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Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke Book Club

Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, both authors and readers, selected and announced their first book club recommended read selections of 2021 for the month of January this week. I am excited to read all four of these books. Two of them are on my bookshelf and the other two are on my e-reader tablet as e-galleys from the publisher.


The Books Selected Are As Follows:

  1. This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousens.

  2. Eliza Stats A Rumor by Jane L. Rosen

  3. People Like Her by Ellery Lloyd.

  4. Better Luck Next Time by Julia Claiborne Johnson.

This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousens



Book Synopsis

In this warm-hearted love story for fans of One Day in December, a man and woman who were born at the same hospital on New Year’s Day meet on their thirtieth birthday and discover the many times their paths almost crossed before.


Down-to-earth baker Minnie Cooper knows two things with great certainty: that her New Year’s birthday has always been unlucky, and that it’s all because of Quinn Hamilton, a man she’s never met. Minnie and Quinn were born at the same hospital just after midnight on New Year’s Day thirty years before, and not only did he edge her out by mere minutes to win the cash prize for being the first baby born in London in 1990, but he stole the name she was meant to have, as well. With luck like that, it’s no wonder each of her birthdays has been more of a disaster than the one before.


When Minnie unexpectedly runs into Quinn at a New Year’s party on their mutual thirtieth birthday, she sees only more evidence that fortune has continued to favor him. The handsome, charming business owner truly seems to have it all–including the perfect girlfriend. But if Quinn and Minnie are from different worlds, why do they keep bumping into each other? And why is it that each frustrating interaction somehow seems to leave them both hoping for more?


 

Eliza Stars A Rumor by Jane L. Rosen


Book Synopsis

The author of Nine Women, One Dress delivers a charming, unforgettable novel about four women, one little lie, and the big repercussions that unite them all.


It wasn't supposed to happen this way. When Eliza Hunt created The Hudson Valley Ladies' Bulletin Board fifteen years ago she was happily entrenched in her picture-perfect suburban life with her husband and twin preschoolers. Now, with an empty nest and a crippling case of agoraphobia, the once-fun hobby has become her lifeline. So when a rival parenting forum threatens the site's existence, she doesn't think twice before fabricating a salacious rumor to spark things up a bit.


It doesn't take long before that spark becomes a flame.


Across town, new mom and site devotee Olivia York is thrown into a tailspin by what she reads on the Bulletin Board. Allison Le is making cyber friends with a woman who isn't quite who she says she is. And Amanda Cole, Eliza's childhood friend, may just hold the key to unearthing why Eliza can't step out of her front door.


In all this chaos, one thing is for sure...Hudson Valley will never be the same.


Funny, romantic, raw, and hopeful, this is a story about being a woman and of the healing power of sisterhood.


 

People Like Her by Ellery Lloyd.


Book Synopsis

A razor-sharp, wickedly smart suspense debut about an ambitious influencer mom whose soaring success threatens her marriage, her morals, and her family’s safety.


Followed by Millions, Watched by One


To her adoring fans, Emmy Jackson, aka @the_mamabare, is the honest “Instamum” who always tells it like it is.


To her skeptical husband, a washed-up novelist who knows just how creative Emmy can be with the truth, she is a breadwinning powerhouse chillingly brilliant at monetizing the intimate details of their family life.


To one of Emmy’s dangerously obsessive followers, she’s the woman that has everything—but deserves none of it.


As Emmy’s marriage begins to crack under the strain of her growing success and her moral compass veers wildly off course, the more vulnerable she becomes to a very real danger circling ever closer to her family.


In this deeply addictive tale of psychological suspense, Ellery Lloyd raises important questions about technology, social media celebrity, and the way we live today. Probing the dark side of influencer culture and the perils of parenting online, People Like Her explores our desperate need to be seen and the lengths we’ll go to be liked by strangers. It asks what—and who—we sacrifice when make our private lives public, and ultimately lose control of who we let in. . . .

 

Better Luck Next Time by Julia Claiborne Johnson



Book Synopsis

"Do you want to read something funny? Let’s say, a novel set at a divorce ranch in Reno in the 1930s? A book with memorably eccentric characters, sparkling dialogue, a satisfying plot twist, and some romance and sex? A feel-good literary comedy/western? Here it is, then, the book you've been looking for: Julia Claiborne Johnson’s Better Luck Next Time."—Julie Schumacher, author of Dear Committee Members and The Shakespeare Requirement


The eagerly anticipated second novel from the bestselling author of Be Frank with Me, a charming story of endings, new beginnings, and the complexities and complications of friendship and love, set in late 1930s Reno.


It’s 1938 and women seeking a quick, no-questions split from their husbands head to the “divorce capital of the world,” Reno, Nevada. There’s one catch: they have to wait six-weeks to become “residents.” Many of these wealthy, soon-to-be divorcees flock to the Flying Leap, a dude ranch that caters to their every need.


Twenty-four-year-old Ward spent one year at Yale before his family lost everything in the Great Depression; now he’s earning an honest living as a ranch hand at the Flying Leap. Admired for his dashing good looks—“Cary Grant in cowboy boots”—Ward thinks he’s got the Flying Leap’s clients all figured out. But two new guests are about to upend everything he thinks he knows: Nina, a St Louis heiress and amateur pilot back for her third divorce, and Emily, whose bravest moment in life was leaving her cheating husband back in San Francisco and driving herself to Reno.


A novel about divorce, marriage, and everything that comes in between (money, class, ambition, and opportunity), Better Luck Next Time is a hilarious yet poignant examination of the ways friendship can save us, love can destroy us, and the family we create can be stronger than the family we come from.


 

Let me know in the comments if you are looking forward to reading any (or all) of these books.


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