Book 47 (2011): Joy For Beginners

I know this is supposed to be an inspirational story about a woman who beat cancer, and then a profile of all her women friends who helped her during her treatments and surgery. And the story is a good idea but it just seems so overdone. I'm not a fan of Joy for Beginners.

The premise is that Kate survived cancer so she gave each of her women friends a task they must accomplish and she would also do something: white water rafting. Each chapter is the story of one of these women and what they had to do it, how they did it, and then how doing it changed them. Obviously, it's going to have predictable outcome with each women- yeah they did the thing their cancer survivor friend asked because SHE beat cancer so what she told them to do can't be so scary, right? And of course they come out better and happier people.

Blah, blah, blah.

It just didn't speak to me and I wasn't really a fan of the writing style. While there was a thin string of a story that tied all these women together, it really was like reading short stories, and I really didn't feel like there was enough continuity and story flow to call it a novel. (288 pages)

C-