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    Saving CeeCee Honeycutt: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Saving CeeCee Honeycutt: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Saving CeeCee Honeycutt: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    Saving CeeCee Honeycutt: A Novel

    Written by Beth Hoffman

    Narrated by Jenna Lamia

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Read Beth Hoffman's blogs and other content on the Penguin Community.

    Steel Magnolias meets The Help in this Southern debut novel sparkling with humor, heart, and feminine wisdom

    Twelve-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt is in trouble. For years, she has been the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille-the tiara-toting, lipstick-smeared laughingstock of an entire town-a woman trapped in her long-ago moment of glory as the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen. But when Camille is hit by a truck and killed, CeeCee is left to fend for herself. To the rescue comes her previously unknown great-aunt, Tootie Caldwell.

    In her vintage Packard convertible, Tootie whisks CeeCee away to Savannah's perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricity, a world that seems to be run entirely by women. From the exotic Miz Thelma Rae Goodpepper, who bathes in her backyard bathtub and uses garden slugs as her secret weapons, to Tootie's all-knowing housekeeper, Oletta Jones, to Violene Hobbs, who entertains a local police officer in her canary-yellow peignoir, the women of Gaston Street keep CeeCee entertained and enthralled for an entire summer.

    Laugh-out-loud funny and deeply touching, Beth Hoffman's sparkling debut is, as Kristin Hannah says, "packed full of Southern charm, strong women, wacky humor, and good old-fashioned heart." It is a novel that explores the indomitable strengths of female friendship and gives us the story of a young girl who loses one mother and finds many others.

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 12, 2010
    ISBN9781101154564
    Unavailable
    Saving CeeCee Honeycutt: A Novel

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    Reviews for Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

    4/5

    1,034 ratings165 reviews

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    • 4/5
      What does your life book say about you?Wow! I love finding a buried treasure on my shelves. I have had this book forever, so when I saw the audiobook I thought I would give it a try. It took me completely by surprise and also helped me get out of my audiobook slump.I am not sure what I thought this was about, but it was not what it ended up being (in the best way possible). This deals with mental health, loss, love, and family. This is also dealing with historical issues in the South including race issues.Overall, I really loved this! I highly recommend this on audio.
    • 2/5
      I tried really hard to get into this book, it just didn't do much for me.
    • 5/5
      A VERY fun read. I loved CeeCee and all those sweet Southern women!
    • 4/5
      CeeCee's life starts out pretty rough - an absent father and a mentally ill mother with only the love of a nearby neighbor to bring a little light into her life. When tragedy strikes, CeeCee can only feel abandoned and betrayed. But this novel is filled with women who are ready and willing to love CeeCee and fill up all those empty places that she has lived with for so long. I especially loved this aspect of the novel - all the wonderful and diverse women who each provide something important to CeeCee.
    • 4/5
      Team 5 (High Fives): Reader 4: Tag: Mental Illness

      Saving CeeCee Honeycut, Beth Hoffman (306 pages)

      ? ? ? ?

      CeeCee Honeycut is twelve years old and the caretaker of her psychotic mother, Camille. Camille is living in the past as the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen. CeeCee's father is a traveling salesman and rarely if ever comes home. CeeCee's only friend is the kindly Mrs. Odell who helps CeeCee through the rough patches with her mother.

      When Camille is struck down by an ice-cream truck while crossing the street on her way to the Goodwill Store to purchase more prom dresses, CeeCee's Aunt Tootie comes to "save" CeeCee. CeeCee moves to Savannah w/ Aunt Tootie. There she meets Aunt Toot's eccentric neighbors, makes friends w/ Oletta (Aunt Tooties cook), and begins school....

