The Mermaid Chair

I just finished reading The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd. I bought it because I so loved The Secret Life of Bees, but approached it with a bit of trepidation after all the terrible reviews I read. No, it's not a romance novel, although the tagline "In this luminous novel from the author of The Secret Life of Bees, a wife and mother falls in love with a Benedictine monk" may imply otherwise. Many readers called Jessie selfish, but I have to think after thirty-three years of hiding her true self from everyone, she's allowed a couple months of selfishness. Sue Monk Kidd's lyrical prose is an absolute joy to read and while The Mermaid Chair is a strong novel, it just never will have the power that Bees has. Very few novels do.