Book Club Friday [1]

I would really like to get back into reading some more this summer, and it seems like a good way to use some time since I currently don't have too much going on this summer. So, I've decided to begin doing the Book Club Friday link up. 

This week I'm sharing: 

 

The Synopsis:

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.
-via

My Thoughts:
I know that a lot of people have already read this novel, especially since the movie has been out for awhile. I was one of those people who actually had not heard anything about this book until I saw the previews for the movie, and then I had some serious interest. (I'm a huge fan of Emma Stone, so I figured I would at least see the movie). I decided to see the movie first, worried that if I read the book before it that I wouldn't enjoy the movie at all. I LOVED the movie and own it now, but I was so busy with student teaching and everything that reading for pleasure was not really a possibility. However, now that summer came around I finally had time to pick up the book again after purchasing it shortly after the movie released and I saw it (twice).

Now, I already had no doubt that I would love the book based on the movie and all the positive raves it got, but oh my goodness did I love it. One of the best books I have ever read, I would say. Stockett is an incredible author, and I had no trouble looking in on the lives of the main characters. She made it so historically realistic that I felt sick that our country was like that (and still has so many problems with it). I was worried that the movie would ruin it, but they were both done so well. Things had to be changed of course, but it's hard to fit a whole book into a two hour movie. Anyway, I enjoyed the book immensely and would recommend it to anyone. And that Celia Foote, she's something else!