Rebecca Wells is famous for her novel "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," which I dearly loved. I wish I could say the same about her new novel, "The Crowning Glory of Calla Lilly Ponder," but I can't. It was a fairly good book, but not a great one.
The book is about Calla Lilly Ponder who is enjoying an idyllic childhood in La Luna, Louisiana. Calla has two loving parents who own a wonderful dance studio/dance hall. Her mother also operates a beauty salon on the porch of her house. Calla Lilly has two loving, nondescript brothers and a host of loving friends and family around. She also has the love of a troubled new boy in town, Tuck. Calla Lilly's world comes crashing down when her beloved mother, whom she calls M'Dear dies of breast cancer.
The second part of the book revolves around Calla Lilly's departure from La Luna to make her way in the world. She shares her mother's gift for therapeutic hair styling and goes to a beauty school in New Orleans. There she meets more loving friends and Sweet, a man she later marries.
So, that's what this book is about - loving friends, loving husbands, loving parents, loving boyfriends etc. It's almost sickeningly sweet. I expect Southern novels to have wildly dsyfunctional families, eccentric characters and closets virtually stuffed with skeletons.
The book does have a nice plot twist at the end and Calla Lilly is a very likeable character. I just was expecting more from the author of Divine Secrets...
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