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The Wisdom of Hair
Author: Kim Boykin
Purchase on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Synopsis: Life can be beautiful, but it takes a little work...
“The problem with cutting your own hair is that once you start, you just keep cutting, trying to fix it, and the truth is, some things can never be fixed. The day of my daddy’s funeral, I cut my bangs until they were the length of those little paintbrushes that come with dime-store watercolor sets. I was nine years old. People asked me why I did it, but I was too young then to know I was changing my hair because I wanted to change my life.”In 1983, on her nineteenth birthday, Zora Adams finally says goodbye to her alcoholic mother and their tiny town in the mountains of South Carolina. Living with a woman who dresses like Judy Garland and brings home a different man each night is not a pretty existence, and Zora is ready for life to be beautiful.
With the help of a beloved teacher, she moves to a coastal town and enrolls in the Davenport School of Beauty. Under the tutelage of Mrs. Cathcart, she learns the art of fixing hair, and becomes fast friends with the lively Sara Jane Farquhar, a natural hair stylist. She also falls hard for handsome young widower Winston Sawyer, who is drowning his grief in bourbon. She couldn’t save Mama, but maybe she can save him.
As Zora practices finger waves, updos, and spit curls, she also comes to learn that few things are permanent in this life—except real love, lasting friendship, and, ultimately… forgiveness.
Brought to you by TeamNerd Reviewer Annabell Cadiz
Warning: There will be minor spoilers and sarcasm and slight ranting.
Side Note: Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review and to Book Nerd Tours for the opportunity to be apart of this tour.
Review: The Wisdom of Hair . . . Not so much wisdom as it was a guide to the type of men you do not want to date. Ever. Or the type of woman you do not want to be. Ever.
For those of you
who think you’ll be getting a book filled with funny and heartfelt lessons from
inside a Southern beauty salon, think again. Now the salon is featured and a
few incidents happen there but nothing that personally has to do with the main
character or anything that offers any real “wisdom” as the title suggest. I was
disappointed in that. The salon acted more as a backdrop and a place for the
main character to go because she needed to go somewhere in the story instead of staying home all day. The salon
is also where Zora (main character) meets Sara Jane who would become her best
friend but that was the only good aspect of the salon.
Zora May Adams
is a character I would have loved to have been face to face with just so I could
give a good tongue lashing about how much of idiot she is and tell her to go
back to live in the mountains if she’s going to continue to act like such a
fool. Zora hails from mountain folk. She had a daddy who was a drunk and was
killed by a train, a grandmother who was the only one to really teach her
anything of value and mother who had a daughter at fourteen-years-old and had
no clue how to raise a daughter. The mom became a drunk and pretended to be
Judy Garland after the husband died and hasn’t been able to stop whoring
herself around ever sense. Zora decides it’s about time she leaves and starts a
life somewhere else, hence, why she ends up in beauty school. She’s able to get
an apartment owned by a really hot guy named Winston and doesn’t have to pay
rent as long as she cooks his meals for him and leaves them out on the old
picnic table.
And that is
where the trouble with this book begins. Good ole’ Winston. Zora decides he’s
just too gorgeous she must fall in love with him the very first thirty seconds
of him meeting her. I mean how can a girl not fall for a guy who says, “Okay
then. Here’s some money for groceries. I get home around six; you can just
leave the plate on the picnic table by the porch”? Then he barely speaks to you
throughout the remainder of the book, uses you for sex and to feel better about
his pathetic, drunken existence. It’s enough to make a girl swoon (insert
sarcastic voice).
That’s how Zora
spends the majority of the book. Watching Winston drink himself nearly into a
coma every night through her apartment window but they never exchange words or
get to know each other. Winston doesn’t notice her existence until one night
when she puts on an old dress Zora found in a box under her bed that belonged
to Winston’s late wife (because that’s not all creepy??) and doesn’t wear a
bra. Yet there’s Zora, falling madly in love with him and wallowing in self-pity
night after night after night. If I was Sara Jane I would have smacked her over
the head with a frying pan and tell her to get a damn grip!
Wisdom of Hair had more to do with what was happening
with the characters around Zora than with Zora herself. I think it may be the
first time I read a book where the main character wasn’t the actual focus of
the story. Often times Zora acted as a secondary character to Sara Jane or Sara’s
family. Or Mrs. Cathcart, the beauty school teacher, and her husband and the
salon. Zora became a focal point of her own story in the third half of the book
but by then her characterization could not be salvaged.
