«Maybe it is true that there are no perfect books, but I closed this one believing that I had found perfection. The language is never anything short of crystalline and inspired. The plotting is subtle and careful and exquisitely executed...The characters are lovable and deep-hearted, fully dimensional, never pat. The story endures long after the book is slipped back onto the shelf»

Book magazine

«'Kidd's first novel is well placed, gentle and deeply moving' The Times»

The Times

«Sue Monk Kidd has written a wonderful novel about mothers and daughters and the transcendent power of love»

Connie May Fowler

«What a splendid novel! It's wonderfully thoughtful and sensitive and compulsively readable»

Susan Isaacs

«A wonderful modern fairy tale...a touching story with a memorable cast of characters»

The Big Issue

«A hive's worth of appealing female characters, an off-beat plot and a lovely style... Deeply satisfying»

Publishers Weekly

«A honey-sweet novel»

Elle

«Superb»

Woman & Home

«With imagination as lush and colorful as the American South, a clutch of deliciously eccentric characters, and vivid prose, Sue Monk Kidd creates a rich, maternal haven in a harsh world»

Christina Schwarz

«As original as its title and rivetingly so... It is one of the most inventive books I have read in a long time, and utterly compelling... This book demands to be read again and again, for it is not so much the solving of the mystery that is compulsive, but the gentle, sensitive, humorous and intensely colourful creation of a world far from our own»

Oxford Times

«Monk Kidd has created a narrative as skilful and sweet as a honeycomb. Uplifting and warm-hearted, this is a moving novel and Lily is a fascinating, funny and clever narrator»

Literary Review

«An incredibly original and imaginative book with great charm and atmosphere»

Glasgow Evening Times

«'A personal favourite, one of those infectiously written books you can't get out of your mind...a lovely tale' Bookseller»

Bookseller

«'A tale that's beautifully and movingly written' Buzz»

Buzz

«Lily is a wonderfully petulant and self-absorbed adolescent, and Kidd deftly portrays her sense of injustice as it expands to accomodate broader social evils...August and her sisters, June and May, are no mere vehicles for Lily's salvation; they are individuals as fully imagined as the sweltering, kudzu-carpeted landscape that surrounds them»

New York Times Book Review

«This is a wonderful book, by turns funny, sad, full of incident and shot through with grown-up magic reminiscent of Joanne Harris.»

The Daily Telegraph

«Eccentric, inventive, and ultimately forgiving... a truly original Southern voice»

Anita Shreve

«Sue Monk Kidd... Illuminates what is beautiful... THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES is a gift, filled with hope»

Luanne Rice

«This is the story of a young girl's journey toward healing, and of finding, at its end, not only wholeness, but the intrinsic sacredness of living in the world. I think it is simply wonderful»

Anne Rivers Siddons

«A wonderfully written debut novel»

Kirkus Reviews

«Moving, original, and accomplished ... wonderfully written, powerful, poignant, and humorous, and takes a line which is - refreshingly - strongly female without being cliche-feminist. It is also deliciously eccentric, which lifts it out of the usual category of a rite-of-passage novel into the realms of real distinction. Do read it»

Joanna Trollope