Lock, Stock and Over a Barrel by Melody Carlson

Melody Carlson

Title: Lock, Stock and Over a Barrel (Dear Daphne # 1)

Author: Melody Carlson

Published: June 2013 by B&H Publishing Group

Pages: 304

Find it at: Flipkart / Amazon

My Rating: 4/5!

Blurb from the cover!

With high hopes, Daphne Ballinger lands her dream job at The New York Times. But it's not long until writing about weddings becomes a painful reminder of her own failed romance, and her love of the city slowly sours as well. Is it time to give up the Big Apple for her small hometown of Appleton?

When her eccentric Aunt Dee passes away and leaves a sizeable estate to Daphne, going back home is an easy choice. What isn’t easy is coming to terms with the downright odd clauses written into the will.

Daphne only stands to inherit the estate if she agrees to her aunt's very specific posthumous terms -- personal and professional. And if she fails to comply, the sprawling old Victorian house shall be bequeathed to . . . Aunt Dee’s cats.

And if Daphne thinks that’s odd, wait until she finds out an array of secrets about Aunt Dee's life, and how imperfect circumstances can sometimes lead to God's perfect timing.

My Thoughts!

This book was a very different Melody Carlson that I read, the previous reads being Harsh Pink and Deep Green from the Truecolors series. Though this book doesn't have teenagers as protagonists, all these books are categorized under the label 'Christian', because all of them have this underlying theme relating to God, prayers and living life as a believer in the Almighty. It is subtle, not too overpowering and comes into the picture only towards the end when the protagonist and characters need support. Lock, Stock and Over a Barrel is a contemporary story of a young woman, Daphne Ballinger, living in New York since the past 12 years, writing wedding stories for The New York Times. She belongs to a small town called Appleton, but moved to New York with big dreams, including climbing to the top of the ladder as a journalist. Just that she seems stuck and unable to do much, mostly because of her cautious personality. She'd had her heart broken once while in New York, which makes her overly cautious and an 'avoider'. 

When she learns that her Aunt Dee in Appleton has passed away, she decides to move back into Appleton, especially after learning that she's the heiress to everything her aunt owned. This is when she discovers how little she truly knew about her aunt. Aunt Dee is a mystery with secrets left behind, known only to the lawyer and now, Daphne. She isn't really all she made people believe. She was much more than that, and it is truly fascinating. I mean, as it mostly pertained to literary stuff, I felt really excited about those prospects, about the possibility of stuff like that actually happening. So cool! The writing style is descriptive and simple. Not too simple, but it seems to have a nice flow and ring to it that you get used to the way you're understanding the story without any intermissions in between. I like books that successfully recreate the aura of a place I haven't seen, so that I can easily imagine and 'be there' as if I'm a close observer. This book does all that beautifully! I would almost like to live in a place like Appleton. Such a sweet town! 

I liked all the characters, who seemed to have clear distinctive personalities, so that you can try hazarding guesses about their actions. Fun people! Except for Ryan, Daphne's heart-breaker-ex-lover, who is such a snob! Sometimes I did wish Daphne would stop being so under-confident and be clearer about her feelings. And it was pleasant to see how she grew as a mature person in the book. I didn't find myself rooting for any one guy to be her future love interest, though. They all seemed nice enough, but not the perfect kind of guy I wished she had. True, that's what the book wants to convey, it's not all dreamy-dreams in reality. Sometimes you gotta settle for what's available. Maybe. Then there's this wonderfully mysterious Dear Daphne column, the secret to which I can't divulge here, but I found the questions and answer-giving very enjoyable and meaningful. This book's got some solid meaning! 

Overall, the essence of the book is simple. The life of an ordinary girl who wants to fulfill her dreams, who gets heart-broken, who gets the opportunity to revive her life again, who feels confused because she's human and she's got to deal with many different personalities and trying to figure them out in light of the situation, dealing with secrets and making decisions, being given tremendous responsibilities, wanting to feel loved, then understanding and realizing that life is meant to be lived, whatever the circumstances, it is important to focus on being happy and believing that God would take you there, that everything has its own course, that things take time to settle sometimes, that it's important to have faith. There is no over-dramatization of any sort, even though I felt it seemed a bit underplayed. The blurb focuses on Aunt Dee's secrets and the book gives off a vibe that it'll be oh-so-exciting! For me it was slightly less exciting than I had anticipated, mostly because the 'secrets' thing is not the essence of the book. 'Life isn't perfect but how some people choose to deal with it is what matters', is what the book truly stands for. 

