I was really looking forward to reading this book. I loved
The Great Santini,
Lords of Discipline and
Prince of Tides is my all-time favorite book. But
South of Broad was very disappointing. In parts the writing is beautiful - classic Pat Conroy, but the dialogue
…more particularly is awful and the rest is just ordinary.
The plot is cliched and predictable, except for the ending, which did take me by surprise, but it wasn't worth slogging through the trite plot. The misfit, unpopular boy somehow in the summer before his senior year in high school make friends with a racially and socially disparate group of friends and ends up being the social conscience of the class. .... The group of friends has a gay guy, three orphans, two blacks, three socially elite kids and the leader of the group, the misfit Leo, and practically overnight in 1969 in the South, they all manage to form friendships that last a lifetime. It's a plot Danielle Steele would be proud of. (less)