      What a wonderful book, unlike many on the subject of Mental Illness, this book did not dwell on the depressing aspects...nor was the mental illness of CeeCee's mother the major subject of the book. The story of CeeCee flowed easily, held my interest and was filled with warmth and humor. The characters were warm and likeable. Because the story wasn't depressing I was able to read this pretty quickly......
    • 5/5
      Just loved this book! The characters real and fun. Would make lovely movie. My favourite line 'It's how we survive the hurts in life that brings us strength and gives us beauty"
    • 3/5
      In 1967 wealthy Aunt Tootie rescues bookish 12 year old CeeCee after the girl's mentally-ill mother gets hit by a truck and her father runs away from the situation. CeeCee is spirited away to a female-dominated version of Savannah, Georgia, where she makes friends with the Oletta the cook (a stereotypical Mammy figure) and learns about Southern ideas of fashion, hospitality and eccentricity. Not great literature, but a quick, diverting read.
    • 4/5
      loved the southern setting in savannah, gerogia. the book really made me hungry with all the talk about food. sweet little story. almost too sappy for me, but i enjoyed it and so did my bookclub.
    • 2/5
      The bad:Shallow characters, hyperbolic life lessons, and dead-end epiphanies. The author is clearly aiming for Lucy Maude Montgomery-style episodic chapters, but misses the boat. The premise had promise, but it fell apart when it became clear that the author didn't bother to research mental illness at all and just went with a Hollywood brand of crazy that was easy to visualize. Also, the author seems to get lazy and wants to take the reader on the short road to the life lessons of each vignette. Instead of showing us the lesson learned, the author spells it out with a character telling CeeCee some trite homily. Sometimes CeeCee comes to a "life-altering" epiphany on her own, which would have been acceptable but these many epiphanies never influenced any other part of the book. About Miz Goodpepper: "I knew with searing clarity that I'd never want to fall out of her favor." Ok, great. Now maybe we're getting somewhere with a little foreshadowing, right? Wrong. That epiphany never gets played out anywhere else and is just another dead end. Also, how many characters whose names start with an "O" could one book have?The good:Clear writing. Good active voice. Easy to read. Decent editing- I only noticed one typo in the whole book (a missing open quotation mark). Also, the one thing the author really seems to know about is flowers. The only time she really hits her groove is when she is describing a garden or a bouquet. She is clearly a gardening enthusiast and it shows in her vivid descriptions of the various gardens and flowers mentioned time and again in the book.
    • 4/5
      A great feel-good book.
    • 4/5
      Delightful read
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book. There was a strong sense of fairy tale about it, with words of wisdom sprinkled over the pages and a rags-to-riches story. The contrast between the cold North and the warm South was maybe over-drawn, but it was lovely to read about the heat and flowers of Savannah on a wintry Canadian night.

