Customer Reviews

The Wildwater Walking Club

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

How do you turn a golden handshake into a series of wonderful, touching and life altering adventures? Read "Wildwater Walking Club" for the answer. I loved, loved, loved this book. I have friends with the same friendship as Tess, Rosie and Noreen and I had to call them and share this book with them. I enjoyed it on so many levels. The way these three women started walking, set a goal of 10,000 miles per day and accomplished it was motivational. When one didn't feel like walking the other two pushed her out the door. They had a great support system among the three which was based on commitment to each other and their cause. I loved the character development in the three women, but also in teenaged Hannah, and the senior lovebirds. Also greatly enjoyed their activism and the comic method of their first protest. "Wildwater Walking Club" was pure fun from beginning to end.

This book was not my favorite of hers, by far! If this is your first book by Claire Cook, don't judge all of her work based on this. Ms. Cook has a wonderful writing style that you don't see very often. it's like a girlfriend talking to you in a way that you want to just keep listening. My favorite is Must Love Dogs and then Summer Blowout. I didn't really care about the characters, there was WAY too much talk about lavender, and adding the part about the teacher and the clotheslines was just odd and disjointed I thought. Maybe a beach or weekend read because it was so light and quick but I'm glad it's done.

I am thrilled to be reviewing Claire Cook's newest book, THE WILDWATER WALKING CLUB just out on May 5. Watch out Ya-Ya Sisters, Wives' Clubbers, and Sweet Potato Queens because the WALKERS have arrived! Claire Cook's new book THE WILDWATER WALKING CLUB and the walkers are taking over!

In THE WILDWATER WALKING CLUB, Claire Cook gives us three wonderful women who are neighbors on Wildwater Way and at first don't even know each other. It all starts when Noreen Kelly's "boyfriend" convinces her to take a buyout from her corporate position in a shoe company, and she thinks she has made the best choice. However, she soon realizes that her love wasn't just working for the other company but was working her, and Noreen is dumped by the boyfriend and the company. In a fit of frustration and shock, she uses her actually void company ID and buys up every shoe in her size at the corporate shop for 50% off. With that, Noreen takes her shoes and heads home to Wildwater Way to try and figure out what is left of her life.

Sure that her life is over, Noreen sees nothing around her but what she is missing. Not until she makes friends with Tess, her next door neighbor, does Noreen start to realize that maybe her life isn't over after all. Tess, the school teacher who is off for the summer, dealing with a college-bound daughter who isn't speaking to her mom, and Noreen start walking together and they start to talk to each other about life. A third member living on Wildwater Way comes to the group as they meet Rosie. Rosie knows she was doing the right thing moving into her parents' home after her mom died, bringing her family with her, and taking over the lavender farm on her parents' property, but it isn't what she had hoped for. In her friendship with Noreen and Rosie, she literally is able to walk into a different life.

The three women begin to walk their way into a friendship that will turn out to be more than they ever expected. They walk and talk and even start to keep track of their steps using pedometers that Noreen also picked up at the "last shoe buy" she made. Sharing some of the shoes she bought with Tess and Rosie, is not the only thing that Noreen begins to share with these women. Their steps go from being more than just exercise as they take to new directions walking and in life. Noreen attends a career coaching group for unemployed people in her company and sees things through others eyes. She begins to build a better relationship with her own mother thanks to her friendship with Tess and watching Tess's relationship with her daughter. Hanging a clothesline becomes a political issue only found in real life in real writing like Claire Cook's. The walkers take a road trip to Seattle for a festival about lavender and along with all this there are the twists and turns, romances and families, characters and settings that make for a great read that only someone like Claire Cook can come up with. This might be called a `good beach read' but believe me, you will not want to be sitting in a chair after reading this!

The story is a fast and fun read, but also a learning experience. From this book have grown, and will continue to grow, groups of walkers who will see the value in what these women did and how it changed their lives. How Claire Cook could have known that this book would hit home with so many of us in these economically changing times is anyone's guess. I think that people who read this book will all take away something from it. For most it will definitely be a really good read but for others is will be even more. It may be another way of looking at our neighbors, or like me, it may be a realization that walking is more than just exercise. When everyone can get their hands on THE WILDWATER WALKING CLUB on May 5th, we may find our streets more crowded with walkers than ever before...at least there will be happier and more satisfied walkers, that's for sure! This is a book that celebrates friendship and teaches us what Claire Cook intended and that is if you are going to walk the walk, then go ahead and take that first step to talk the talk and make the changes in your life that you can and need to do. As it says on Claire's website "Just put one foot in front of the other"!
Submitted by Karen Haney, May, 2009

Hey, Everyone!

