Miss Julia's School of Beauty

Miss Julia #6

by Ann B. Ross

Imagine Aunt Bea from The Andy Griffith Show with a lot more backbone and confidence," wrote Publishers Weekly about Miss Julia, Ann Ross's endearing Dixie doyenne of decorum. In her latest romp, Miss Julia (now Mrs. Sam Murdoch) returns from her whirlwind elopement, only to find herself roped into Hazel Marie's scheme to raise money by throwing a beauty pageant. Though it all seems a tad distasteful, it's nothing compared to the revelation that Pigeon Forge, the marriage mill across the state line that wedded Julia and Sam, might not be legitimate. And a flustered Julia can't help wondering whether she and Sam can keep up appearances before the town finds out they might be living in sin.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Mystery, Chick Lit, Southern, Audiobook, Cozy Mystery

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Ann B. Ross, who taught literature at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, is the author of Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind, one of the most popular Southern debut novels in years, Miss Julia Takes Over, Miss Julia Throws a Wedding, and Miss Julia Hits the Road. She lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

Reviews

[Katrina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm currently listening to this one but don't see the CD's listed. I have to admit, Miss Julia is working my nerves in this story. She really gets ahead of herself and jumps to all sorts of conclusions with no real evidence to back them up, which could be funny, but for now just comes off as annoying and self-centered. And upon completing the book, I still felt like Miss Julia was just too far out there in over assuming things without the slightest bit of evidence. I felt like if I were Sam, I wouldn't want to put up with her! So far, this one is my least favorite of the series.

[Claudia · Rating 1 out of 5]

A better title for this book would be "Miss Julia Makes a Mountain Out of a Molehill". Tedious and boring. I'll be taking a long break from Miss Julia.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I love the Miss Julia books this one made me wonder where the author was going. She made me think Miss Julia was way too paranoid and that wasn't good...other than that I loved it. I hate to give it a "not so great" review but it wasn't my favorite so far. I will keep reading though!!!

[Carol Jones-Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

(First Read: 07/2011) I loved this book, and love this series. Was looking for something light and quick before my next book club reads come in. Read it in two short afternoons. The characters are enjoyable, very southern, and are pleasant. Imagine Aunt Bee from The Andy Griffith Show with a lot more backbone and confidence," wrote Publishers Weekly about Miss Julia, Ann Ross's endearing Dixie doyenne of decorum.

Miss Julia is a spitfire widow, her deceased husband Wesley Lloyd had a fling with Hazel Marie and they had a child Little Lloyd, who Miss Julia has taken into her home. Miss Julia has become very fond of Hazel Marie, she has her going to religion classes with Pastor Larry Ledbetter of the Presbyterian Church. Little Lloyd loves his mother but admires Miss Julia. Hazel Marie has gone on a date with Mr. William T. Hodge who is a fund raiser for the church, and has now turned up missing. Miss Julia and Lillian her housekeeper got a call from Hazel Marie that got cut off in mid sentence, so Miss Julia goes to the police, who will not help her because not enough time has passed. So she hires a PI, Mr. Pickens to help her locate Hazel Marie. Mr. Pickens has never had a client like Miss Julia, which is part of the fun. I really enjoyed the story of this book. It was mysterious, comical, and engaging. It was a nice change from the typical murder mysteries I usually read. The book is also kid friendly which I appreciate. It seems that foul language is so accepted now days, that somehow works it way into everything. Not the case here, just a well written story that anyone can be comfortable reading. The ending is not what you expect, so just wait for as you read, you won't be disappointed.

In her latest romp, Miss Julia—now Mrs. Sam Murdoch—returns from her whirlwind elopement, only to find herself roped into Hazel Marie's scheme to raise money by throwing a beauty pageant. Though it all seems a tad distasteful, it's nothing compared to the revelation that Pigeon Forge, the marriage mill across the state line that wedded Julia and Sam, might not be legitimate. And a flustered Julia can't help wondering whether she and Sam can keep up appearances before the town finds out they might be living in sin.