      I wasn't always convinced by the voice of the narrator, who often seemed a lot older than her twelve years and the other thing which seemed rather unreal was the social acceptance by all but one of the white women of their black domestic servants as guests at a garden party. With the book set in the 1960s, this seemed unlikely. I also felt the lack of any sympathetic male characters. CeeCee's father is portrayed as a pathetic, helpless sort of person and the only other men in the book are a racist thug and a bedroom-farce policemen.
    • 4/5
      Daddy can't cope, so he all but abandons 12 year old CeeCee to live with and care for her mentally unstable mother. Her one refuge is regular Sunday mornings with her elderly neighbour. When Momma dies suddenly, great Aunt Tootie arrives to take CeeCee to live with her in Georgia.Savannah is populated with strong, sometimes eccentric, women who teach CeeCee that is it okay to love and accept love. Hoffman has written a lovely coming-of-age story that touches (albeit briefly) on tolerance, race relations and environmentalism. More, it is about the healing power of love, friendship, acceptance and the fact that 'it takes a village to raise a child'.I would definitely recommend this light and very pleasant read.
    • 5/5
      Although with hundreds of great reviews, she probably doesn't need another one, I feel compelled to say how grateful I am to have found this author. The writing is wonderful and the characters will stay with me for a long time! I wish her the very best and I look forward to her next book.
    • 4/5
      A heartbreaking yet happy story of a 12 year old girl. Her mentally unbalanced mother died in an accident and her father (who was mostly abesnt) sent her to live with a great aunt in Savannah, Ga. As she adjusts to "Southern" life the story reveals lots of surprises.
    • 5/5
      Flying dishes, prom gowns, red high-heeled shoes, embarrassing school days....what more could a child take. Cee Cee Honeycutt lived with her parents who consisted of a mother who thought she missed out on life since she left her home town in Georgia to marry an older man and her father, an absent traveling salesman. Life didn't really turn out very well for anyone in the family, but once Cee Cee met Great Aunt Tootie, her life was something she never would have imagined.Here is how she happened to be with Aunt Tootie.....one day as Cee Cee's mother was coming back from the Goodwill store wearing her newest prom gown, she absentmindedly ran into the street and was hit by an ice cream truck and died. Cee Cee was then moved to Savannah, Georgia, with her Great Aunt Tootie, but not before her loving neighbor, Mrs. Odell, told her about the Life Book we all have with pages that need to be turned when the time comes. And what a page in Cee Cee's life was turned when she arrived in Savannah....loving people to surround her and protect her, especially Oletta, Aunt Tootie's cook, and of course Aunt Tootie who showered Cee Cee with hugs and affection that had been lacking in the previous twelve years of her life. Cee Cee’s unconventional neighbors and a beautiful home also helped add pages to her Life Book.You will absolutely LOVE this book especially if you like sweet, nostalgic, heartwarming reads with a Southern charm...some of the scenes were laugh-out-loud and others brought tears to your eyes with the tenderness. The characters were lovable and genuine. It is a beautiful, touching read...just like a BIG hug. Going to end my review with a quote from Oletta, my favorite character: "Don’t go wastin’ all them bright tomorrows you ain’t even seen by hangin’ on to what happened yesterday. Let go, child. Just breathe out and let go.” Page 290 Cee Cee definitely had “bright” tomorrows to put in her Life Book thanks to all the loving women in her life.Thanks, Miss Hoffman… This is going to be one of my all-time favorite books.5/5
    • 4/5
      A sweet story with lovely phrasing and characters.
    • 5/5
      I absolutly loved this book. The prose is interesting,the characters are full featured and the story is believable. A picture of Southern life in its best dressed women. CeeCee is a brilant girl with a strange journey from lost child to loved young lady.
    • 5/5
      If you enjoyed The Secret Life of Bees, then you will surely enjoy this book by Beth Hoffman. As the book begins, twelve-year-old CeeCee is in Ohio trying to care for her mentally ill mother. Her father has basically abandoned them, dropping in occasionally to lay some money on the table as he passes through town. Through no fault of CeeCee's, her mother dies, and she is spirited off to Savannah, GA by her great-aunt Tootie, a relative she did not know existed. From that point on, her life is shaped by a variety of white and black women, most importantly, Tootie's maid Oletta. Set in the mid-1960's, this book is a delight. You will laugh and you will cry as you read it. I took the characters to bed with me, thinking about them as I waited to fall asleep. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      I can't understand by English but i can try for my life
    • 4/5
      Delightful is what comes to mind when I think of this book. It tells the story of Cee Cee, who is taken in by her great aunt from Savannah after her mentally unstable mother dies. Cee Cee has never met her great aunt Tootie before, but she soon becomes pleasantly surprised by the warmth that Tootie, her housekeeper, and a myriad of Southern neighbors pour onto her. Cee Cee has a few bumps along the way as she adjusts to her new community - and learns a few things about her past history - but all in all it is delightful to enter the world of this book and see how she turns out in the end.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book. I actually listened to it through Audible and the reader was very good. It was told from the perspective of Cee Cee Honeycutt who is 12 years old. Overall just a good feel good story!
    • 5/5
      very sweet story... just some fluff, but so cute
    • 5/5
      loved this book
    • 5/5
      Basically the same story as Sue Monk Kidd's Secret Life of Bees. Same themes, same plot, only funnier.
    • 4/5
      Lovely. Nothing unbelievably deep, but a nice, positive story with interesting and likable (is that really the right spelling for "likable?") characters.
    • 5/5
      This is a very good read - Hoffman utilizes some southern gothic style in her writing of a little girl who lives a difficult life.
    • 5/5
      I'd use more stars, but there's only five of them. What a wonderful book this was! Rich, uplifting, complex. It's about surviving, it's about southern women, it's about coming of age, and you should read this book.
    • 3/5
      Audiobook edition, read by Jenna Lamia. This was overall an enjoyable story. The author is terrific at creating vivid characters and settings, and Jenna Lamia's reading is as fantastic as always. But the story itself felt too scattered, as though it is a series of events that the characters experience and react to, rather than a coherent plot. The resolution to each event felt unfinished and a little unreal, and the story overall was a little too syrupy for my taste.
    • 3/5
      Oozing southern charm and a genteel lifestyle , on Gaston Street (of course), in Savannah, this first novel is sure to be a winner. Twelve year old CeeCee has been brought up by a certifiably crazy mother and a father who is most often absent. When mom dies, CeeCee goes to live with a great aunt and experience the other side of life. A story that could be shared with your twelve year old daughter or granddaughter. A light and pleasant read.