The Young Wives Club

December 1, 2016
Marrying young seems romantic to four young Louisiana friends, but their Prince Charmings turn out to have clay feet.Quitting high school was easy for Laura. After all, it meant marrying her sweetheart, Brian, and following him to LSU, the next step in his promising football career. But a knee injury sends them back home to Toulouse, hoping to save money for Brian's surgery. Working as a waitress and living with Brian's parents strains Laura's marriage, but she seizes the chance to finish her high school degree. After Brian begins hitting the bottle and squanders six months' savings, however, Laura begins to wonder if she should have followed her own dreams instead. Gabby also thought she'd found her dream man: Tony is smart, attentive, supportive, and wealthy. Unfortunately, Gabby has spun a web of lies about herself, but who can blame her for glossing over her mother's incarceration for embezzlement? Their impending wedding pushes Gabby to tell the truth, but will Tony forgive her? Striving to pay for her father's cancer treatments, Madison is torn between her infatuation with bad-boy musician Cash and her realization that stable, kind, wealthy George might be the answer to her prayers. Can she sacrifice her passion in order to support her family? Of the four, Claire may have hit the jackpot with her minister husband. That is, until she spots his car outside the local strip club. Can she reignite their passion? Does she want to? Pennell's debut novel shimmers with lively banter and the glitter of these young women's dreams. By shifting perspectives and ending each chapter with an emotional cliffhanger, Pennell escalates the tension, making each woman's tribulations intensify her friends' troubles, as well. A light novel in which women take charge of their own happily-ever-afters.

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January 1, 2017
Four friends whose lives should have attained various degrees of perfect lean on each other in tiny Toulouse, Louisiana. Laura married Brian before she finished high school, knowing his football scholarship was their ticket out. But a busted knee and moving in with her in-laws bursts her bubble. Madison's father is fighting cancer and can't work, which makes her problems with her noncommittal biker boyfriend seem trivial. Meanwhile, her cousin, Claire, loves to support her husband's work as a pastor until she catches him in an unflattering situation that leads to an unlikely friendship. And Gabrielle has met the man of her dreams; too bad everything she's told him about herself is a lie. Four well-drawn young women learn that, sometimes, what you want isn't really what you want, no matter what you told your friends. It's uplifting to watch each woman come into her ownsome via forgiveness, some via romance. This sweet (but not too sweet) page-turning debut will appeal to fans of warm southern women's fiction from authors like Rebecca Wells and Mary Kay Andrews. A really delightful book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)