REVIEW: I am in awe! Claire Fullerton writes a beautiful book. She is upper eschillon, top notch! I would put her right up there with Pat Conroy. Her book Little Tea is amazing. I love southern life and was not privileged to live here during the days of plantations and mint juleps but Claire brought me into that time period and gave me a taste of it. 

The book takes place in two time periods now and back somewhere in the 1980’s. Three lifelong friends get together for a long weekend to help one of them figure out her marriage and what she is going to do with the rest of her life. You know how it is when old friends get together? They talk about old times, growing up and their teen years. That is the part that takes place in the 80’s and the rest of it is in today’s time. Folks, I loved every minute of their reminiscing and how they fell right back into their old behaviors. I wanted to be their friend! 

It was a fun read but this book also dealt with some pretty tough subjects. There was a gay brother, an alcoholic father, mental illness, tragedy, death, race relations and divorce. This book made you think about some hard subjects and about what is going on in our society today. Claire Fullerton lays it all out for you and allows you draw your own conclusions. Don’t waste any time getting your own copy. You’re gonna love it!

I won this book through the generosity of the author. This is a fair and honest review of my own thoughts. Thank you, Claire! 

SYNOPSIS:

Southern Culture … Old Friendships … Family Tragedy

One phone call from Renny to come home and “see about” the capricious Ava and Celia Wakefield decides to overlook her distressful past in the name of friendship.

For three reflective days at Renny’s lake house in Heber Springs, Arkansas, the three childhood friends reunite and examine life, love, marriage, and the ties that bind, even though Celia’s personal story has yet to be healed. When the past arrives at the lake house door in the form of her old boyfriend, Celia must revisit the life she’d tried to outrun.

As her idyllic coming of age alongside her best friend, Little Tea, on her family’s ancestral grounds in bucolic Como, Mississippi unfolds, Celia realizes there is no better place to accept her own story than in this circle of friends who have remained beside her throughout the years. Theirs is a friendship that can talk any life sorrow into a comic tragedy, and now that the racial divide in the Deep South has evolved, Celia wonders if friendship can triumph over history.