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• Friday, March 25th, 2022

Before writing fiction, Heather Woodhaven mainly wrote non-fiction freelance work and was a preschool teacher. She travelled from Kenya to the Caribbean and worldwide before getting married and having three children. Heather Woodhaven now bestows her love for adventures to the characters in her novels.

The Secret Life Of Book Club starts with Jeanine Phelps, a dental hygienist tired of living in “survival mode”. At one of her Book Club meetings, she suggests to her neighbours’ Book Club group, Paula, Anne and Kate, to live something new and exciting, some real adventures instead of reading about them in books. She proposes to have a fun activity every week chosen by one of them in turn and in alphabetical order. The idea is to enjoy and realise a wish or a dream they could never fulfill otherwise.

Weekly shared ventures, reunions, discussions, and amusement reinforce existing friendships and become an eye-opener for all of them about tackling and overcoming their long-buried existential problems that were now brought to the surface to be dealt with.

The book emphasizes the solid, binding, long-lasting friendship between women overwhelmed by their everyday mundane lives of wives and mothers seeking some escapades from their repetitive, taxing daily tasks and duties.

The Secret Life Of Book Club is a light, entertaining, easy read, “chick-lit” novel with little substance, lacking some depth. Nevertheless, the concept is original and unconventional about a group of book clubbers who take on different challenges instead of discussing books, experiencing things instead of reading about them.

Regrettably, the cloying parts and “all is well in the best of all possible worlds” make the story superficial and naively simplistic.

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Category: Book Reviews
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