I totally enjoyed the first part of Dreaming Southern by Linda Bruckheimer. The heroine, Lila Mae Wooten, reminded me of a sort of Lucy Ricardo/Carmichael from Kentucky. She means well but is so scatterbrained and impulsive, she just gets herself and her kids into all kinds of crazy messes. She even has a sort of Ethel-like sidekick with a juvenile delingquent son. I alternated between laughing and rolling my eyes at all the predicaments the Wootens get into because of Lila Mae's desire to see the sights and please her kids. The trouble is ... just when I found myself at what I thought was a truly hilarious cliff hanger, the whole thing stopped. A new story took over then, one taking place about 30 years later. Wait a minute, I wanted to say. That can't be all. What happened to...? and to ...?

I was hooked by the opening line: "Usually Lila Mae Wooten had to scream bloody murder before her kids would pay any attention to her at all..." A lot of us moms have felt that way, right? I was really disappointed, though, because I felt like I walked into a booby trap and fell down a tiger trap or something. I would have given it a higher rating otherwise!

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I truly enjoyed the first half of this book, relating the journey of a young mother who is driving from Kentucky to California with four kids. Lots of really funny, if implausible, mishaps. The second half, however, occurs much later when the kids are grown and the narrator has been in California for many years. It does tie up loose ends, nonetheless, it loses the spirit of the first half. I still recommend it.

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Fun, very fast read. The story would appeal to anyone who enjoys a "good story".

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A Kentucky housewife sets off to drive her four kids and remaining worldly possessions to California to join her husband, but her tendency to get sidetracked leads them into various adventures. There's a climax, but not really a resolution, and then there's a novella-length epilogue about the character, decades later. Bruckheimer loses points for that distraction.

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I didn't care for this at all. A mother, three bratty kids, and a baby head out to California to join her husband. Instead of being entertaining, it came across as an addle-brained mother who couldn't control her kids. When her kids smart-mouthed her and disobeyed her, she didn't do anything at all - just screamed at them, which didn't help anything. She also couldn't make up her mind which direction to go. She constantly backtracked because she had to go visit some relative that she hadn't seen in a while.
I gave up on it about one-quarter of the way through. Don't waste your time on this book.

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Great story, didn't want to put it down.

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