Second Read: (10/21) This is the first time that we came across the story similitude as the second one is. When they learn they are not officially married, and the story, boy, what a story it turned out to be. Miss Julia is fast becoming a Southern literary icon, with narrator Cynthia Darlow's excellent presentation aiding her popularity. In this outing, not only is Miss Julia questioning the validity of her wedding chapel marriage, but she's also assisting Hazel Marie, her late husband's mistress, with a beauty contest for Miss Abbot County Sheriff's Department. The usual luscious ingredients of Southern manners, sex, and modern and traditional values collide with human foibles, causing hilarious results. Darlow is splendid as she personifies Little Lloyd (a 9-year-old white boy), Miss Lillian and Leticia (Julia's African-American maid and her granddaughter), Mr. Pickens (Hazel Marie's detective/beau), and Sam (Miss Julia's intended) plus the young, unformed beauty pageant contestants. Darlow's skill lies in each character being splendid without overdoing the accent. One of Ross's best for old--and new--fans.

Forgot to mention that Julia is having some of her home redone so that more people could live there. They had a major flooding with the new construction team for the Beauty Contest for girls in the Abbott County. She is working with one of the contestants, helping her with make-up, her talent, how to walk properly and how to smile and express herself in a good way. With all this going on, Sam Murdoch took Little Lloyd and traveled to see if they could find where the preacher is, to find out if he was legal or not. He wasn't. So if they are not married, they will get married again. The pageant was a complete success, the contestants did well, and the family became much more united..... Great Book
Highly recommend.

[Maggie Grace · Rating 1 out of 5]

Drivel. I did enjoy a few others in this series, but this one was ridiculously slow and stupid. It's 2005 and she has no cell phone, no internet and she doesn't "know if she's married" or can't find the preacher who may or may not have married her so her husband needs to cross the state line and see if he can track him down because Miss Julia doesn't want to live in sin! Meanwhile, her late husband's girlfriend and his son are living with her in her own house. Miss Julia worries that Hazel Marie, the mother of her husband's child might be carrying on with a man, never mind that she used to live with Miss Juia's late husband. It's a little late there, lady. And what the heck year is it anyway? 1945? Not a believable plot. And don't get me started on the ugly beauty queens. Just one of the worst books ever written.

[Rita · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the hilarious Miss Julia books, and this one did not disappoint. Miss Julia and Sam finally do their wedding vows by eloping to Tennessee. However, a problem arises that causes them much consternation, and hilarity ensues. In the meantime, Hazel Marie decides to hold a beauty pageant for the local police department, and problems arise there as well. Miss Julia and Lillian try to help with the "beauty" part of the pageant and try to school the contestants on their make-up regimens. It was a very funny read.

[Julie Trapp · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 They did it! Ran off an eloped in Pigeon Forge. But wait - was the preacher legitimate? Miss Julia refuses to live with Sam (in sin and disgrace) until the whereabouts of the preacher are determined and if he was really a preacher. In the meantime, Hazel Marie wants to make money and decides to throw a beauty pageant. Lame book, silly storyline (just get married again at the courthouse) and the black people use such appalling language - make them sound illiterate.

[Julie Souther · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as all the previous ones! But I will continue on to read the next few and hopefully it will be back up to be as funny as the previous ones.

[Cassie Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though Miss Julia returns to Abbotsville happily married, things don't stay that way for long. Turns out her marriage to Sam Murdock may not exactly be legal, and considering they've been sharing a marriage bed, there could be a scandal unlike any the town's ever seen. While Sam tries to sort out whether or not they're legally married, Miss Julia has another problem. Hazel Marie is holding a beauty pageant, and she needs help to make sure the girls know how to act with decorum. Who else can she turn to but Miss Julia, the most decorous of southern ladies? Desperate to keep the town from finding out about the maybe-legal-maybe-not status of her marriage, Miss Julia is once again in over her head. Can she keep her reputation intact and help Hazel Marie throw a successful beauty pageant? Well, she's certainly going to try.

This was another good book in the Miss Julia series. The main cast is pretty well-known by book 6, and it's so much fun to come back to them and see what else Miss Julia gets them into. The farther into the series the reader gets, the more characters you get to meet from Abbotsville. With a wonderful cast of new characters as well as the familiar, this book is a delight to read. Miss Julia is her usual anxious self, and though it always gets her into trouble, we all love her for it. if you enjoyed the first five books, I cannot recommend this enough. Also, this isn't the book to start with if you're new to the series.

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miss Julia has recently remarried - or has she? Returning from her honeymoon--spent at Dollywood --Julia discovers that the "preacher" who married them at a drive-in wedding chapel may not have been authorised to perform marriages. Horrified at the idea that she may have been cohabiting and fornicating, she at once ceases "marital activities" and banishes poor Sam to the guest room. Meanwhile, Hazel Marie is organising a beauty contest to raise money for police dogs, and Julia is roped in to rehearse the contestants.

