The Twisted Women's Book Club

A weird combination of And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express - lots of people have very good reasons to kill Margaret Richter and they're all on the semi-island of Cape Cod. Each section/suspect is interesting, but disconnected and odd which isn't strange since they are each written by a different person. Hopefully it sticks the landing.

Well it didn't. While many of the individual stories were interesting and surprising, they didn't mesh together into a single story. There was no upshot or resolution and there were weird dangling elements that just didn't go anywhere or have any importance other than showing that damn near everyone in the bookclub could, and did, get away with murder. I'm sure they various show more contributors had fun, but it was really unsatisfying to experience. show less

The Twisted Women's Book Club by Karin Slaughter et. al. is the creation of many different crime writers coming together to write a a series of linked tales which have one thing in common. That commonality is that all the stories feature an extremely rich self-help guru, Dr. Margaret Richter, and her montly book club held at her Cape Cod mansion.

One of the things that drew me to this book was the Cape Cod setting. I went there forty years ago, and its beauty and its wild shores have stayed with me all this time. In 1985, any daydreams about money had me buying a big house on the Cape. (Now a home on the island of Guernsey is my go-to dream house.) I really enjoyed the descriptions of the dunes and the wind and the sound of crashing show more waves.

In most respects I really liked this book and the way it was put together. Some of the stories were excellent. I particularly liked the unexpected tale written by Oyinkan Braithwaite. It was an unusual and compelling tale, and was narrated by a woman with a thick Nigerian accent, deep and warm and rich like mulled wine.

The book became less compelling towards the end. I don't know why that was, and would take a guess that it was my mood that changed, and that the book continued to excel.

If you have an Audible membership, I recommend that you listen to the book. It certainly swept me up this long holiday weekend. show less

A book of short stories written by multiple thriller writers. While each story is more or less a stand alone, they circle around a self help author and her book club group. This is a free audio on Audible and definitely worth listening to.

The multiple author format made for a choppy, disjointed read. The parts did not fit together well at times. Also, a highly dissatisying ending