The Secret to Southern Charm by Smith Harvey Photography

Review: The Secret to Southern Charm by Kristy Woodson Harvey

13 April 2018 by Melissa

About the book, The Secret to Southern Charm

Series: The Peachtree Bluff Series (Book 2)
Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Gallery Books (April 3, 2018)

Leaving fans “practically [begging] for a sequel” (Bookpage), critically acclaimed author Kristy Woodson Harvey returns with the second novel in her beloved Peachtree Bluff series, featuring a trio of sisters and their mother who discover a truth that will change not only the way they see themselves, but also how they fit together as a family.

After finding out her military husband is missing in action, middle sister Sloane’s world crumbles as her worst nightmare comes true. She can barely climb out of bed, much less summon the strength to be the parent her children deserve.

Her mother, Ansley, provides a much-needed respite as she puts her personal life on hold to help Sloane and her grandchildren wade through their new grief-stricken lives. But between caring for her own aging mother, her daughters, and her grandchildren, Ansley’s private worry is that secrets from her past will come to light.

But when Sloane’s sisters, Caroline and Emerson, remind Sloane that no matter what, she promised her husband she would carry on for their young sons, Sloane finds the support and courage she needs to chase her biggest dreams—and face her deepest fears. Taking a cue from her middle daughter, Ansley takes her own leap of faith and realizes that, after all this time, she might finally be able to have it all.

Harvey’s signature warmth and wit make this a charming and poignant story of first loves, missed opportunities, and second chances and proves that she is “the next major voice in Southern fiction” (Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author).

Buy, read, and discuss The Secret to Southern Charm:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | Indiebound | Goodreads

About the author, Kristy Woodson Harvey

Kristy Woodson Harvey is the bestselling author of Dear Carolina (Berkley/Penguin Random House, 2015), Lies and Other Acts of Love (Berkley/Penguin Random House, 2016) and the Peachtree Bluff Series, beginning with Slightly South of Simple (Gallery/Simon & Schuster, 2017). Dear Carolina was long-listed for the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize, has been optioned for film and has appeared on numerous “must-read” lists. Lies and Other Acts of Love was a Romantic Times top pick, a Southern Booksellers Okra Pick and a finalist for the Southern Book Prize. Slightly South of Simple was a Southern Bestseller, a Barnes & Noble Bestseller, one of PopSugar’s picks for “Ultimate Summer Reading” and one of Glitter Guide’s “Must-Reads for April.” The Secret to Southern Charm, the second book in the Peachtree Bluff series, releases April 3, 2018.

She blogs with her mom, Beth Woodson, daily on Design Chic, the inaugural member of the Design Blogger Hall of Fame sponsored by Traditional Home and winner of Amara’s Best Luxury Blog, sponsored by Roberto Cavalli, about how creating a beautiful home can be the catalyst for creating a beautiful life and loves connecting with readers at kristywoodsonharvey.com.

Harvey is a Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s school of journalism and holds a master’s in English from East Carolina University, with a concentration in multicultural and transnational literature. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications and websites, including Southern Living, Traditional Home, Parade, USA Today, Domino, Our State and O. Henry. She has been seen in Women’s Health, The Washington Post, US News and World Report, The Huffington Post, USA Today’s Happy Every After, Marie Claire’s The Fix, Woman’s World, Readers’ Digest and North Carolina Bookwatch, among others. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and six-year-old son where she is working on her next novel.

Connect with Kristy:

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

My Thoughts

I’ve been reviewing Kristy Woodson Harvey’s work since Dear Carolina, in 2015, and I’ve never been disappointed. This book, The Secret to Southern Charm, is her first sequel, continuing on from last year’s Slightly South of Simple. If you’re at all worried that you have to be familiar with the previous book, don’t be. This novel works as a standalone, though you’ll probably want to go read the earlier story. Similarly, if you’re the type to be concerned that sequels are never as good as book one, you may put those concerns to rest. Harvey is as strong as ever. In fact, I feel like in this novel, her voice has become fully realized.

