Book Review: Queen Bee By Dorothea Benton Frank
If you're looking for a quick-read that's funny with clever and witty characters, this one is for you. As a stay at home mom I don't always have the time to read so this "quick-read" actually took me quite a while. So worth the wait. I instantly loved Holly and her mother Kristen, aka Queen Bee (QB), and her sister Leslie. Their family dynamic made them an interesting bunch that kept me wanting to read just one more chapter.
Beekeeper Holly McNee Jensen quietly lives in a world of her own on Sullivans Island, tending her hives and working at the local island library. Holly calls her mother The Queen Bee because she’s a demanding hulk of a woman. Her mother, a devoted hypochondriac, might be unaware that she’s quite ill but that doesn’t stop her from tormenting Holly. To escape the drama, Holly’s sister Leslie married and moved away, wanting little to do with island life. Holly’s escape is to submerge herself in the lives of the two young boys next door and their widowed father, Archie.
Her world is upended when the more flamboyant Leslie returns and both sisters, polar opposites, fixate on what’s happening in their neighbor’s home. Is Archie really in love with that awful ice queen of a woman? If Archie marries her, what will become of his little boys? Restless Leslie is desperate for validation after her imploded marriage, squandering her favors on any and all takers. Their mother ups her game in an uproarious and theatrical downward spiral. Scandalized Holly is talking to her honey bees a mile a minute, as though they’ll give her a solution to all the chaos. Maybe they will.
Queen Bee is a classic Lowcountry Tale—warm, wise and hilarious, it roars with humanity and a dropperful of whodunit added for good measure by an unseen hand. In her twentieth novel, Dorothea Benton Frank brings us back to her beloved island with an unforgettable story where the Lowcountry magic of the natural world collides with the beat of the human heart.
(via Barnes and Noble website)
What I loved about this book was that at the beginning of every chapter, before the title of the chapter, you had a bit of dialogue between characters. When the chapter was more about Holly's point of view, she was usually talking to Tyler and Hunter, Archie's little boys, about bees and interesting bee facts. I'm not completely dense but how in the world did I not know that honey was regurgitated nectar before this book? I enjoyed learning about bees when a bit of bee facts were given throughout the book.
Most of the chapters are from Holly's point of view but we get Leslie's as well in some chapters. The different points of view is something I've noticed in quite a few books I have read. Colleen Hoover, a young adult novelist, writes in this format very well. Dorothea Frank is no exception. As someone who enjoys reading a lot, I've enjoyed when writers have used different points of view for each character. I like seeing the development of a character not only from their perspective but from the perspective of someone else. Sometimes the transition doesn't always work well, but Frank has done a great job telling her story from two different perspectives and the bee facts throughout the story connect very well with what the characters are going through. So they're not just thrown in there just for facts.
About the Author: Dorothea Benton Frank
Dorothea Benton Frank was born and raised on Sullivan's Island in South Carolina in 1951. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of America in Atlanta, Georgia in 1972. She began writing when her husband wouldn't give her the rest of the money she needed to buy her family's home in South Carolina. Her first novel is Sullivan's Island and it came in at number nine on the New York Time's best seller's list. She continued to write many novels after that. She died on September 2, 2019 from complications due to myelodysplastic syndrome in Manhattan.