Book Review: The Secret Life of Bees
By Taryn B., Navy Team

“The Queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed from the hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness.”- Man and Insects. That is how every chapter of The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd starts out, with a different fact from different books about bees. This book is one of the few books that meets my definition of good literature.

For me, good literature means having a plot that has a real point to it; the writing also needs to be sophisticated with significant descriptive detail about the character, settings, and events. But the one standard for a good book that must be met is a good ending. If a book ends abruptly then I just drop the book as soon as I'm done, and I don't give it a second glance ever again.

But The Secret Life of Bees is a different because of its ending, which shows true love between Lily and August, two main characters. The ending also does not leave you hanging like most books. Instead, you know exactly what will happen to Lily when she has the choice to go back home with her father or live with August and her new family.

The point of view that The Secret Life of Bees is written in is first person, with the narrator being Lily Owens, the main character. Lily is very reliable, and she is the only one that really could have narrated this book because she is part of every event that goes on in the story. If she did not tell us what happened, it might not have actually been what really happen. For example if T. Ray, Lily's father, who is not fit to be a father, was the narrator then the story would have been totally different because of the way he thought things happened.

The Secret Life of Bees was a wonderful book that I loved. I would recommend this book to any girl young or old because all the events in this book are events that we go through during our short lives. The only difference between Lily's life and ours is that she experiences these things all in the summer she turns fourteen, and we experiences them throughout our lives. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a New York Times Bestseller and should be on the top of you reading list.