The Help by Kathryn Stockett: Review and Giveaway

SYNOPSIS OF BOOK

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t. (from publisher)

THEMES IN THE BOOK

MY REVIEW

I dream of those stories and characters that will challenge and move me and The Help makes that dream come true. The Help goes back to the history of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi as told through the eyes of two black maids and one young, idealistic white woman. Each woman takes turns narrating the chapters and it works well with the story. The author, Kathryn Stockett, made me feel the unimaginable humiliation and disregard that Aibileen and Minny endured, but it is their strength and dignity that helps them overcome. Learning how the three women come together in the story and how things will turn out, kept me anxiously turning the pages. The Help is about hope, loss, bravery, fear, change and love. I think you will not only learn from these incredible characters, but you will also wish they were your friends.  You can purchase The Help, published by Penguin Books, at Amazon and bookstores everywhere.  Thank you to mom.central.

I happen to have an extra ARC of The Help and I loved it so much that I want to give it to one of you lovely book readers!

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