"No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club"

Marie Sharp is heading toward sixty and is just fine with it. She’s already had plenty of excitement in her life: sex and drugs in the freewheeling sixties, career and children, marriage and divorce. Now she’s ready to settle into a quiet, blissfully boring routine. No Italian classes or gym memberships or bicycle trips across Europe, thank you very much! Marie just wants to put her feet up and “start doing old things.”

She’s even sworn off men! But as it turns out, life still has some surprises in store, the biggest of which is a new grandson on the way. What’s more, Archie, her old childhood crush, suddenly reenters her life, and her closest friend falls seriously ill. Armed with a biting sense of humor, Marie wrestles with a life that refuses to follow her plans—and may still offer more possibilities than she realizes.

My Thoughts...

I found this book at a going out of business bookstore for $1.00. I loved the title, and thought it sounded like it would be a fun book to read. It is the fictional diary of Marie Sharp, a retired art teacher. It started out full of cranky wisdom and the ordinary ways of facing old age.  However....

I'm on the fence about this book, even though it had some fun moments at the beginning of the story, I did not find it a screamingly funny story about embracing life beyond middle age. It started out with a few cute and witty challenges that come with getting older, but as the story progressed it became more of a rant about being a grannie and what a wonderful grandson she had. Then there was a lot of talk about death, because she had a friend who was dying of cancer. It fizzled out about a fourth of the way through the book for me, when the fun and humor ended. Therefore...

I awarded this book 2**. This book is part of my personal library.