I loved this sixth book in the series. Some of the books have very little plot, but this one had plenty of genuinely funny situations. Miss Julia is a treat, Sam is lovely, and my only worry is the racial stereotypes.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Number 6 in the series.
Miss Julia made a very hasty leap at the end of the previous book and is now feeling the repercussions - some expected and some not so much. True to her proper Southern lady sensibilities, she overthinks everything and is overwrought as things start falling apart. Add in Hazel Marie dragging her into a whirlwind preparations for the Miss Abbott County Sheriff Department Pageant and she's got just about all she can handle.
Sure, Miss Julia can be high minded and judgemental and a little quick to fuss over the worst case scenarios - but that's why we love her.

[Susy Skidmore · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love this series of books, but I really wanted to smack Miss Julia back into reality. She’s exhausting in this book. Sometimes I think the author gets too deep in Miss Julia’s thoughts and I find myself skimming over those pages. I hope the rest in this series aren’t as difficult to get through.

[Virginia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am pretty sure this is the dumbest book I have ever read. Why did I keep reading???? Because it had to get more interesting. Oops... No...I was wrong.

[Penny · Rating 1 out of 5]

Could not be bothered to finish it...got about halfway through. I did not find this book interesting or funny (unlike the first few books in this series).

[Heidi Burkhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of the Miss Julia books. Hilarious!

[Kelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual, Miss Julia is a hoot! LOL moments, all the way to the end.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

First of all the recording was terrible. Someone digitally recorded the tapes. The tape number was recorded as well as issues with the physical tapes, quivers, stutters and repeats due to what were probably deterioration in the tapes.
Secondly the subject matter was just dumb. A beauty pageant I could handle but the delirium over are we married or not was tiresome.
Just go get married again and stop nattering on about a nonexistent question of morality.
Just when I was starting to like this series again.

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poor Miss Julia. This should be an especially happy time for her, as she and Sam start their married life. But due to a number of circumstances, Julia is besieged by doubt and a loss of self-confidence. I was glad to see her starting to regain some of her usual spunkiness.

[Lora Shouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poor Miss Julia! No matter what she does, she can’t escape the effects of negative gossip. No sooner has she thwarted one nasty rumor than another one pops up to plague her. Probably she’d do better to take Hazel Marie’s advice and do what has worked best for her so far – hold her head up and ignore the gossip.

Miss Julia is busy trying to work out how to live with Sam following their sudden elopement at the end of the previous book. Should they live in his house? Or hers? And how to get her cook Lillian and Sam’s manservant, James, to get along peacefully? But before Miss Julia has any of that sorted out, her long-time neighbor, LuAnne has to tell her the story she read in a country music magazine about country star Sonny Sutton, who married in Pigeon Forge in much the way Julia and Sam had and later discovered that the preacher who had married him and his new wife may not have been a properly licensed pastor.

Miss Julia promptly has Sam check into this. It turns out that Sonny was married by the same preacher who married them. Further checking reveals that he has since disappeared. Miss Julia finds herself forced into taking remedial action to be sure she is not living in sin. But at the same time, they must not let on what has happened so that the neighbors don’t find out. Sam undertakes a more thorough search and contacts Sonny’s people for help in locating the missing preacher.

The last thing Julia wants to do is go to her regular preacher, Pastor Ledbetter, with whom she has been at odds for years, to get properly married.

But in the meantime, Hazel Marie has acquired some challenges of her own. Not evil gossip in her case, but a job of work nevertheless. The sheriff’s department, in an attempt to increase public awareness of what they need and raise money for some extra members of the canine squad, has decided to sponsor a beauty pageant, and they have asked Hazel Marie to run it. Hazel Marie asks Miss Julia to help her with the pageant – to help give it the proper tone. Later, she also asks Etta Mae Wiggins to be her assistant. Miss Julia doesn’t much like Etta Mae; earlier she was Sam’s home health aide after he broke his leg, and Miss Julia thought she was making a much too obvious play for his affections.

It turns out that Hazel Marie and Etta Mae make a very competent team for running a beauty pageant. But some of the contestants turn out to be almost terminally annoying.

Shortly before the contest, the errant fake preacher turns up in Abbotsville where he seems to have relatives. He seems to believe the Lord approves of him. And, while threatening to reveal the full list of people he married to some television interviewer, he intimates that he will not have Julia and Sam’s names on that list provided they can fix it so that his niece (the worst contestant of the bunch, even though she proves to be a talented singer), wins the beauty pageant.

