreams of her husband and family can be fulfilled. The ensuing identity crisis will inevitably see Jessie propelled headlong into an affair with a dark, damaged much younger young lover, from which she will emerge tainted but not destroyed. And for a bonus point I'll guess that in the end she'll realise that she actually does love her husband afterall, and when all is said and done they'll begin the difficult job of putting their lives back together again.

Since the author is Sue Monk Kidd, whose book "The Secret Life of Bees" seems to be beloved by all, I actually thought that my snap prediction would be way off the mark. In my defense, that's the only reason I bought it. I expected a few surprises to this predictable framework, a curve ball at the last minute perhaps. Sadly, it's not to be. The only thing that comes close is the very bizarre gothic tendency (SPOILER ALERT!!!) Jessie's mother has to chopping off her own fingers. That's really quite freaky. Other than that, my predictions were spot on.

Boring as hell.

I read this so that I could see what all the bad reviews were about and I found out. I got to page 123 and I just can't do it anymore. I wasn't intrigued by the mermaid part of the story at all and a love story between a monk and a married woman didn't do it for me either. I have too many books that I want to read to waste any more time on this one. Such a disappointment after loving The Secret Life of Bees so much. Oh well, hopefully she will put out another good one!

I'll start this review by saying I usually steer clear of books with adultery. Makes me too uncomfortable. I started this audiobook not knowing it was about adultery until I was already engrossed in it. I thought to myself, it's fiction, it doesn't have to be your Pollyanna view of the world. So I kept listening to the audiobook and I'm glad I did.

First of all Eliza Foss, the narrator, was great, both Southern and male voices.

Jessie's mother has cut off her finger purposely and so Jessie goes to where her mother lives and where she grew up to see if she can find out what's happening. She hasn't been there in a long time. She and her mother had this strange falling out about a robe with a dragon on it that didn't seem like the line in the sand they made it out to be. Jessie's also using this as a way to have a time out from her husband Hugh. She feels like she's drifting without any real purpose. While on the island, she falls in love with a monk who hasn't taken his final vows and they begin a very intense affair. Jessie also seems to fall back in love with the island. There are some family secrets that are revealed. Also Jessie comes to the point where she needs to decide whether she should live her life with or without Hugh or Thomas (Whit), she just can't seem to make up her mind where she wants her life to lead.

Very good book. First time reading this author. I would recommend it.

that sue monk kid might be a one hit wonder..just joking but secrt lives of bees was an all time fav for me and i was extremely disappointed in this book. did not connect with character at all. save your money buy the second book from the author of the kite runner...he proved himself with his second novel.

In the winter of 1988, 42-year-old Jessie Sullivan returns to her childhood home, Egret Island off the coast of South Carolina. Her mother has unexplainably and deliberately chopped off her own finger, and Jessie hurries home to be with her. In the process, Jessie must come to grips with the repercussions from her father's death thirty-three years previously and her own lackluster marriage. Jessie finds herself drawn to a Benedictine monk, Brother Thomas, who lives in the island's abbey and engages in an affair with him. Only when her mother chops off another finger does the truth her mother has carried hidden for many years come out, and Jessie is able to put her life back together. Through it all, Jessie learns that she must be true to herself in order to become her most fulfilled self.

I gave the novel four stars instead of five because I found the middle section difficult. I had difficulty relating to the characters of Jessie and Brother Thomas in this section and the choices they were making. But Sue Monk Kidd is a gifted writer, and tied everything together into a seamless whole. I felt the ending was perfect, exactly right for all of the characters. I also related to her theme of discovering and honoring oneself, sometimes through a "solitude of being", which in turn enables one to be a better partner in a relationship.

This book is great for women in their 30’s and 40’s who have lived a little, women who have married, and had their relationship grow a bit stale over time. This is the story of Jessie Sullivan, how she returns home to help her mother get through a strange ‘accident’ (she purposefully maimed herself), and how she falls in love with a monk. How does their tempestuous relationship resolve itself? Does he leave the monastery? Does she leave her devoted husband? Does her mother resolve her issues? All of these questions are answered in the course of reading this novel which is not at all a sequel to the Bees.

This is the worst book I've read in the past two years. I don't know why I finished it. I don't go for romances to begin with - but this one is pretentious with its pseudo religious themes. But when she pulls out the mysterious Black woman Who Knows Things - and doesn't mention her skin color when she describes her - she really fails.