Published October 10th 2017 by Gallery
320 pages | Goodreads
Description: ❝M.J. Stark’s life is picture-perfect—she has her dream job as a magazine editor, a sexy doctor boyfriend, and a glamorous life in New York City. But behind her success, there is a debilitating sense of loneliness. So when her boss betrays her and her boyfriend offers her a completely new life in California, she trades her cashmere for caftans and gives it a try.
Once there, M.J. is left to fend for herself in a small beach town, with only the company of her elderly neighbor, Gloria, and an ocean that won’t shut up. One afternoon, M.J. discovers that Gloria has suddenly moved to Paris with her friends to honor a fifty-year-old pact. And in lieu of a goodbye, she’s left a mysterious invitation to a secret club—one that only reads erotic books.
Curious, M.J. accepts and meets the three other hand-selected club members. As they bond over naughty bestsellers and the shocking letters they inherited from the original club members, the four strangers start to divulge the intimate details of their own lives… and as they open up, they learn that friendship might just be the key to rewriting their own stories: all they needed was to find each other first.❞ (end of description)
MY RATING: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
REVIEW
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It follows M.J. leaving her job in New York to move across country to California with her boyfriend. As soon as she settles in she meets their lively and welcoming neighbor Gloria. Days go by and soon after M.J. learns that Gloria has moved to Paris with her lifelong friends and has left behind an invitation to M.J. to attend a mysterious club. This enigmatic meeting turns out to be the setup for a book club with other hand-picked members and thereafter all sorts of things happen, friendships develop, marriages are discussed, and the characters question their life’s choices.
What attracted me to the book was the book club theme and cover. One of the things I look forward to in my life are the monthly book club meetings I attend. The members and I get together, eat, drink, laugh, talk about the month’s book and update each other about our lives. We have a wonderful time and I wanted to read about other people’s similar experiences in a fictional setting.
Overall, I enjoyed the book but did not love it. I felt the characters lacked some depth and the situations were too far-fetched at some points. At the same time, the novel was light-hearted and a good break from the suspenseful reads I usually indulge in.