Book Review: "Fat Fridays" by Judith Keim

* - I thought this would be like a cute, inspiring chick-lit filled cupcake with frosting. Instead, it was kind of like a half-baked fruit cake. When I have nothing nice to say I try not to say too much, so here goes.

On the box, this is the story of five women who meet together for calorie dense lunches and form solid friendships while supporting each other through various hardships. In this case, this means five disconnected stories with no solid conclusions and no great love or detail given to any of them.

Each woman gets her own chapter to start, so it takes five or so chapters for the story to even begin. This was a really hard slog and - I'm not going to lie - it took me a few days to even get through it. None of the women seemed relatable and none of them really had a hook that made me want to keep reading.

The main character is Sukie, recently divorced and with two adult children, she is sick of being the subject of town gossip and joins the Fat Fridays lunch group as there seems to be nothing else on her social calendar. Sukie is your typical house wife. Can't believe her husband cheated on her, overly concerned with her children's lives, loves to cook and is eagerly awaiting the birth of her first grandchild. She meets a younger man, and thus ensues the most unconvincing romance I have ever read. Her love interest may as well be a wet sheet of corrugated cardboard with a nice smile. Sukie spends most of the book in denial that he could be attracted to her, and while she eventually accepts that he is, I couldn't quite make that leap with her.

The other women don't fare much better. Tiffany is stuck in a suffocating marriage which includes her in-laws; Betsy has found an unconventional love that her family struggle to accept; Carol Anne is an air-head who needs a boot up the backside and thinks an attractive, wealthy man is all she needs to be happy. Lynn's story should have had a book to itself and is the catalyst for the climax of the story, but she barely gets a handful of pages devoted to her.

I was expecting strong female characters and got a box of tissues. Most of these women could have solved all of their problems by telling people to shove off and mind their own business. What's worse, the book ends with the stories only half concluded, and the fate of background characters is unknown. There is a sequel, which I only discovered when I jumped online to review the book, and probably should have been mentioned somewhere in the book.

The book is technically well written, although there is one scene which gave me some major deja-vu - it is nearly a carbon copy of an earlier scene, and I suspect one of them was supposed to have been edited out.

The cupcakes on the cover look appealing, but this book isn't. Thanks to netgalley for the free copy in exchange for my review - wish I could have said something sweeter.