Review: Love, Cajun Style

Title: Love, Cajun Style
Author: Diane Les Becquets
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Date published: 2005
Type of book: YA fiction (first love, marriage, sex, fine arts)
Pages: 296
I received this book from/at: local library
My interest in this book is: plot

Ideas expressed/message/plot: From book jacket: “ ‘Why did people say they were ‘falling in love’? Why didn’t they step into love, or slide into it like a baseball player heading for home? Was it the thrill, ike jumping off a high dive, or the fear of not knowing how they might land?’
For Lucy Beauregard, each day in her sleepy southern town looks a lot like the next – days of riding her bicycle and skinny dipping with her friends, delivering flowers to the wonderfully odd folks of her town, and listening to her mama dish out her Loo-zee-anna gospel of wisdom.
Falling in love isn’t something she has planned. In fact, there are a whole lot of things she hasn’t planned, like her two best friends getting their first tastes of love, or the attraction her very-married mama seems to have or another man, or the confusing flurry in her own heart stirred by a handsome – and much older – stranger. And then there’s the arrival of Dewey, a boy unlike anyone she’s ever known. In one sweltering summer, Lucy not only discovers herself but soars into love, Cajun style.”

Favorite characters, quotes/lines: Lucy, Evie, Mary Jordan: they were really funny and reminded me of my closest friends, though we’ve never ridden our bikes naked; Dewey: he was cute and I wished I could hear him play the piano; Tante Pearl: she was a wise, wise lady

When I finished this book I felt: It was really funny, and sometimes outrageous. I thought it was a really great book though – full of wisdom about love. I liked the different types of love and relationships throughout the book: first love, married love, love that is found after loss, love that is found later in life, etc.

Other books to read by this author: The Stones of Mourning Creek

I would recommend this book to: all girls and their moms… it was a really touching book about love, without being shallow or immature