Bulls Island: A Lowcountry Tale

i have never read this author before. really ejoyed reading and did not want to put down..good to the very end.

I have read all of Dorothea Benton Frank's novels. I am a fan because she always accurately includes the history and local color of the Low Country. While this was not my favorite, I enjoyed reading it while vacationing on Isle of Palms.

This book was fantastic.I enjoy her work a lot. Since I am a Southern woman, I can relate to her subjects. I lent the book to a friend, now she wants to read more of Frank's books.

OK I'm an unabashed Dorothea Benton Frank devotee, but I LOVED this book. I love ALL her books, but I picked this up at a very low time in my life and found myself smiling and sighing with contentment throughout--and that takes a lot. It's just simply fun. Could the plot ever happen? Probably not. Would all the t's be crossed and the i's dotted by the end in a way that is just perfect? Uh uh. So what. You want reality? Get a heavy tome by Joyce Carol Oates (with no offense meant to her) and dive in. Get well and truly depressed. You want entertainment, human kindness, lovely people, a fun story? This is your book. I won't belabor the plot, as it's similar in many ways to Frank's other works. High-powered Manhattan single mom returns to South Carolina homeland after 20 years away, bearing many secrets. Secrets that can tear other lives apart. Especially for the only love of her life, J.D. Langley, whom she fled all those years ago--and whom she now has to have as her business partner on a huge development project. That project, developing Bulls Island, is handled with sensitivity and grace and a great deal of environmental information. Would that REAL developers had such "green protection" in their plans. Be that as it may, this is simply a terrific read, entertaining, fast-paced, can't-put-it-down old-fashioned pleasure.

I'm not a 'professional reviewer', I'm just a very avid reader, so please keep this in mind when you read this review. A very brief summary of this book - The main characters of this book are "Betts" McGee and J D Langley who, when we meet them 19 years ago are very young and very much in love. Through a tragic event on the day they become engaged, they seperate, Betts leaves South Carolina and breaks off from her family and JD. Moving forward 19 years and the true story starts. This book is filled with a variety of emotional upheavals - I laughed through many chapters and cried through the same number, but the one thing you can't get around is everyone in this novel carries some kind of secret. Secrets and lies - this is the glue that seems to hold these two families together for bettter or worse. Ms. Franks writes with a vividness and Southern style that makes you want to be sitting on your front porch sippin' at a Mint Julep while you watch the 'gators slowly swim by in the murky river. JD and Betts are thrown together again after 19 years when Betts, now a high-powered New Yorker, whose job it is to evaluate and restructure distressed properties for her company, finds herself forced to work on a project back home in South Carolina with Langley Developement , AND J D Langley on the Bulls Island project. Secrets and lies, and Betts seems to be hiding the bigggest secret and telling the largest lies. I was more than half-way through this book, before Ms Frank started to make me worry that the secrets will remain untold and the lies would remain un-apologized for...more chapters went by and I started to gnaw at my finger-nails thinking she could never pull this off. Just when i thought I couldn't stand another moment of suspence it happened...Betts secret is out. I read the last chapters with much skepticism thinking that the ending was just too pat, too easy...too false. But thank God for the epilogue. It sealed the deal in making this a perfect beach -read and for making me go to the bookstore to pick up all Ms. Franks books to add to my collection. On a side note - In the first quarter of the book, Betts does have a bit of a fling with someone so totally out of her comfort zone, that I had to wonder why Ms. Franks bothered. But, the pieces seem to fall together in the last chapters and I see why she had Betts do something so out of character! I also wanted to let you know that I was so impressed and amused and happy with this book, that I immediately went out and bought 3 more by this author.