The GW/LW book club has one ironclad main rule: no miracle babies. :) This book fits the bill: all four heroines are childless/free. And any change in that status is highly unlikely: they're also all now 60, menopausal, and celebrating retirement after 40 years of working together -- as an elite squad of highly trained professional assassins, whose job was to help rid the world of dictators, drug lords, arms dealers and the like. Their employer -- a secretive international organization known only as "the Museum" -- is sending them off in style on a luxurious Caribbean cruise.
Then one of them recognizes a fellow operative on board in disguise -- and they quickly realize that the now-retired hunters have become the hunted. Someone from the Museum has put a hit out on them -- but who, and why?
I wondered, as I opened this book again, whether it would prove to be as much fun the second time around.
It was. I (still) loved it, and (as with my first read) blazed through it quickly. Not everyone will like it, obviously, and there are a few less-than-glowing reviews on Goodreads (albeit the average score is currently a pretty favourable 3.92 out of 5). The book unfolds from Billie's perspective (with some flashbacks showing how she was recruited in 1978, and how the four were trained); it might have been nice to learn a little more about the others than we do. (Besides tough-girl Billie, there's widowed Helen, the crack sharpshooter; practical Mary Alice, who hasn't told her wife what she does for a living; and flirtatious, much-divorced Natalie.) And yes, there's a lot of killing going on (with the attendant gore), and some readers might find that disturbing.
From an adoption/loss/infertility/childless content warning perspective, there are a few small potential pitfalls: there is a pregnant women who makes an appearance near the end of the book (and complains about her pregnancy symptoms). There's a younger female character who is clearly a surrogate daughter figure for one of the women.
But quite simply, I (still) thought it was a whole lot of fun, with a lot of humour and some deft comments about ageism and aging, sexism, friendship, grief and loss, roads not taken, and the corporate world. As I wrote the first time around, I'm hoping for sequels -- and a movie adaptation. (I read an interview with the author who admits she had Diane Lane in mind as she wrote!)
My original rating of 5 stars on Goodreads still stands. :)
This was Book #12 read to date in 2023 (and Book #2 finished in March), bringing me to 27% of my 2023 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 4 books ahead of schedule. :) You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2023 tagged as "2023 books."
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