The Wildwater Walking Club

This was a good read. I laughed a lot at some of her thoughts about walking because I always say the same thing. I am at a weird time in my life and this has made me start thinking.I really enjoyed the book and will be checking out other books she has written.

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.

I really do believe this is Claire Cook's best novel. It is filled with the delightful familial comedy of her other work such as "Must Love Dogs," but there is something more going on here. The book is a valentine to friendships and relationships among women. It is also a subtle meditation on the passing of time and what we decide to do with our lives even after we think we've decided what to do with our lives. Bravo.

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!

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.

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,