Audiobook Review - The Bookclub for Troublesome Women

Title: The Bookclub for Troublesome Women

Author: Marie Bostwick

Publisher: Harper Muse

Genre: Historical Fiction

{Thank you @librofm for the #gifted audiobook.  It’s narrated by Lisa Flanagan who does this genre a lot and is very good at it!}

▪️1960s

▪️A Neighborhood Bookclub

▪️The Feminine Mystique 

▪️Friendships

▪️Found Family

▪️A Feminist Revolution

Through a neighborhood bookclub in the 1960s, this book takes a look at women wanting more than just being wives and mothers, in a time when women couldn’t even open a bank account without their husband’s permission or get certain medications.  But it does it in a thoughtful way showing that it’s okay to only want to be a wife and mother, if that is your dream. 

Main character Margaret Ryan is a wife, mother to three, and lives in an exclusive D.C. suburban neighborhood.  Lately she’s feeling bored and restless and looking for more.  So she starts a bookclub!  Their first book is the The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.  

New neighbor Charlotte is not like the other suburban housewives—she’s so mysterious and intriguing!  Maragret is desperate to make a connection, so she invites her to the new bookclub.  Charlotte has the group sharing secrets over cocktails in no time!

Viv was a nurse in the Army and is now pregnant with her seventh baby!  Her family is her world, but she’s a damn good nurse too.

Bitsy is the baby of the group and is newly married to a man much older than her.  She works at an equestrian stable.  They are trying to have a baby, but Bitsy really wants to finish school and apply to be a veterinarian.

Along the way Margaret begins writing a fluff column for a magazine, but she really wants to write a bold truth of how women actually feel.  What they actually want and deserve.  How they should be seen.  With her girls help…she does just that!

Humorous. Thought Provoking. Nostalgic.  If you liked Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry, I think you’ll like this one too!