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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fab!, 31 July 2006
I loved this book, read it in 2 days! I found it much better than her 1st book, which was also very good. A beautiful message of family loyalty was found within this well written novel. I stumbled upon this book by accident, and was surprised that it had not been better advertised! You wont regret buying this book which holds a beautiful story and a lot of important truths about life, love and family dynamics. Just can't wait for her next one...
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the perfect summertime read, 1 Aug 2007
With a population of 90, the town of BETWEEN, GEORGIA, is proving to be too small to contain the feud taking place between the Frett and Crabtree families. It's a feud that started before Nonny's birth, but is quickly coming to a head and Nonny is caught right in the middle of the whole mess.
Nonnie has been raised as a Frett but she was born to fifteen year old Hazel Crabtree who'd hidden her entire pregnancy. She gave birth in Bernese Frett's house and insisted that the birth of her baby be kept silent. Stacia Frett is a deaf artist who is slowly losing her eyesight due to a genetic condition, but seizes this baby as a reason for living. Nonny is raised as a Frett. Her birth to a Crabtree is kept a secret until Hazel reveals the truth in a scathing note to her mother, Ona. Nonnie becomes the focus of the ongoing battle between the two families - one that can do no wrong (because they have money that proves it) and the other family who live life more on the shady side of the law.
Thirty years later, Nonnie has some major decisions to make. She's an interpreter living in Athens. She's still tied to her husband, Jonno, who's cheated on her repeatedly (at least until the divorce hearing on Friday) and her best friend, Henry Crabtree, is sneaking his way into her heart. Her aunt Bernese is raising a little girl, Fischer, in Between who Nonnie is very attached to, but her job keeps her in the city and she's not able to see Fisher as much as she'd like. Her family is doing their level best to make her crazy with the constant drama and expecting her to take care of everything. Now in the latest episode, the Crabtree's dog attacks Stacia and her companion, Genny, putting them both in the hospital which forces Nonnie back to Between before her divorce hearing date. She single-handedly has to try to keep the members of the Crabtree and Frett families from retaliating against wrongs done to them, save Fischer from Bertrice's crazy diet ideas, somehow get back to Athens to finalize her divorce and figure out her true feelings for Henry. The anger that's been simmering in Between has reached a boiling point and the little town will never be the same.
Joshilyn Jackson captured my interest right from the start with her quirky book BETWEEN, GEORGIA. The dialogue between the characters is hysterically funny throughout the storyline. I laughed during many of the family discussions because they're just so much fun and you get to feel like you're really there observing the whole time. The characters are outlandish and brilliantly done so that you can envision them and each new crisis reaches out from the pages and grabs your emotions. I confess that I love this female version of the Hatfields and McCoys. It's the perfect summertime read - full of twists and turns, laugh out loud funny, and has characters you won't soon forget.
Chrissy Dionne (courtesy of Romance Junkies)
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Lacklustre and lacked depth, compared to the fabulous Gods in Alabama, 21 Jun 2008
I LOVED Gods in Alabama, her first book. I ordered this straight away afterwards, but only got around to reading it now... and I'm afraid it's now calling the charity shop home.
It's about a woman named Nonny, from tiny Between in Georgia, who is by birth one of the feckless, trashy Crabtrees but raised as an order-loving and proud Frett. Now aged 30, she's divorcing her faithless husband Jonno but can't stop falling into bed with him. Back in Between, her deaf and blind adoptive mother needs her, as does a young relative, Fisher. And Bernese, the hard-to-like Frett family matriarch, has just kicked off a family war with the Crabtrees. So Nonny's torn between the city and her hometown, the Crabtrees and the Fretts, Jonno and a potential new love interest...
It's hard to explain, but not one of the characters did it for me. In Gods in Alabama, which had similar themes of a girl coming home from the city to her dysfunctional Southern family, I loved Lena and her boyfriend from the start, and grew to love cousin Clarice and Lena's strict Aunt Florence. I thought the characterisation in that book was awesome, and there was a lot of humour in it too. Not to mention the pace was snappy and the plot very cleverly put together. These qualities were sorely lacking for me in Between, Georgia. Perhaps it needed a good mystery like G. in A. had, because the only real suspense in the plot was whether Nonny would divorce Jonno. Apart from that, it was more of a vague "how will things turn out?". The characters were all idiosyncratic but they just didn't touch my heart, and I didn't really care exactly how things turned out for them. Maybe they lacked depth. Bernese, for example, had a similar role to Aunt Florence in G. in A., but while Aunt Florence is first presented as a complete cow and slowly revealed to have many layers, Bernese never seemed to develop in a similarly satisfying way (although there is a nice twist concerning her!). I still thought she was a cow at the end. And Nonny herself was a bit of a non-starter for me, too.
Overall, I would have liked to have seen less kookiness, more action and motivation, and more on the relationships between the characters. The book just seemed to bumble along almost as if she was half making it up as she went along; it read more like a draft than a finished and edited novel.
Still, I'm sure there is better to come from the talented Joshilyn Jackson and I will still look out for her books in the future. Gods in Alabama shows how good she can be. Between, Georgia doesn't hold a candle to it in my opinion, though it looks like I'm in the minority.
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by Joshilyn Jackson
by Joshilyn Jackson
by Billie Letts
by Ann B. Ross
by Billie Letts
