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Title: The Old Duck's ClubAuthor: Maddie PleaseFormat reviewed: EbookSource: NetgalleyPublisher: Boldwood BooksPublication Date: 18th May 2021Rating: 3.5 Stars
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Title: The Old Duck's Club
Sophia Gregory is fading away…
Recently split from her married lover and about to turn sixty, Sophia doesn’t recognise the old woman staring back at her in the mirror. Where has her life gone so wrong? How has it come to this? A quiet holiday in beautiful Rhodes is the perfect chance for her to find herself again.
Until she meets the Old Ducks!
Bold and brash, Juliette, Kim and Anita are three friends who are determined not to grow old gracefully – and they are Sophia’s worse nightmare! But when Sophia is made an honorary member of The Old Ducks’ Club, she begins to discover a new side to life. Dancing and drinking till dawn Sophia starts to shake off her grey, drab old life and finds the fun side to living again!
And when she meets her gorgeous Greek neighbour, Theo, she thinks that maybe, if she’s just a little braver, she can learn to spread her wings again....
It’s never too late to teach an Old Duck new tricks!
A rip-roaring, laugh out loud story about the importance of friendship and always, always having fun!
I really enjoyed The Old Duck's Club, especially the Rhodes setting and the Old Duck's themselves.
On the other hand it took me a while to even remotely connect to Sophia, in part because of her initial responses to both meeting Theo, and to the group of women in the villa next to her, who wake her up on their first night with loud hot tub antics.
Yet as she got to know them, she is shown a way of life that she never imagined possible for a woman of a certain age, of women just not caring what society may think of them.
The two weeks she teams up with the Old Ducks are the most entertaining of the book, as they get up to all sorts, there is even an incident in a night club involving the police, and its adds a life and soul to the book.
And I really enjoyed the setting of Rhodes and various bits of sightseeing done, in addition to the mentions of delicious sounding Greek meals in restaurants and the spattering of Greek phrases included to add a bit of flavour to the book.
But with Sophia, when she was by herself and also with any man, she just drove me a bit mad, I just struggled to connect with her, which i think is what contributed to this book taking me far longer than I would have thought to read it. That, and I seemed to have no time to read over the past few days, and my concentration was all over the place, and it always drives me slightly demented when I can't read a book in sizeable portions at the very least.
I will say I really loved, hating Lucian whenever he was present, either via phone or later in the book where we see a bit more of him, just after a rather amusing scene that involved paint!
It's an enjoyable book and had I read it perhaps on holiday myself, I would have probably loved it a lot more. The writing is good, the plot interesting, and I did love the idea that life doesn't end at age 60, and seeing Sophia coming up with a plan for the rest of her life. There is certainly some character development over the course of the book, and I was really happy for her and the changes she makes to her life, by the time the book reaches its conclusion.
Thank to you Boldwood Books and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.
Great Review! Sounds like a fun book to read. I’ll add it to TBR
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