Harvey’s novels always involve strong female characters who take all the southern stereotypes and pulverize them. Her characters are richly painted and dimensional. You really feel for them, especially for Sloane with her two kids and her militaary husband who is MIA.

In fact, it’s in Sloane that I believe Harvey has done some of her best work, showing the combination of hope and fear and grief that Army wives experience whenever their partners are deployed. What could have been angsty, was poignant, and as Sloane’s experience changes, it’s as if we’re glimpsing the soul of a real person.

Which isn’t to say that the entire book wasn’t wonderful – it was. Harvey is extremely adept at capturing the mother-daughter dynamic. Ansley, Sloane’s mother, is the perfect example to this. Essentially the second lead in this story, she’s mother to Sloane and her sisters, grandmother to their children, and a daughter herself, caring for an aging mother (whose lack of filter often provides beats of humor).

If you want a believable, relatable family drama – if you want to read a book that is full of vivid descriptions and characters who are, for the most part, truly charming, then the answer is simple. Read The Secret to Southern Charm.

Goes well with iced tea and chicken salad on a bed of lettuce.

Lies and Other Acts of Love, by Kristy Woodson Harvey (@kristywharvey) #review #contest #mustread

6 April 2016 by Melissa

About the book, Lies and Other Acts of Love

Print Length: 352 pages
Publisher: Berkley (April 5, 2016)
Publication Date: April 5, 2016

Dear Carolina was praised as “Southern fiction at its best.” Now author Kristy Woodson Harvey presents a new novel about what it really means to tell the truth…

After sixty years of marriage and five daughters, Lynn “Lovey” White knows that all of us, from time to time, need to use our little white lies.

Her granddaughter, Annabelle, on the other hand, is as truthful as they come. She always does the right thing—that is, until she dumps her hedge fund manager fiancé and marries a musician she has known for three days. After all, her grandparents, who fell in love at first sight, have shared a lifetime of happiness, even through her grandfather’s declining health.

But when Annabelle’s world starts to collapse around her, she discovers that nothing about her picture-perfect family is as it seems. And Lovey has to decide whether one more lie will make or break the ones she loves….

Buy, read, and discuss this book.

About the author, Kristy Woodson Harvey

Kristy Woodson Harvey is the author of Dear Carolina, which was recently long-listed for the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize and Lies and Other Acts of Love, a Romantic Times top pick and Southern Booksellers Okra Pick. She blogs at Design Chic about how creating a beautiful home can be the catalyst for creating a beautiful life and loves connecting with readers at kristywoodsonharvey.com. She is a Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s school of journalism and holds a Master’s in English from East Carolina University. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications and websites, including Southern Living, Domino magazine, Our State, Houzz, the Salisbury Post and the New Bern Sun Journal. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and four-year-old son where she is working on her next novel.

Connect with Kristy

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Contest: Order to Enter

Order Lies and Other Acts of Love and send a picture of the receipt to kristy@kristywoodsonharvey.com between now and April 10 to be entered to win a $1,000 Shop Design Chic gift card. Everyone will receive copies of four gorgeous printable quotes from the book! Order or pre-order from an independent bookstore or Indiebound for two contest entries!

Link to blog post: bit.ly/1UE6elP

(See above for buy links.)

My Thoughts

I had the privilege of reviewing Kristy Woodson Harvey’s first novel, Dear Carolina before it’s release, and I quickly fell in love with both that novel and Harvey’s writing, so when she sent me an email asking if I’d review her sophomore outing, Lies and Other Acts of Love, I made time to do so, and I’m glad I did, because I think this may be one of the best novels of the spring/summer of 2016 – and we’re barely into April.

