From Goodreads: "Best friends Annie and Sarah need cash—fast. Sarah, a beautiful, successful lawyer, wants nothing more than to have a baby. But balancing IVF treatments with a grueling eighty-hour workweek is no walk in the park. Meanwhile, Annie, a Harvard-grad chemist recently transplanted to Southern California, is cutting coupons to afford her young autistic son’s expensive therapy. Desperate, the two friends come up with a brilliant plan: they’ll combine Sarah’s looks and Annie’s brains to sell a “luxury” antiaging face cream to the wealthy, fading beauties in Annie’s La Jolla book club. The scheme seems innocent enough, until Annie decides to add a special—and oh-so-illegal—ingredient that could bring their whole operation crashing to the ground."

Thank you to Lake Union Publishing for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for review! All opinions are my own.

So this one took me forever to get to due to personal life reasons but it was actually a pretty quick read! While there were certain aspects of this book that I did enjoy, the overall book didn't end up being something that I felt was for me, unfortunately. However, I can see where readers that enjoy chick-lit books would definitely enjoy this or someone looking for a quick beach read would absolutely devour this story!

Plot:

Best friends Annie and Sarah are both struggling for money. Annie, a Harvard-grad chemist and recent Southern California transplant, has a son named Oscar who has just been recently diagnosed as autistic and is in need of some extremely expensive therapies. Sarah, a beautiful and successful lawyer, wants nothing more than to have a baby. But trying to balance her intense IVF treatments with her insane eighty-hour work week isn't the easiest thing to accomplish. Desperate for money, the two friends have a bright idea to make a "luxury" anti-aging facial cream to sell to the rich ladies in Annie's La Jolla book club. It's innocent enough, and very profitable, until Annie decides to add an extra- and illegal- ingredient to the mix that could bring the entire operation to the ground.

Crimes Against a Book Club was definitely a funny, easy to read novel that I'm sure a lot of readers will enjoy. The book club aspect kind of fades off after the first chapter or two, so the title kind of threw me off and had my expectations for this way off, but again, still a funny story. I enjoyed reading Annie and Sarah's stories, but not so much the other characters that were also focused on throughout. The plot overall was again, easy to read, and I think readers that enjoy chick-lit books will really enjoy Crimes Against a Book Club. There were parts I liked more than others, mainly those involving Annie and Sarah because they were my favorite characters, but the book was a pretty fun read for me even though the genre wasn't exactly something I would normally reach for. But I really am appreciative of Lake Union for sending this my way because of the fact that I normally would not reach for a book like this, but I ended up picking it up and didn't have the absolute worst time reading it. It was unexpected, and while it wasn't my favorite book in the world, it was a pretty silly, fun, easy read that I really powered through.


Characters:
This book did have multiple characters and would change POV sometimes with every chapter and that's probably my biggest disappointment with Crimes Against a Book Club. I wasn't a really big fan of the other characters simply because they were boring to me. I didn't enjoy any of their personalities or the things they did in their chapters because they all came across as stuck up rich ladies and that just did not do it for me. There were some parts of the other characters perspectives that I did enjoy, parts that were kind of funny and had me laughing out loud, but for the most part they just weren't the type of characters that I like to read about. Maybe it's my age, but they really just felt like stuck up women who had nothing better to do but put on a fake face around the others but then talk poorly about them when one of them (or more) wasn't around. It just wasn't my taste, personally, but there may be people who enjoy those type of characters!

I did feel that Annie, Sarah, and Chloe were the best characters and they were so much fun to read about. The friendship between Annie and Sarah felt so authentic and I loved their interactions with each other so much. Also, despite Chloe's bad parenting, I really enjoyed her character. She was sassy and hilarious and just did what she wanted because that's what she wanted to do. The interactions between those three characters were the best towards the end of the book and I was just smiling and laughing while reading the last few chapters with them in it. I feel like if the book focused solely on those three, it would have been more of a win in my book because they were really what made the book for me, personally. I loved Annie's dedication to helping her son, and Sarah's determination towards having a baby, and how the two women were working so hard to both help their own lives/children, but also helping each other. It really showed some seriously realistic women friendship positivity and that was a really great aspect of this book!

Writing:
The writing was easy to sit down and fly through, so definitely no complaints there. When the POV started switching between characters that I wasn't really enjoying, the writing is something that kept me going. It was very easy to just open the book and fly through a huge chunk of it because Kathy Cooperman's writing was so enjoyable to read. She was able to give each character such a unique voice that while there were so many of them, it wasn't hard to distinguish which character was currently speaking, which I give such high praise to the author for. It's so easy to have your characters voices get lost among each other the more characters there are, but Kathy Cooperman did a great job at making each of her characters unique enough to stand out on their own with no confusion. While I may not have been the biggest fan of this book, the writing alone was enough to make me want to check out more books by this author.

Overall, Crimes Against a Book Club was a good book. While it isn't a genre I would reach for, it was still an enjoyable read. I can see how others may enjoy this more than I did, like I said above, especially if you're a fan of chick-lit. It would definitely be something I would recommend to anyone looking for a quick beach read or something to pick up on a rainy day to lighten up the mood. I think this could even be a great read for a book club!