The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.  As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!

I know we have some regular Virtual Book Club attendees who live that double book club life, but this time, we are trying it out.  We are following along with the Literary Lads Book Club as they read and review From Blood and Ash #1 by Jennifer Armentrout.  We will finish before they do, as our Hearts.Wants.Books Virtual Book Club will be meeting August 26 at 7:30pm CST to discuss this intriguing novel.  And folks, be sure to get those sign ups in so you have that link almost immediately and don’t miss out on being in the conversation!

I’m going to spoil the ending of the review up front – I don’t remember ever liking a book that isn’t for me so much.  Readers, Shoulder Season by Christina Clancy is over the top in so many ways, which feels like something one should expect when reading the story of a Playboy Bunny.  Some of the over the top I expected, and some was a surprise, but it all poured in to make the story something really special, and not in a bad way.  In the book, freshly graduated from high school Sherri has lost both of her parents and is on her own, with a building on a struggling midwestern square that includes an apartment she shared with her parents and a watch repair shop that hasn’t been tended since her father passed years prior.  She gets the opportunity to work at a nearby Playboy Resort as a “bunny” or server, and takes it.  As one expects, this launches her into a life of booze, boys, drugs, and rock n’ roll, directly from her working class, midwestern upbringing.  Assorted waves of drama ensue, and readers want to thrash Sherri throughout for making dumb decisions, both big and small (or maybe that’s just me).  The first three-quarters of the book takes place in the early 1980s, and the last quarter is in 2019, tying up the loose ends from the first part and letting us know where our cast of characters landed.  If you’ve read this and want a spoiler filled discussion, I am HERE. FOR. IT. and can be found in the DMs.

As you may imagine, I loved the extended epilogue feel of the last quarter of Shoulder Season.  It was most definitely my favorite part of the book seeing where everyone ended up after their adventures in the 1980s.  While I might skip my high school reunions, I love attending my annual college get together and seeing how everyone is and catching up, and I imagine the resort was more like college would have been for Sherri if she’s attended instead of getting a job.  Perhaps one of the reasons for my struggles with the first portion of the book, which was a giant struggle with Sherri’s habitual poor choices, is because I can remember having my own struggles with making great choices at this age.  I, like Sherri, was trying to find myself, and figure out who that was in the sea of possibilities and trying to find my people as I went along.  I won’t tell you how that worked out for Sherri (if you need to know, DM me), but it ended up just fine for me, and my people are amazing!  

Ultimately, I’m giving Shoulder Season a solid three stars.  The writing was picturesque and really helped the reader understand Sherri’s struggles and where they originated.  The pacing wasn’t my favorite, but it served the story well.  My big issue was I did not enjoy reading about Sherri’s consistently awful decisions. Yes, I’m downgrading the book because the main character aggravated me, but I’m also stating that so you can decide for yourself.  I hated that she had virtually no responsible adults in her life to guide her.  And I feel like I’m doing the story an injustice in saying that because I genuinely enjoyed the last quarter and am very interested in reading more from Clancy, but it didn’t make up for the rest when I more than once texted Ashley things like “I don’t want to keep reading because Sherri is about to [insert stupid choice here].”  Yes, I do enjoy books about young adults, but the titles I read are mostly of the fantasy variety where the youths are trying to save the world.  I’m not sure I like the floundering version, and to be clear, this novel is definitely adult, content wise.

What’s a book you can appreciate, but didn’t enjoy?

~Nikki   

Shoulder Season is the sophomore effort of creative writing professor Christina Clancy. Her debut novel, The Second Home, was released in June of 2020 and quickly followed by today’s review pick in July 2021. She has spent her life in Wisconsin, growing up in Milwaukee where she received her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, teaching English at Beloit College, and currently living in Madison with her ‘very tall’ husband. I think it’s very important to note that her husband’s family is from East Troy, the town that our protagonist Sherri calls home, and where Clancy’s family currently spends their summers. In the bio on her website, Clancy states that after her daughter read Shoulder Season she said: “Mom, you wrote two books about coming home.” And after recently spending a long weekend in Wisconsin, I can understand why the summers would be so fabulous on the lakes.

The shoulder season is that time at the resort that is not peak but not yet off-peak. I think the this time in Sherri’s life, right after high school, right after losing her mother to a chronic disease, and before she knows anything about what real life is really like is Sherri’s shoulder season. She’s trying to figure her life out, figure herself out, who and what she wants to be. Do I agree with Nikki that she made some really dumb decisions? Absolutely. But, that’s what this season in a young person’s life is for. Perhaps not to the extent that Sherri does, with her access to hard drugs and her lack of sexual health education. I really actually enjoyed the train wreck that Sherri doesn’t even realize is coming at the end of the tunnel, but that we as readers can see from the front end. We don’t know the exact timing of the wreck, or what the damage that it is going to entail, but we know it’s coming. I think I learned something about myself reading this book, realizing that I have never been very comfortable in or focused on my body, my physical being or on the pleasure that a human can derive just from existing in this form. I experienced Sherri learning and enjoying the process of what her body could do, like carrying drink trays and balancing in high heels for hours and hours at a time. And maybe I need to reconnect with my physical being rather than constantly be ignoring it.

I also wanted to discuss the change in covers for Shoulder Season. When we first put this novel on our TBRs last summer, the cover was this beautiful teal background and a svelte redhead’s bare shoulders. Looking more closely to that image, you’ll notice that woman’s outfit is a tight bodice cut low and strapless in the back, with a collar and bowtie around her neck just like the Playboy Bunnies wear. It is a photograph of a bunny in an incomplete outfit, we don’t know if she is getting ready to work, or just getting done with a shift. I really think that this cover is a better representation of the novel than the one where a woman is jumping into bow-tie shaped water.

I don’t have to like a character, even a main character, to enjoy a book, so I’m giving Shoulder Season four stars. It definitely exceeded expectations on several levels, and made me think about lots of things in my past as I was supposed to be ‘finding myself’ and realizing that maybe I haven’t done enough of that even at thirty-seven. Clancy’s writing is just right, and I really feel like I read this book at the right time – the beginning of my summer’s shoulder season here in Tennessee.

What book have you read recently that really made you ‘feel’ a certain season?

~Ashley

PLEASE SUPPORT US WHEN YOU SHOP BY FIRST CLICKING ON THE IMAGES BELOW: