Helpful Score: 4
A book to bring to the beach. Light and a good insight into some interesting characters.
Helpful Score: 4
A best-friend feel-good book. You will laugh and cry.
Helpful Score: 4
If you like Beth Gutcheon, you'll like this one. A heart warming story of several women whoform a friendship that gets each of them though some personally difficult times. Good read!
Helpful Score: 4
Five women meet at an upscale health spa. One is a young widow coming to terms with her husband's death, one is an older woman who will soon become a widow, a mother and daughter trying to come to terms with a tragedy, and a feisty private eye who isn't sure why she is there at all. In a week, they become friends. Even after they go to their homes and their lives, they keep in touch. They all experience life-changing events and decisions, but their support for each other never wavers. Beth Gutcheon draws you into each character's story, told separately, but never losing the thread that weaves them together. It is a positive and uplifting book, and I really enjoyed "spending time" with these women :)
Helpful Score: 3
A witty, silly and interesting book. A great summer beach book.
Helpful Score: 3
I read this because it was on my reading group's list. I had never heard of Beth Gutcheon before. After reading this I'm planning to read more of her work. It was a fast, enjoyable, and uplifting book. That was also the general consensus of the rest of my reading group.
Helpful Score: 2
Five womens lives meet when they all enroll in a one-week long fat camp spa resort. They become friends during their stay at the spa and their lives continue to cross one another after theyve all gone home. I really enjoyed getting to know each one of the women and read about their stories. I thought the author did a great job in keeping them all connected throughout the book. A good feel-good friendship book, I really enjoyed it.
Helpful Score: 2
A really interesting read. Five very different women meet at a spa and the book takes you through their lives as they become friends and their lives intertwined.
Helpful Score: 1
5 women meet at an arizona health spa (fat farm) and become fast friends. the novel takes them thru the next year of their lives, as they each overcome challenges in their lives - challenges that make them grow closer together.
a wonderfully inspirational story. makes me want to read more by beth gutcheon.
a wonderfully inspirational story. makes me want to read more by beth gutcheon.
This was my first Beth Gutcheon book and I really enjoyed it. This is the tale of five very different and unique women who meet at an exclusive spa. The story tells about their lives and how their lives intertwine and they become great friends.
A group of women meet at a Southwestern USA wellness ranch and really connect with each other. Over the next year their lives unfold as they face challenges and keep in touch. They reunite at the wellness ranch to review their goals and triumphs. Nice pace to the plot and good variety of characters.
This was a great book. It showed how some women with extremely different backgrounds and interests all joined together, and stayed together! I really enjoyed it.
I liked this! Wish I had gone to the "fat farm" and made some friends.
Bought this book for $.25 or $.50 at a garage sale June 2017. Finally got around to reading it a couple weeks ago (early March 2018). Had never heard of this author before. I enjoyed the book. It was an easy, quick, and entertaining read. Some of the critical reviews (on Amazon) thought it improbable that five women could form a close bond after spending a week together. However, they were together 24/7 in an "enclosed" environment (the spa) for a week--limited access to TV, etc. So, I don't think it's inconceivable that certain people "clicked" and wanted to stay in touch after the week ended. Of the five main characters, I found "Laurie" (widow of a famous tennis star) to be the least interesting/compelling.
The reason I'm giving it four stars instead of five is that I--like a few other (Amazon) reviewers--sometimes had a hard time remembering some of the secondary characters.
The reason I'm giving it four stars instead of five is that I--like a few other (Amazon) reviewers--sometimes had a hard time remembering some of the secondary characters.
Such a great story!
From Publishers Weekly
Friends, lovers, adulterers, a fortune-teller and even a murderer are objects of gently sardonic fun in Gutcheon's stylish new comedy (after Saying Grace) about five women who meet at The Cloisters, a posh $4000-a-week health spa in Arizona. Octogenarian Rae Strouse, a former fan-dancer and now a wealthy San Francisco matron, returns for her 22nd visit. A birthday gift for outsized (six feet and 180 lbs.) L.A. PI Carter Bond allows her a week in the hallowed hot tubs. Amy Burrows and her obese teenage daughter, Jill, come tangled in dirty laundry from their privileged Manhattan life, while anomalous, athletic Idahoan Laurie Lopez comes to grieve over the death of her husband, a politician and once a tennis star. "Fat Chance" is an apt nickname for this temple of rejuvenation: most of the guests haven't a prayer of living up to the example of their enthusiastic, neon-clad fitness instructors?one of whom is so thin "her body looked like a collection of bicycle parts." At the end of their frog march through the fat farm's regimen, the women meet in secret with a mysterious palm-reading masseuse, whose predictions will follow them long after they have completed their tour of duty at The Cloisters; by then, we are as caught up in this fast-paced story as these women are in each other's lives.
The New York Times Book Review, Betsy Groban
Beth Gutcheon's novel about the enduring friendships within a group of women may depict interesting lives, but it is not, in the end, very interesting as fiction.
Friends, lovers, adulterers, a fortune-teller and even a murderer are objects of gently sardonic fun in Gutcheon's stylish new comedy (after Saying Grace) about five women who meet at The Cloisters, a posh $4000-a-week health spa in Arizona. Octogenarian Rae Strouse, a former fan-dancer and now a wealthy San Francisco matron, returns for her 22nd visit. A birthday gift for outsized (six feet and 180 lbs.) L.A. PI Carter Bond allows her a week in the hallowed hot tubs. Amy Burrows and her obese teenage daughter, Jill, come tangled in dirty laundry from their privileged Manhattan life, while anomalous, athletic Idahoan Laurie Lopez comes to grieve over the death of her husband, a politician and once a tennis star. "Fat Chance" is an apt nickname for this temple of rejuvenation: most of the guests haven't a prayer of living up to the example of their enthusiastic, neon-clad fitness instructors?one of whom is so thin "her body looked like a collection of bicycle parts." At the end of their frog march through the fat farm's regimen, the women meet in secret with a mysterious palm-reading masseuse, whose predictions will follow them long after they have completed their tour of duty at The Cloisters; by then, we are as caught up in this fast-paced story as these women are in each other's lives.
The New York Times Book Review, Betsy Groban
Beth Gutcheon's novel about the enduring friendships within a group of women may depict interesting lives, but it is not, in the end, very interesting as fiction.
My cover is different for this book.
