{"id":45793,"date":"2025-10-27T22:39:43","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T02:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=45793"},"modified":"2025-10-27T22:39:43","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T02:39:43","slug":"review-of-the-book-club-for-troublesome-women-by-marie-bostwick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=45793","title":{"rendered":"Review of The Book Club for Troublesome Women, by Marie Bostwick"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Book Club for Troublesome Women<\/em><\/p>\n

by Marie Bostwick
\nread by Lisa Flanagan<\/p>\n

Harper Muse, 2025. 11 hours, 10 minutes.
\nReview written October 13, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
\nStarred Review<\/p>\n

I loved this one. In many ways it’s a standard story of four women bonding through the ups and downs of life because they’ve come together in a book club. But this book adds something special because they begin meeting in the early 1960s, and the first book they read together is The Feminine Mystique<\/em>, by Betty Friedan.<\/p>\n

So the book isn’t simply about enduring friendships through life’s difficulties. It’s also about a woman’s role and society’s expectations for women.<\/p>\n

The setting is a fictional suburb in northern Virginia called Concordia – that fits right in with the suburbs found here today. The four women of the book club are chafing under the expectations of running a home and caring for their husband and kids. One wants to be a writer, another wants to get her art into galleries, another wanted to be a veterinarian – but got married and dropped out of school shortly before getting her Bachelor’s in order to help establish her husband’s practice. And the fourth is a former combat nurse who now has six kids – and gets pregnant because she wasn’t able to get birth control pills without her husband’s permission, and he hadn’t gotten around to coming to the appointment yet.<\/p>\n

A couple of the women have good relationships with their husbands, despite some ups and downs and working things out. A couple of them have very bad relationships with their husbands. The writer gets a job writing a column for a women’s magazine – but they only want her to write fluff pieces. The high point of the book is when she decides to write an honest essay about what The Feminine Mystique<\/em> and the book club have meant to her.<\/p>\n

I loved listening to this book right from the start. It got me thinking about my life and my mother’s life. My mother got married at the end of 1960, and I, her third child, was born in 1964 – so she was navigating marriage right in this time period. My mom did not achieve the perfect house and family – she had way too many kids to keep up (ending up with thirteen) – but she desperately wanted to. My mom would decidedly not have joined this book club, being staunchly against feminism, and despite the fact she didn’t meet society’s expectations for a housewife, she did pass those expectations on to me. So something else I had to deal with after I got married was realizing I couldn’t afford to be a stay-at-home mom even if I wanted to be. And keeping a clean house and good meals? An always failing proposition. In so many ways it was crazily liberating when my husband left me – because it pretty much threw out all those expectations, and I got to find out how truly wonderful a meaningful career can be.<\/p>\n

But of course it’s all more complicated than can be put into a paragraph. Or an essay. But a novel – that’s a wonderful format to explore how attitudes were changing for women in the early 1960s and all that could mean for individuals.<\/p>\n

And besides all that thought-provoking stuff, these characters were so much fun to get to know and spend time with. Troublesome women can be very entertaining! Highly recommended!<\/p>\n

mariebostwick.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Fiction\/book_club_for_troublesome_women.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

Subscribe<\/a> for more reviews and talk about books.<\/p>\n

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick read by Lisa Flanagan Harper Muse, 2025. 11 hours, 10 minutes. Review written October 13, 2025, from a library eaudiobook. Starred Review I loved this one. In many ways it’s a standard story of four women bonding through the ups and downs of life because they’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,32,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction-review","category-historical","category-starred-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45793"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45831,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45793\/revisions\/45831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}