There is an important clause in Aunt Dee's will which just wasn't getting any closer to completion as the book neared the end and I was anxious, because that was something that you can't just deal with in the last few pages! Turns out it has been left for the next book in the series! Which didn't make me particularly happy, but it's okay. The wait would be worth it! ;) I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a light yet meaningful contemporary read, it's easy and fast. Young Adult readers, Adult readers, anyone. There isn't any explicit content as such. 

Thank you B&H publishers for this book! :)

The Secret Life of Bees

Author: Sue Monk Kidd

Pages: 302

Published in: 2002

Publisher: Penguin Group

Find it at: Amazon

My Rating: 5/5 or more, if I could say that!

I hadn’t heard of this book before Alyssa at Life is Good mentioned that it’s among her top five favourites! (See how awesome book blogging can be?) While searching the shelves in the library I found this title and got it home. I’m so glad I did! I’m buying my own copy because this is one book everyone should read at least once in their lives.

Summary from Goodreads

In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owens, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic. --Regina Marler 

My Thoughts

I wasn’t even halfway through when I was sure this book is fantabulously awesome and deserves a 5/5 rating! I was hooked to it and totally into the story from the very beginning, what Lily remembers about the “incident” when she was four and her Mother passed away, how bad, resentful and confused she feels over how T.Ray treats her and eventually the readers would move along with her as different events happen that change the course of her life. Lily is easy to like, but at some places you might think she should be more mature, but even then, you think back to what all she’s endured and considering all that, you might find her even well behaved sometimes. I like her nevertheless, what with all the wondrous things happening around her, like she says in the book, “I wake up to wonder each day.”

The story’s focused on a number of things. Childhood and how parents’ problems and misbehaviour affects the children. That was Lily’s case. How children feel the need to know the truth, no matter how harsh it is, how they sometimes have to live with facts that even adults find hard to bear. Then there’s racism, Rosaleen’s case. She gets in trouble just because she stood up for herself in front of the three most racist men in town, how she lands in jail and then in hospital. Even later when Lily’s living with four black women whom she adores, the policemen advise her to stay away from ‘bad influence’. The book definitely gives the message that color has absolutely no role in what a person is from the inside, which is just so true!

I loved the story when Lily and Rosaleen were in Tiburon with the ‘Calendar sisters’, especially August, who’s a really respectable character. I would love to have a relative like her! :P All the parts about bee keeping were also interesting. You just realize there’s so much you don’t know, like how we get the honey we spread on our breads; how those bees are reared, how they live and their habits. The book also covered Christianity, primarily the sisters’ belief in black Mary. All the stories about her and her powerful aura and spirituality were so overwhelming! Also the way Lily felt connected to her and respected and grew to love her was simply heart warming, since she was always remembering, rather, fantasizing about her mother and found a mother figure in Mary and all the women in the 'pink house' (The Calendar sisters' house).

Needless to say, the book is extremely well written! And it’s the author’s first book! Totally amazing! I wish for this kind of talent, one where the first book itself is mind blowing! It’s also been made into a movie, I discovered. I would love to see it sometime! There are a few lines from the book I saved, which I really want to share!

The world was really one big bee yard, and the same rules worked fine in both places: Don’t be afraid, as no life loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. Don’t swat. If you feel angry, whistle. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.

This is by far my absolute favourite! ‘Some things don’t matter that much, like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person’s heart- now, that matters. The whole problem with people is they know what matters, but they don’t choose it.’

‘There’s a fullness of time for things. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course.’ Aww... this one is so good too! 

Drifting off to sleep, I thought about her. How nobody is perfect. How you just have to close your eyes and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart be what it is. Oh God. This is awesome too. I just love each word of this book. *Insanely brilliant*

And you know the best part? It comforted me the most when I needed something so bad! I almost had a mini anxiety attack a couple of days ago thinking over new college beginning the next day and new faces and finding out and making new friends. Then I picked The Secret Life of Bees and it showed me how tiny actually, the problem with me is, if I compare it with what people have to suffer from. When I read about how Lily was feeling sad, I could connect with her feelings so strongly and then all those pages talking about how she finally got over it, found happiness and a very happy ending to the story.

“If you think you have problems, read a book”

Recommended for: Everyone!

PS- I typed this review in over three days. What exactly my life with this hectic college schedule is going to be, I have no clue. And believe me, if I could, I would pick reading and blogging over college any day, but I can't really do that. :| Anyway, I would try my best to be as regular as I can!