Dear Fellow Readers,

How are you doing? Are you okay through this sheltering in place?  It is harder than ever would have thought, isn’t it?  Of course, part of the issue is that we have no solid idea when it will end. And even when it lets up, will you feel safe leaving the house?  These are strange times.

I would have thought that this would be a great time to get a lot of reading done.  I mean, isn’t this time made for readers?  Think of all the books that can come off the TBR pile!  Except that isn’t really what I have been doing.  Okay, yes, I have read several books, but I just don’t feel like reading sometimes.  I don’t feel like doing much most of the time.  Oh well, this too shall pass.

And I seem to be inclined to hit old favorites rather than picking up on some newer reads.  Take, for example, today’s book, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt.  It appealed to me because it takes place in the South and from the description, has a cast of crazy women.  My kind of book…

BUT the crazy southern woman in this book is really crazy.  That is not exactly my choice for light reading. Poor Camille Honeycutt has serious mental health issues.  Her husband has moved her from the South, and she is not coping well with his distance and his cheating.  She has breaks with reality, spends time buying pageant dresses at the local Goodwill store so she could regain her days as the Vidalia Queen. Poor CeeCee sees people making fun of her mother all the time. And her classmates make fun of her because of her mother.

But then her mother has an accident and is killed. Great Aunt Tootie shows up at the house and the next thing CeeCee knows, she is packed up and riding to Georgia with Aunt Tootie.  She is now in the town that her mother talked about all the time.  CeeCee, who is used to having to take care of herself is now in a home with women who care for her. She finds friends and grows up over the summer as she finds out how supportive women can be.

The book is sad at first. CeeCee is trying do deal alone with her mother’s mental illness as the townspeople and her classmates make fun of her mother.  Then as CeeCee lives with her great aunt, there is the small-town humor that can bolster her and show her what life can be like as a child rather than as a child having to act like and adult.

I enjoyed the story.

Thanks for reading.