Readers will savor The Friendship Club, an inviting standalone novel by Robyn Carr (The Family Gathering), in which four Nevada women of varying ages--all associated with a popular cooking show--support each other through loneliness, life changes, and new love.
Each character is a food lover. Marni Jean McGuire is 57 years old and a popular TV chef--widowed, remarried, and now happily divorced. Her meddling daughter, Bella, is an assistant district attorney; she is overjoyed to be expecting a baby with her lawyer husband. She urges her mother to start dating again, which she also decides she will orchestrate. Then there is Ellen, the introverted, always-reliable producer of Marni Cooks, who is Marni's loyal older friend. Having spent the majority of her adult life caring for a severely disabled husband, now deceased, Ellen feels reinvigorated by a budding romance with a neighbor. Sophia Garner is a student intern working on Marni's show. Sophia's amorous involvement with a man whom she learns has a creepy, controlling dark side makes her suddenly feel homesick for her native Argentina. When Sophia's father, Sam, an agriculture teacher, meets Marni and offers advice on her vegetable-herb garden, his "kind spirit" and "strong heart" instantly appeal to Marni. Is romance best when sought out or when grown organically?
"Sustainable food is what binds families and communities and countries," says one character. And through the tender, graceful storytelling dexterity of Robyn Carr, so, too, does friendship, love, and romance. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines