As the year comes to a close, and I finish up my final holiday reads, I want to take the rest of 2021 to focus on some reviews that I never quite got to posting reviews for! Let’s start first with In A Book Club Far Away by Tif Marcelo.

From the author of Once Upon a Sunset and The Key to Happily Ever After comes a heartwarming and moving novel following three Army wives—estranged friends—who must overcome their differences when one of them is desperate for help.

Regina Castro, Adelaide Wilson-Chang, and Sophie Walden usedto be best friends. As Army wives at Fort East, they bonded during their book club and soon became inseparable. But when an unimaginable betrayal happened amongst the group, the friendship abruptly ended, and they haven’t spoken since.

That’s why, eight years later, Regina and Sophie are shocked when they get a call for help from Adelaide. Adelaide’s husband is stationed abroad, and without any friends or family near her new home of Alexandria, Virginia, she has no one to help take care of her young daughter when she has to undergo emergency surgery. For the sake of an innocent child, Regina and Sophie reluctantly put their differences aside to help an old friend.

As the three women reunite, they must overcome past hurts and see if there’s any future for their friendship.

If you title a book that involves anything along the lines of “I own a bookstore” or “I’m in a book club” then 9 out of 10 times I will pick it up to read. I love my book club, and have made some great friends from it, so I was hooked instantly from the title of the story into wanting to read it.

This is a story of friendship throughout the years of 3 Army wives, brought together by a fateful book club meeting. After getting very close, an incident occurs that drives the wedge between 2 of the friends, and it’s up to the 3rd to try and bring them back together. Meanwhile, all 3 have struggles they are going through in their own lives.

I really liked reading about women both in the army and supporting spouses or partners in the army, as this is not something I see very often. The chapters go back and forth between present day, when one gets sick and puts out an SOS to her friends to help her heal, and the past, where we slowly learn of the incident that drove them apart.

Usually I’m ok with time jumping chapters, but for some reason while I was reading this, I got confused. I found the character of Regina, who was harboring grudges the whole book, was very immature. To me, she never had a reckoning she needed. She treated people horribly instead of looking in the mirror, and everyone was ok with that? Yeesh.

This is a nice calm read – no major twists and turns, no gut churning emotions. There’s a tiny twist at the end, but you get a sneaking suspicion it’s coming about halfway through.

Out now! Have you given this one a try? Let me know your thoughts!