Let's Bust a Recap : The Oysterville Sewing Circle

Hello, all! We're just marching on through 2021 and already into February. I feel like we have a few things to catch up on around here. First of all, I deleted my Instagram account. I know, I know: the horror! I've had a love/hate relationship with the Instagram from the start and at the end of 2020, I decided I was done with it. So for you faithful few who are reading this without a little Insta-prompt: thanks for sticking around. (And here's a friendly reminder that if you want my posts to come straight to your Inbox, you can pop your e-mail address into that little box over to the right.)

Secondly, if you caught my loosey-goosey 2021 book list post, you'll know that I'm free-birding my way through my reading life this year and that my big goal is to black out the Unread Shelf Bingo Card. That means I need to read 25 of my own unread books. As part of this project, I decided to finally take a stab at rounding up all my unread books and figuring out how many I have hanging around. 

Anyone want to take a guess at what my number might be? It's embarrassing really. Actually, now that I think of it, I'm going to leave you hanging on that until next week's recap. *insert my most evil laugh here* Now you have to come back! (But if you're absolutely dying to know, you can find me over on Goodreads and browse "my unread shelf" to see what we're working with.)

Anyway, to get back to what I was saying about this year's reading goal, I should really be reading at least two of my unread books each month to keep ticking along at a nice pace. So how did January go, you ask? Well, I read three books (yay!), but only one was from my unread shelf (*shrugs*), and it just so happens that The Oysterville Sewing Circle was that one.

The Oysterville Sewing Circle by Susan Wiggs was actually just published in August of 2019, and I picked it up off a cart of free books outside a library in Germany. I had just finished Rilla of Ingleside and was planning to head right into Unbroken but needed a little break in between WWI and WWII, and this little mass market paperback caught my eye. The book itself was pretty with this sort of ombré-style artwork and the title was just quirky enough to pique my interest. After reading the back, I thought it might be just the light, quick read I needed so I claimed it and immediately dove in.

And it was a flop. 

Sure, I read it quickly so it wasn't a big investment of my time, but even the time I did spend reading it turned out to be a waste. From just the first few pages, I could tell I was not going to love this one, but once I start a book I cannot quit, y'all. Our protagonist is Caroline Shelby, an aspiring fashion designer who has been slugging it out in glamorous NYC for the last 10 years trying to make a name for herself. At the beginning of the story, we find her crawling back to her tiny hometown of Oysterville, Washington with her tail tucked between her legs and two orphaned kids in tow. The kids, we find out later, are the progeny of one of Caroline's supermodel friends who died in Caroline's apartment of a drug overdose. 

By the way, consider this your spoiler alert because I just really don't care.

Through the course of the novel, Caroline ends up starting a thriving group for survivors of domestic abuse, designs her own fashion line, creates her own business which becomes instantly successful on the internet, reconnects with her two best friends Will and Sierra who are married to each other, supports Sierra through her divorce with Will, adopts the two kids after a nasty custody battle with their surprise father who, by the way, was her famous ex-boss that stole her designs and ruined all her prospects back in New York, and finally marrying Will—yes Will, her recently divorced best friend's husband. 

All this in just 415 pages! Seem like a lot?

That's because it is. And it comes together in such a jumbled, ridiculous mess of poor writing that you just have to laugh. Apparently, Susan Wiggs is a very successful, award winning author of over 50 novels. And I'm not here to bag on her. This is the first (and only) novel of hers I've ever read. Perhaps her other books are wonderful. But this one is not. It's scattered, shoddy, and there is absolutely no meaningful development at all. If Wiggs had chosen any one aspect of her plot to hone in on (or actually fleshed out the whole story in what would easily have turned into a saga well over a thousand pages long), she could have had a great story. Instead, it seemed like every idea that came into her head while writing got crammed into this plot and then she sent it off to her publisher and sat back down to crank out the next one.

Undocumented immigrant kids orphaned in a mysterious and probably violent way? Sure.

No name fashion designer hopeful gets shafted by a big name style icon but goes on to create a successful online company in under a year? Put it in there.

Not even 30 year old woman raised by two stable, loving parents and has never had a long-term relationship, much less an abusive one, begins a support group for survivors of domestic abuse and a roomful of battered women show up on Night One? It's the height of the #metoo movement, this is definitely going in.

Awkward love triangle with not just a married guy—the married guy of protagonist's best friend? Do it.

Wait, can we make the jerk ex-boss the kids' surprise father who shows up to claim them as part of his nasty vendetta against our just-trying-to-do-the-right-thing protagonist? Why the heck not!

And I'm just trying to hit the big points here. I mean, can you see how laughable this is? 

On top of everything, the writing just isn't good. I'd be afraid to tally how many times the word "totally" was used—which is totally okay for the teenage flashbacks but doesn't work at all for the adults. All the dialogue is painfully stilted and unnatural. And the book is littered with casual sex, casual divorce, casual drinking, drug use, and profanity, even a secret casual abortion—it was just off-putting.

I did enjoy the protagonist's flashbacks to her childhood in Oysterville. The author's description of small town life and the Oysterville community were lovely and made me want to take a vacation there. But those small sections could not make up for what was otherwise a very poorly written book. This is not an author I'll be trying out again, and my copy of The Oysterville Sewing Circle will be going to the Little Free Library downtown. 

Harsh start for our 2021 recaps, eh? Hopefully we can only go up from here!

What did you read in January? Have you ever read anything by Susan Wiggs? And don't forget to take a guess at how many unread books are floating around my house!