The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Title: The Help
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Published By: Putnam (Feb. 10, 2009)
Genre: Realistic Fiction
My Rating: 5 Stars

Goodreads Description:
Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

My Review:
It is very rare these days that a book lives up to all the hype that it has been getting, which is why I am always apprehensive about starting a book that has such glowing reviews and that everyone has just loved. I hate being disappointed by a book that I have been excited about reading and really looking forward to. 
So it was with great apprehension that I started The Help. I wasn't expected it to be fabulous and I most certainly wasn't holding my breath.

I so love it when I am very pleasantly surprised that a book can and does live up to the hype, from the first page I loved this story. 

I fell in love with the three main characters, their stories, their hardships, their joys, their strength, their sense of humor and just the wonderful woman that they were.

This book had me laughing, it had me crying, smiling and all those other emotions in between.

This truly was just an amazing book. 

I even loved the authors dedication and acknowledgements at the end of the book. This book has definitely made my top 10 list of books I have loved reading this year, heck, that I have loved reading ever.

This book opens your eyes and makes you take a good look around you. I won't say it has changed my life but it certainly has made me a better person from reading it.

One of my favorite lines in this book is this:

"We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought." 
I love that line because I think that it is sometimes easy to forget that we are all just people. We have differences and we even look different but when it comes down to is simply that we are people, all of us.
This is a beautiful story about strength and doing what it right and standing up for what you believe in no matter what may happen. I truly think it is a story for everyone.