Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landnik

This was the first book read by the new Mom's Club booked club . . . the book club that I somehow DID NOT FIND OUT ABOUT until after the first meeting. Someone helpfully pointed out that if I would have read the second page of the newsletter, I would have seen it. Oops! Since I'm in charge of the newsletter starting next month - I won't let such things pass me by! I thought I better read this book before our book club meeting tomorrow so I would be caught up.

This was a good book. It was enthralling enough that it kept me awake and engrossed at 2 AM last week while I was running an XP-SWMM model for work. If that's not a ringing endorsement - I don't know what is!

The overall plot of Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons concerns the lives of five different women who live in a suburb of Minneapolis and have started a book club in 1968. The book tells the story of each woman and how they change over the thirty years they are involved in the book club. Faith is a woman with a secret past who is new to town with a loving pilot husband who is gone a lot and twins; Audrey is a woman who likes to live life to its fullest; Merit is a shy, quiet pastor's daughter witha controlling doctor husband; Kari is a 40-year old widow with a longing for a child; and Slip is a tiny "slip" of a woman who is always trying to change the world for the better. The title of the book comes from the name of the bookclub that one of the husbands bestowed on it.

I also liked how each chapter was for each woman and it listed the name of the book to discuss and why it was chosen. I was happy I had read a lot of the books and it gave me ideas for a few more I'd like to read in the future.

There were only a couple of things I didn't like. One was the characterization of one woman's gay son. Supposedly they are able to tell he is gay because he plays with dolls instead of trucks when he is a kid and runs like a girl - Please! That seemed a bit too much of a stereotype to me and very unrealistic. I also didn't care for Faith's letters to her mother at the end of each chapter.

If you are looking for a good book about women bonding together, this is it. I liked it much better than Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - a book I thought was highly overrated.