Every year on the first Monday of December, Marnie and her twelve closest girlfriends gather with batches of beautifully wrapped homemade cookies. Everyone has to bring a dish and a bottle of wine and, as they eat, they take turns telling the story of the cookies thye have baked. Stories that, somehow, are always emblematic of the year that has just passed.

Wow!! What a wonderful surprise!!
Thank you smurphie for the belated Christmas package! :)) I got the Highlanders in a fairly good condition - yummy! Thank you!! You are so generous! :)

I've already started reading this one and love it! The atmosphere in it is so ... womanly sweet ;)

This is the first book I read this year. A real success! :)
I liked the idea of a party, the friendship between women, the warmly womanish atmosphere :) I don't like on of the character's conclusions about men. When I was a teenager I used to think the same way; it's a cold raw rationale. I'm not saying it's wrong, it seems to me nasty... :D I agree love parish, that shouldn't make man disappear of our lives!
Some of the cookies recipes seem to be real!! Anyways, this whole package reopened my appetite for wanting to bake some goodies!

Thank you smurphie for sharing this treasure! :)

Going back home!
Thank you for this opportunity! The book is great! I hope you will find it a new reader :)

Caught from Smurphies food box. Looking forward to reading this one.

I don't really know why it took me so long to get to this lovely book and yesterday I was suddenly totally drawn to it by it's lovely cover.
It's nowhere near christmas or the festive season, but that does not matter. You can read the book whenever you feel like it.
I really loved reading it, though I got a bit stuck halfway in and then put it aside, but I finished it this morning. It's more interesting than your average chiclit, but still a light read.
I'll probably pass it on at the next annual Turnhout meet-up, april third upcoming :)))

Taking this with me to the meet-up !

A lovely bookcrossing meeting today, in Turnhout, Belgium.
I met other bookcrossers, and was able to trade quite a lot of interesting books.
Among which this one, which looks a promising read.
Possibly I'll keep it until next winter, with spring just arriving I'm not in the mood right now to read about christmas ;-)

Wordt vrijgelaten op de bookcrossing meeting te Liedekerke op 25 september.

Is now with me ;-)

Yes, I've read this in the summer. No, I'm not crazy.
Every year, on the first Monday in December twelve women get together to share cookies, recipes and stories. The past year has been very eventful for many of the members. Some express joy, others sadness, and one the terrible loss of a son. They listen, laugh and cry. Their bond strengthens each of the women as they get ready to move on to another year and look forward to another Cookie Club meeting.
I loved the format. Each chapter highlights one of the women and starts off with the recipe for the cookie they have brought to the club.
Another aspect I loved was that in between chapters there was a small history of a given ingredient. For example, they're be a page or two about vanilla, where it would describe how humans first started using it and how that changed over the years. It wasn't expecting this in the book, but I love this type of thing and I was glad to read the small glimpses of history.

As secret santa gift

Thank you, rodespringbal, for the lovely Christmas book and gifts. I loved everything :-)

I think it is fun to read Christmas books in summer - you start anticipating what you are going to do different when the end of the year comes close.
This is a light read, what I call a "feel good" book about female friendship. Some issues, such as betrayal, wanting children or not, got me really into the lives of the characters and I felt that they were also my friends when the book ended.

Picked from the VBB-Women in Fiction. Enjoy :-)

Selected from the Women in Fiction VBB, this arrived here in France - just at the right season!

I selected this from the Women in Fiction Bookcrossing VBB last year, and was able to read it in the build-up to this year's holiday season. I began it before leaving on a trip, and didn't want to take a book with not much left to read with me, so I finished it after returning.
The book was somewhat unexpected in that I thought it would be quite a bit of sweetness and light à la Jenny Colgan... There was a little of that, but it was mainly concentrated in the cookie recipes. There were a number of difficult circumstances and horrific tragedy, which did curdle the cream a bit.
I don't object to reading about such very real situations, but was somewhat taken aback to be reading about them here. Maybe the title is deceptive? Although no one says a club has to be a jolly group..
I didn't connect very well with Marnie, although it seems she was a hub for the others. I was also a bit intrigued by the strictness of the club rules. I did appreciate the inside information about the various ingredients, and there are a few cookies I'd like to try making.
On the whole an entertaining and interesting read, with as many real world issues as there are members of the club.
We'll see where this heads next.