The Secret Life of the Bees.
I usually like to read books that involve suspense or romance, so when I decided to read The Secret Life of the Bees, I wasn’t expecting much. However, this book surprised me and was truly amazing.
Lily is a girl who has grown up living with the pain of losing her mother and living with an abusive father. Other than learning a few things from her housekeeper, Rosaleen, Lily has had to learn the things a mother would usually tell their daughters on her own.
After insulting three of the most racist men in the town, Rosaleen is put in jail and when Lily helps her get out, they head to the only place she can think of, Tiburon, the name on the back of a picture that belonged to her mother.
While in Tiburon, Lily and Rosaleen are taken care of by three African American sisters-August, June and May. Lily helps take care of the bees and learns to see the world with new eyes from seeing how August and her sisters see bees. “Most people don’t have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive. Bees have a secret life we don’t know anything about” -August, p.148. Throughout the story we learn that most of the characters are different to what they seem to be on the surface. People usually live more complicated and complex lives than what others expect.
This story is definitely a book for mothers and their daughters to read because it shows the importance of having a mother in a girl’s life. Also, throughout the whole story, the author creates a metaphor about bees and how it relates to society, which is something I really enjoyed. Roe instance, Lily is like a bee without a queen bee, so she is lost. But in the story, Lily is able to find a series of new queens in the women in her life.