The Wildwater Walking Club

The Wildwater Walking Club -- The rest of your life starts with one step. Noreen Kelly learns this the hard way when she takes a buyout offer at her small shoe company and wakes up the day after—jobless, dumped by her slick co-worker, and wondering who she is and what she wants. She becomes tentative friends with Tess and Rosie, and together the women form a walking club, each step bringing them closer together and closer to the life solutions they all seek. Cook creates likable female characters with realistic flaws. The plots are marked with Gilmore Girls–type dialogue and settings, utterly charming from beginning to end. There’s plenty of laughs, anger, sorrow, and rage to keep the story moving along at a breezy pace; and all the subplots involving the multigenerational characters and their kooky suburban antics are tied up nicely. There’s a little more edge here than in a typical “gentle” novel, but more softness than in an edgy “hen-lit” novel. Miss Julia would be proud to be friends with these women.