Book Smart Kate

Book: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Audiobook: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Spice: N/A

by @kbairokeefe – Many thanks to @thepurplecouchbookshop for selecting this as our Mayl fiction book club pick. 

Agatha, an author, lives in suburban Massachusetts with her husband, Dax, and two sons. Life isn’t perfect, but they have a good marriage, a great house, and are financially secure. The town Facebook Moms page drives Agatha crazy, and she doesn’t have many friends, but Dax is the yin to her yang. Since college, they understand each other, mock the gossips, and joke about the dog walker – until Agatha finds Dax having sex with the dog walker in THEIR SHED while she was making the kids breakfast. With startling speed and a hatched to the shed, Agatha’s marriage dissolves, her kids are splitting time between their home and the dog walker’s home…and Agatha loses it. The only audiences for more of her disdain than Dax are those Facebook moms. And a neighborhood interloper. And a woodpecker intent on destroying her house. And the skunk who lives under her porch. A lot is getting to Agatha – and she lets it all pour out. But the more rage she expels, the more she searches for connection and wonders if some around her might not be enemies after all.

The author lives only a few towns over from me, and I deeply related to the small-town Facebook group drama – stink bugs, inane questions, senseless drama, and a lot of pot-stirring. For a few months, Agatha’s life revolves around a destroyed shed, an overgrown lawn, spying (and very specific spy pants), a skunk (named Susan Sontag), goats (named Thelma, Louise and Timothy), a police officer with a newfound lover for Their Eyes Were Watching God, a homeless woman living in the woods, tormenting the town moms, a debilitating case of writers block, and a whole lot of fear and pain. But with the help of a very patient therapist (aka Shrinky-Dink), a grocery store stranger’s affections, and a neighbor’s relentless kindness, Agatha slowly returns to herself. This is an INTENSELY quirky and wildly funny story about life after divorce, making peace with the curveballs life throws you, and the importance of friends.