The Widows Club

The Widow’s Club by Dorothy Cannell is a 1988 Bantam publication.

Ellie and Ben are newlyweds, but things have gotten off to a rocky start… well, make that a deadly start…

The first book in this series was pretty good, and I’d been looking forward to the second installment. Unfortunately, this book was a hot mess!! I noticed that in 1988, the Edgar Awards nominated this book for best novel. Seriously???

It’s not that the novel didn’t age well, really. It wasn’t all that dated as far as vernacular, etc., but it was stupendously silly and completely unbelievable. I ended up skipping ahead, over entire chapters, mind you, and didn’t miss a single thing that mattered. The conclusion was a bit of a head -scratcher after all show more that. A surprise, yes, because who could have possibly figured anything out in the midst of all that chaos?

Now, I have several other installments of this series on my Kindle… but I’m not sure if I’m up for another one of these anytime soon. That said, I did read one of the last installments years ago and thought it was hysterically funny, at the time. So, maybe someday I’ll give Ellie another shot at sleuthing…. We’ll see.

1 star show less

Lugubrious: mournful or gloomy, esp. to a ludicrous degree.

Is a one-word review acceptable? Reading this book was like wading through mud. I read and read and read, and there was still more book to get through.

Do yourself a favor and choose a different book!

A good read, though not quite as fun as her first book A Thin Woman.

Suprisingly a slow read this time.

Ellie finds herself becoming involved with a club who services women who choose widowhood over divorce. Needless to say that the in law's become involved.