Temple Secrets (Unabridged)
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4.3 • 6 Ratings
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A town held together with secrets. A wealthy widow looking for an heir. One choice could shame high society into submission.
Eighty-year-old Southern aristocrat Iris Temple's health may be failing, but her wit is as sharp as ever. Before she joins her ancestral ghosts, she must pick an heir to take over her sprawling estate—and the book of secrets that's kept her family in power for generations. But between her scheming son, her estranged daughter who abandoned Savannah years ago, and her illegitimate half sister, she's working with slim pickings.
While only her half sister and cook have put up with her outlandish diet and constant bickering, she can't ignore the powerful hold her late father's 100-year-old mistress has over the two women. When someone leaks embarrassing snippets from the Temple family book, she half suspects the voodoo-practicing centenarian as the elites of Savannah teeter on the edge of revolt. With Iris fading fast, her ragtag bunch of potential heirs must reveal the leaker before the book's secrets tear the sleepy town apart.
Temple Secrets is a hilarious women's fiction novel with a Southern gothic flair. If you like wisecracking humor, headstrong women, and twisty mysteries, then you'll love Susan Gabriel's compelling tale of an unconventional inheritance.
Customer Reviews
Funny, rollicking, strong women, ghosts & more
I love a meaty novel that gives me a great story - especially Southern Gothic! – that is well written, teaches me a few things and makes me - at various points - laugh out loud and cry. Temple Secrets audiobook delivered all of that, with superb narration. I tend to be one of those people who laugh silently, but I burst out with a few in this audiobook! This novel is quite different from Gabriel’s The Secret Sense of Wildflower, which I heard a while ago, and was also really excellent.
In Temple Secrets, the story is narrated by four women: Queenie, Violet, Rose and Old Sally. These women, black and white, have a lot of shared family history and to varying extent, genes. Queenie is hilarious. Violet, her niece, has some psychic abilities inherited from Old Sally, her grandmother and the wise holder of the Gullah traditions. Rose is the estranged daughter of Iris Temple, the matriarch of this entrenched, elite Savannah family. The plot gradually reveals all the interconnects of the characters and a delicious outcome of Iris’s will. This wonderful story left me feeling fully satisfied.