Passion Postings

Bikini Season
by Sheila Roberts

Contemporary Romance/Chick Lit

The Premise: Four friends of various ages, all members of a cooking club, reach a point when they decide they simply must lose weight. Erin is getting married in six months, and can no longer get her wedding dress zipped. Kizzy has had a health scare, and her doctor tells her to lose some weight or risk far worse than shopping in the plus size section for life. Angela fears her husband will begin an affair with his very attractive co-worker. Megan, brilliant and hardworking attorney, fears she won’t make partner and will spend her life alone, envying the office’s pretty, successful “pencils.” And so the “Teeny Bikini Club” is born. What the women find when they try to change their relationship with food is that they have to rethink many of their other relationships as well. As they change, they have to ask themselves if the people around them are changing or if they are just seeing them clearly for the first time.

What I liked: The characters are all well developed and engaging. The issues they face are realistic and are things we can all relate to. There is a lot of humor in this book as well; one of my favorite passages reads:

...how many times did a girl get married? Only once, Mom used to say, and
then a woman got smart. But Erin didn’t want to get smart. She wanted to
marry Adam. Wait a minute. That hadn’t sounded quite right.

The various ways the women deal with food and temptation were very true to life. I had a lot of “Oh, I’ve done that!” moments. There was a nice mix of backgrounds and careers among the characters – it wasn’t all small town or big city, stay at home mom or career. The different ages really helped with this and was nice to see.


What I didn’t like: It took Erin way to long to wise up to the fact that Adam really wasn’t Dr. McDreamy; I really wanted to shake her a few times! And I would have liked to see more of Megan – in fact, I would really like her to have her own book, since her story seemed to be the least “wrapped up” out of the four.


Overall: I enjoyed this a lot and think it makes for great summer reading. There is something in it for everyone – romance, humor, friendship, and a beautiful setting. I would definitely read other books by this author, and am looking forward to seeing what she comes up with next.