Book 2/30.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Lwile is getting her groove back this year (liwe Lwile liwalo), so I decided to kick things off by reading about how Stella got hers back 😊
Stella Payne is forty-two, divorced, a high-powered investment analyst, mother of eleven-year-old Quincy – and she does it all. In fact, if she doesn’t do it, it doesn’t get done, from Little League carpool duty to analyzing portfolios to folding the laundry and bringing home the bacon. She does it all well, too, if her chic house, personal trainer, BMW and her loving son are any indication. So what if there’s been no one to share her bed with lately, let alone rock her world? Stella doesn’t mind too much; she probably wouldn’t have the energy for love – and all of love’s nasty fallout – anyway.
But when Stella takes a spur-of-the-moment vacation to Jamaica, her world gets rocked to the core not just by the relaxing effects of sun and sea and an island full of attractive men, but by one man in particular. He’s tall, lean, soft-spoken, Jamaican, smells of citrus and the ocean – and is half her age. The tropics have cast their spell and Stella soon realizes she has come to a cataclysmic not only must she confront her hopes and fears about love, she must question all of her expectations, passions, and ideas about life and the way she has lived it.
How Stella Got Her Groove Back is largely a fictionalized autobiography, retelling the story of how the author met a very attractive young man in Jamaica while on vacation and what happens after that. A lot of reviewers on Goodreads are not fans of the run-on sentences (that you can get a glimpse of from the book’s synopsis above), and while I normally do not like that style of writing, I did not have a problem with it. I also enjoyed the Jamaica setting and most of Stella’s inner monologue (though sis really WENT OFF every so often 😅). I would have enjoyed this a lot more if it had been edited for length as I found the story became a bit flat once Stella got back from America the first time. I also felt that, other than Stella and her son Quincy, none of the other characters were fully fleshed out.
This was my second Terry McMillan read (the first being A Day Late and a Dollar Short that I also rated 3 stars) and I look forward to watching its movie adaptation starring Angela Bassett and Taye Diggs.
** A guide to ratings **
1 star – did not like it
2 stars – it was okay
3 stars – liked it
4 stars – really liked it
5 stars – it was amazing
Lwile the Leo 