Summary from Goodreads:
Best friends Annie and Sarah need cash—fast. Sarah, a beautiful, successful lawyer, wants nothing more than to have a baby. But balancing IVF treatments with a grueling eighty-hour workweek is no walk in the park. Meanwhile, Annie, a Harvard-grad chemist recently transplanted to Southern California, is cutting coupons to afford her young autistic son’s expensive therapy.
Desperate, the two friends come up with a brilliant plan: they’ll combine Sarah’s looks and Annie’s brains to sell a “luxury” antiaging face cream to the wealthy, fading beauties in Annie’s La Jolla book club. The scheme seems innocent enough, until Annie decides to add a special—and oh-so-illegal—ingredient that could bring their whole operation crashing to the ground.
Hilarious, intelligent, and warm, Crimes Against a Book Club is a delightful look at the lengths women will go to fend for their families and for one another.
Review:
So, first, I was intrigued by this novel because of the title. Anything referencing books or book clubs and I want to know what it's about ... and the fact that there were supposedly crimes against a book club? Uh, yeah. I was hooked and definitely wanted to know more.
Annie and Sarah are each other's antithesis. Sarah is tall, beautiful, with a handsome, brilliant husband and high-powered corporate job. Annie is short, a little frumpy, with an intelligent, OCD-driven husband. Annie has three children where Sarah has none, but she wants to have them. Sarah is adept enough to become friends with anyone in any social situation; whereas Annie struggles with being posh enough to fit in, even in a book club. Sarah embodies L.A.-living. Annie's content in La Jolla's suburban, touristy landscape. The two really have nothing in common except for the fact they slightly envy each other. Annie would love Sarah's figure and social aptitude. Sarah would love a husband who's home every time she needs him and children running around the house. You would think Sarah would be the main character and Annie the sidekick but it's actually reversed, which gives this Character Writing 101 a bit of a twist.
Annie is the brain behind the new anti-aging cream. It's her idea to start the business, her idea for the formula, and her idea on how to sell it. The availability of the special ingredient and how Annie came to acquire some was a bit ... unrealistic. It's a little difficult for me to believe that, with as moral as Annie seems to be, she would have kept this special ingredient in the house with her for as long as she did without disposing of it sooner.
Sarah, being a lawyer and Annie's best friend for 20 years, should have known that Annie was hiding something and sniffed it out of her at the beginning of their enterprise. Again, another small unrealistic scenario that if it didn't happen we wouldn't have had a novel to read. In spite of that, even I found myself drawn to Sarah like the ladies in the novel. I wanted Sarah to be my friend and to hang out with her.
In the end, things do turn out well for Annie and Sarah at the expense of another. Don't be upset with them, though. The person being sacrificed made the decision all on their own and actually insisted upon it.
If you don't consider the events too closely (as I tend to do sometimes), then this novel would be a fun, quick read. I'm not sure I found the hilarity in it, although there were a few amusing tidbits thrown in towards the latter part of this novel. Overall, for me, I'd give this about 3 out of 5 stars.
*An ARC was provided by the publicist in exchange for an honest review.