Starting a book club is a lot of work. No, seriously. It’s fucking painful. But the results? OH SO WORTH IT.

A few months ago, I was contacted by a company about reading a book for a book club (and they’d provide 1. The books. 2. The wine. 3. Some snacky stuff. 4. Extras.)

So I rallied the troops. I said to a collection of my girlfriends, “LADIES, let’s start a book club. We’ll call it The Bad Ass Bitches’ Book Club. And it will be good.”

And the troops were in. Unfortunately, between regular gaming nights, epic social lives and the holidays…it was damn near impossible to get together.

FINALLY, we were able to set a date. While not everyone could make it, the wheels were set in motion.

When the calendar invites went out, Brookie Banosnapper (pictured above, slightly behind me) requested that we change the name to “The Nice Girls’ Book Club. Because we’re nice.

And so, I modified it to the Bad Ass Book Club for Nice Girls (even if we’re sometimes a little bit bitchy). And our little club was formed.

This Missing Something Club Book Review

We read The Missing Something Club by William Haylon…and I use the phrase, “we read” loosely. Of the four ladies who made it to the inaugural book club meeting, only two of us finished the story. We both enjoyed the easy read and the basic plot line of the story, one of the others couldn’t get into it based on the first few pages, and the other just didn’t find the time to get into it (though she liked the writing that she did read). Two other friends who didn’t make it to the book club weren’t a fan of the story at all.

SPOILER ALERT: I’m really bad with giving a synopsis without giving away what might be a spoiler. So take this as fair warning.

The premise of the story begins with a 50-year-old empty nester and divorcee who feels lost. She starts a Meet Up group for people who are missing something. Whatever that something in their lives may be. Five strangers initially show up, varying in age, sex, and life experiences. The story follows their experiences through the separate voices of each character, who all seem to find themselves with the help of the oldest member of the crew.

There’s a lot of drinking. A lot of human nature. A lot of nakedness (thought mostly non-sexual nakedness). And more drinking. The characters are all deeply flawed, and I think that’s part of the point of the story. All of the women pose naked for the oldest character, where they share even more of themselves and open up in ways they don’t even open up in the weekly group. The book is a lot of therapy jammed into several chapters.

Unfortunately, for me, while I liked the premise of the story, I wasn’t sure I liked the way it was delivered. I enjoyed some of the prose, but the dialogue (and there was a LOT of dialogue) felt unnatural – almost too formal. And some of the things the characters did were…extreme. In general, though, it was an easy read and I found myself enjoying parts of it it the further I delved into it.

Brookie liked the story too, and played the part of teachers’ pet when it came to answering questions for the book club. After talking about the book, I think I liked it a little bit more. Seeing it from Brooke’s perspective definitely helped me to gather that each of the very flawed characters has something that I can relate to…and that was a really interesting way to see it.

BUT…we did eat. drink. and make merry. And we started a joyous club that will hopefully live on for many years to come.

Would you ever join a club without knowing the members? Do you think that drinking makes it easier or more difficult to open up and share secrets? What about nudity – would being naked make it easier or harder to share secrets?