Told in alternating chapters from Lovey and Annabelle, this novel holds the richness of family tradition in every page, but tradition isn’t always fluffy, and I really appreciate the way Harvey’s characters are flawed and dimensional. Lovey is at an age where secrets really start to weigh upon you, and we feel that in every one of her interactions, though we feel the equal – greater – weight of her love for her family as well.

Annabelle, by contrast, is still young enough to retain some element of capriciousness, though her maturity increases as the story goes on.

Maybe I’m just a sucker for stories about big families with overlapping generations, but I felt that the collection of women in Lies and Other Acts of Love was incredibly important. Our mothers and grandmothers and aunts – our cousins and and nieces and daughters – these are the people who hold our histories and our stories, but they also hold our hearts. There’s something incredibly powerful, to me, about women supporting other women, and it drives me crazy when they don’t. In this novel, we see more support than not, but both sides of the coin are reflected, and that balance is part of what makes these people seem so real.

I want to say a word about the men in the story, and especially D-Daddy – Lovey’s partner, who is declining much faster than she is. The scenes between the two of them were so poignant, and so naked, full of the little fictions we tell the people we love to ease their days, but also full of the impact of a decades-long relationship. Despite the requisite pain that comes with knowing someone you love is fading, the scenes with these two people were some of the most interesting, and most passionate, in the novel.

Overall, I found that Kristy Woodson Harvey’s voice, while remaining once the same as it was in Dear Carolina, has evolved into a confident, warm voice made for telling these distinctly human tales, that are the perfect blend of realism touched by romance. It’s no lie that I loved this book, and I’m certain you will, too.

Goes well with fresh-caught fish, a garden salad, and sweet tea (or maybe a vodka cranberry).

Dear Carolina, by Kristy Woodson Harvey (@kristywharvey) #review

27 April 2015 by Melissa

About the book, Dear Carolina

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Berkley (May 5, 2015)

One baby girl.
Two strong Southern women.
And the most difficult decision they’ll ever make.

Frances “Khaki” Mason has it all: a thriving interior design career, a loving husband and son, homes in North Carolina and Manhattan—everything except the second child she has always wanted. Jodi, her husband’s nineteen-year-old cousin, is fresh out of rehab, pregnant, and alone. Although the two women couldn’t seem more different, they forge a lifelong connection as Khaki reaches out to Jodi, encouraging her to have her baby. But as Jodi struggles to be the mother she knows her daughter deserves, she will ask Khaki the ultimate favor…

Written to baby Carolina, by both her birth mother and her adoptive one, this is a story that proves that life circumstances shape us but don’t define us—and that families aren’t born, they’re made…

Buy, read, and discuss Dear Carolina

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Goodreads

About the author, Kristy Woodson Harvey:

Kristy Woodson Harvey holds a degree in journalism and mass communications from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s in English from East Carolina University. She writes about interior design and loves connecting with readers. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and three-year-old son. Dear Carolina is her first novel.

Connect with Kristy

Website | Facebook | Twitter

My Thoughts

When Kristy Woodson Harvey contacted me asking me if I’d be interested in reading her book, I jumped at the chance, because it sounded exactly like something I’d love to read.

I was not wrong. This is a fantastic novel about mothers and daughters, and what exactly constitutes family.

Written in alternating first-person accounts, letters to the title character, this book focuses on Jodi, the nineteen-year-old biological mother of Carolina, and Khaki (real name Frances) her older, married cousin, and Carolina’s adopted mother, and how the lives and stories of all concerned are intertwined, woven into a tapestry where love is ever present.

I loved the way the rhythms of southern speech infused this novel. All through it, I found myself reading bits aloud because I wanted to hear the words, not just read them, and the author did an excellent job of keeping the two main voices of the novel separate and distinct, but clearly related. It’s a tricky thing to pull off, but she did it with aplomb.

Based on this novel, I believe it’s safe to say that Harvey has a bright future ahead of her. I loved this book, but I’m also looking forward to whatever she comes up with next.

Goes well with homemade bread slathered with jam made from fresh-picked berries.