Time to head to the sporting goods store and purchase a new pair of walking shoes. Because, while reading this energizing, inspiring and thoroughly entertaining novel, you're going to be itching to get started.

Wildwater Walking Club is about three women; neighbors who start walking together more due to proximity than anything else. But who in so doing, discover that even though they are in different phases of their respective lives, they share more in common than not. What starts as a need for companionship develops into comraderie which becomes the real friendship that is "The Wildwater Walking Club". The adventures, high jinx, escapades, relationships and life exploration that follow will leave you not only laughing out loud but also believing that you, too can achieve the life YOU desire...one step at a time! (I must caution that you may very well develop an affinity for lavender-infused champagne along the way!)

Claire, you've again succeeded in crafting an engaging, amusing, rousing yet sensitive tale - a really satisfying read to which all of your many fans will relate. I can't wait for the next one. Thanks!

I enjoyed this book, funny and inciteful. The author was the typical workaholic, had not even been in backyard since she moved into her house. I was looking for something light, fast and motivational and this served me well. The author finds new friends, a new love, an earthy hobby and a new life when she is 'tricked' into taking a buyout from her longterm job. The thee women (Noreen, Tess, and Rosie) couldn't be more different, all with different issues that they resolve when they start walking together. Bonus--Romance still exists well into old age, you can still be a rebel and a housewife and (not so shockingly) animal print thongs come in many sizes and appeal to the mature set too. The author concludes you have to live your life in full--now. She is soooooo right!! It reminded me of my husband;s favorite saying... 'jobs are man-made, make the money, don't let the money make you'. Great summer reading. I ordered two of her previous novels as well, Multiple Choice and Ready to Fall.

This book was highly recommended by a 70-something woman when we were discussing clotheslines. . .a topic that passes as a weak subplot in the story. What tries to present itself as a story of a woman finding her true self through adversity (how lucky for her she had a high powered job that offered a huge buyout, unlike most of us who get laid off with two weeks salary and no career building benefits), turns out to be a predictable tale of a woman looking for a man.

If you are not a lover of everything "lavender," run, do not walk away from this book. And the town ban on clotheslines - how "convenient" that the women left town just as their rebellion was caught on camera and then someone else voluntarily took the blame (why - never explained). When something akin to "drama" takes place, instead of being forced to fend for themselves on a sandspit leading to a lighthouse in a state park, they are once again rescued in an obvious way.

Can a woman who was probably earning a six-figure salary actually afford to live in a seaside home in Massachusetts on what she earns selling handpainted gadgets on the internet? Oh, I forgot, she found a man who is also leaving the corporate world behind - but wait - he also has no visible means of future support! Well, in "chick lit" that's considered a happy ending.

I found "The Wildwater Walking Club" not only entertaining but even motivational for a northern woman like me. The attitudes of the women portrayed got me moving again. So start reading, gather together your good friends, put on your pedometers and get moving.

I bought this book for myself for Christmas, and I was not sorry. What starts out as a physical release to some sorry circumstances, turns into a great way to exercise, make lifelong friends, and find new paths in life. This is a great read and oh so, inspiring. Thank you, Claire, for turning me back on to walking, not that I was a slacker at it, but now I walk MORE!

This was a delightful book - I'm 70 years old and the book was a little young for me but the story encouraged me to get a pedometer and start walking!!! I'm a bit overweight and I believe this will help my health. I also became addicted to Lavender. I don't have many friends that walk but perhaps I'll find them along the way. I would encourage anyone to read this light,informative read. Reading time is just right and the encouragement to do something with your life, for yourself, was great. While our world falls around us we can still keep on track with taking care of ourselves.

The Wildwater Walking Club is about three women who become unlikely friends and allies. Noreen has just taken a golden parachute from her career, Tess is dealing with her soon-to-be college freshman daughter, and Rosie's family has reluctantly moved into her widower father's house so that she could carry on the family's lavender farm.

Over the course of the summer, the women set and meet various goals, and it is very satisfying to watch the character development. This novel is character-driven, rather than plot-driven, but that shouldn't bother the readers who love chick lit in general and beach reads in particular.

Although we come to know all three women, Noreen is definitely the main character. Forced to stop and really think about who she is, who she wants to be, and what she wants, Noreen makes some amazing discoveries about herself and the people she loves.

There is romance, but this is not a romance novel. There is no "happy ever after" ending, but there is a great deal of optimism and hope, and at the end of the day, what more could we ask for?

Four stars because I really wished we could have gotten to know Tess and Rosie a little better, but highly recommended nonetheless.