The plot doesn’t
exist much. There’s Zora acting as a peeping tom to Winston every night and
growing her fantasy of love bordering on psychotic obsession. There’s Sara Jane
finding the love of her life and getting married. There’s Zora starting a “relationship”
with Winston (not really a relationship—just sex where she’s dumb enough to
believe it’s more than that) and there’s Zora’s mother who comes back into her
life for about a chapter then disappears again.
Speaking of Zora’s
mother, I thought Zora’s judgments of her mother where extremely hypocritical.
She can’t stand to be around her mother because her mother drinks too much and
brings home men who only want to use her for sex and beat her around. Winston
may not have had the nerve to beat a girl around but he never had the balls
either to be a real man and Zora knew it right from the beginning. She spends
the entirety of this booking drinking ALL THE TIME so I found it ridiculous how
much she criticized her mother for being such a drunk yet decided Winston didn’t
deserve the same judgment because he was just too beautiful to look at and she
didn’t deserve the same judgment because she wasn’t as stupid as her mother.
Yet there she was, falling for a drunk who could only offer her a glass of wine
and cheap sex every night. No conversation (unless it had to do with sex). No
intimacy. No ROMANCE.
The story offered
nothing of value or substance. Zora and Winston’s so called “romance” offered
nothing of value or substance. Er well, I guess it’s valuable to know as a
woman that you probably don’t want to go around falling in love with perfect
strangers you hardly know . . . or maybe let a perfect stranger live in an
apartment above your house because she may turn out to be a serious stalker on
the verge of a nervous breakdown . . . but outside of that, The Wisdom of Hair had little to do with
wisdom and more to do with a girl who couldn’t seem to learn any.
There were a few
elements to the story that miraculously did manage to work (although they couldn’t
save the book). Sara Jane is confidant, honest and firecracker. I loved her!
She’s a great best friend and a smart girl. Mrs. Cathcart was patient, kind,
loving and strong. She also had a fierceness about her. I wouldn’t want to get
her mad at me! Mrs. Farquhar was so sweet and so cute and a such a great mom. I
loved the fact that the book was set in the South in the 80’s and the old
hairstyles that were introduced from that era. The characterization with the secondary
characters was done FAR BETTER than with Zora or Winston. Although there were
many scenes that focused on things that didn’t matter or details that didn’t
matter, the secondary characters were still pretty fun to read.
The Wisdom of Hair is a good book to read when you have
nothing better lying around or need something to do while you tan at the beach.
About the Author: I was born in Augusta, Georgia, but raised in South
Carolina in a home with two girly sisters and great parents. So when you read
my stuff if there is ever some deranged mama or daddy terrorizing the
protagonist, I want to make it clear, it’s not them.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I had a happy, boring childhood, which sucks if you’re a
writer because you have to create your own crazy. PLUS after you’re published
and you’re being interviewed, for some reason, it’s very appealing that the
author actually lived in Crazy Town or somewhere in the general vicinity.
What I did have going for me was two things. One, my
grandfather, Bryan Standridge, was an amazing storyteller. He held court under
an old mimosa tree on the side of his yard, and people used to come by in
droves just to hear him tell stories. He told tales about growing up in rural
Georgia and shared his unique take on the world. As a child, I was enthralled,
but when I started to write, really write, I realized what a master teacher of
pacing and sensory detail he was.
The other major influence on my writing is my ADHDness. Of
course when I was a kid, nobody knew what that was. Compared to my older
sisters, I knew something was “wrong” with me, so I learned to multitask like
crazy and excel at things I did well to make up for things I couldn’t do like
math and sitting still.
Today, I’m an empty nester of two kids with a husband,
three dogs, and 126 rose bushes. I write stories about strong southern women
because that’s what I know. I’m an accomplished public speaker, which basically
means I’m good at talking.
If this doesn’t tell you what you want to know, check out
my blog for a few laughs and some good stuff on writing, gardening, food, and,
of course, hair.
Giveaway!
1 Winner will receive the Kindle pictured above. (WiFi, 6in Display)
4 Winners will get 2 ARCS each, on for them self and one for their hair stylist!
4 Winners will get 2 ARCS each, on for them self and one for their hair stylist!
Shipping in the US only, no PO Boxes. Must be 13+ to Enter