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. While this book is written with the same sense of chaotic misadventure as the rest of the series, the plot of this book was not particularly interesting to me. There are 2 main plot lines - the first is a beauty pageant (which held zero interest for me) and the second is Miss Julia freaking out like a crazy person about whether her marriage to Sam was legal (which became pretty ridiculous after a while).

I do enjoy reading this series, but I don’t love all 23 books. There are a few, like this one, that depart from delightfully funny and head closer to ridiculous in an unbelievable way. The way Miss Julia reacts to the marriage situation fell into that category for me.

If you were to skip this book, you would not miss anything important from the series. Nothing happens in this book that changes anything from the series story arcs. Nothing moves forward for any characters and there are no major changes in anyone’s lives. That is probably another reason I didn’t care for this book very much.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

One star might seem a bit harsh, especially since I have enjoyed the previous books in this series quite a bit. Miss Julia is an "active Senior" as we prefer to be called now, although her age has never been disclosed and she would be way too polite to tell anyone, but I've always thought she was around my age. She lives in a small town not far from where I live in North Carolina and I have heretofore found the books quite charming and funny. However, Miss Julia got on my nerves in this one. She is overly prudish and whiny, which my Miss Julia is not. Aside from that, the story of the young Ashley, thrust into a beauty pageant she wants no part of, and the further maturing of Hazel Marie was delightful. If only Miss Julia had shut up through most of it. I will not give up on the series, but I hope Miss Julia is back to her old strong-willed, somewhat stuffy, but loving self in the next one.

[Kristin Hart · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Miss Julia Series is tied with The Southern Sisters Mysteries by Anne George and The Cat Who Series by Lilian Jackson Braun for my all time favorite series!! The characters are lovable and once you start reading the first one, you just can’t stop! You are on the edge of your seat dying to know what happens next until you get through every book! I searched for years for another great series like this and I couldn’t be happier to have found this one! A true treasure! There aren’t many great writers that can capture my attention like Ann B. Ross has in this series. Well worth the time! If you’re on audible, the narrator is amazing!

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a riot! That Latisha is a hoot - glad she showed up again. Interesting new characters in the fashion show. My only disappointment is that Hazel Marie has not yet opened her own beauty school - maybe in a future book...What suspense with Sam and her and their marriage. Another great read, followed immediately by the next book which I had already thank goodness! Miss Julia's complexes about Sam and her relationship are interesting to navigate with her. An intriguing yet believable character, in both senses of the word!

[Dawn King · Rating 5 out of 5]

The adventures of Miss Julia is captured by Ann B. Ross in this popular series. While this is not high literature, I thoroughly enjoy the situations that Miss Julia finds herself in. She is like a madcap Angela Lansbury careening through her small southern town trying to please everyone while dealing with her many personal crazy friends and relations. These are hilarious and often you can't put them down. I don't know why they never made this into a comedy series.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fantastic entry in this great series, Ann Ross keeps the humor at a consistent and sustainable level. I really appreciated the side story of Ashley, which had a satisfying and uplifting conclusion. Now that she is finally officially and formally married, perhaps some of Miss Julia's prudish ways will be replaced with hedonism and debauchery (jk lol). On to the next entry in the series!

[Allison Mclean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miss Julia and Sam are now married or are they? Did they get scammed? While they are trying to figure that out, Hazel Marie agrees to put a beauty pageant for the police department to raise funds for the canine unit. Of course she needs Miss Julia's help but also enlists Etta Mae, someone Julia thinks is after Sam.

[Lawanda Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book as well as all in the Miss Julia series. Good, light read for relaxation and some smiles. Humorous, plot twists, sometimes predictable, sometimes surprising. Well written fun for boomers and middle-age women.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

love the miss Julia series. never know what she is going to get herself into and this one is no exception. is she or is she not legally married? what she puts herself and her family through is hilarious. you can't help but to laugh. great read.

[Papa Moon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another win for Miss Julia!

One of the most convoluted, but warm and enjoyable Miss Julia stories I've read. It was delightful the way it all turned out. Well worth reading, y'heah?

[Jane Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another success from Ann B. Ross! I love it when I laugh out loud at Miss Julia. She has her character down pat. I totally enjoyed it when the book club was describing a book just like this one! A page-turner til the end!