Tina’s Pick
June, 2026
The Book Club for Troublesome Women
Marie Bostwick
Harper Muse Publisher, April 22, 2025
If you love stories about friendships, strong women, the 60s, and the power of the written word, this is the book for you.
(Marybeth Mayhew Whalen, author)
The year is 1963 and Margaret Ryan is living the dream life of a suburban housewife. She has a loving husband, 3 children, a station wagon and a beautiful home in a brand-new planned community in northern Virginia. She rubs elbows with other housewives in the neighborhood and has a standing invitation to the neighborhood coffee klatch. She even has a subscription to A Woman’s Place, a popular magazine inspiring woman how to act, how to entertain, how to dress, among other things. On the outside, she appears to have it all. However, inside she is struggling with the path her life has taken. When did her dreams to have a career as a writer go? She has this feeling of resentment being in charge of taking care of the household responsibilities, taking care of her husband and raising their 3 children.
Her favorite neighbors and best friends, Viv Buschetti and Bitsy Cobb, also appear to have it all. Life appears simple, planned, and routine. When Charlotte Gustafson, moves to the neighborhood from New York City, Margaret becomes a little obsessed with figuring out who this mysterious and artistic neighbor is. She decides to welcome Charlotte to her home on the guise of beginning a book club, along with her two good friends, Viv and Bitsy. They sit around gossiping and drinking, and through their journey of learning about each other and sharing their inner most secrets, the four women realize they all seem to have similar feelings of resentment, sadness, and frustration regarding where they are in their lives.
To make it a true book club, Charlotte suggests they read the provocative new book, The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan. As the women delve deeper into this very feministic book discussing the dissatisfaction of women and their roles as “housewives” in post- World War II, they realize they have been blinded by the media and the culture they live in. Their life of domestic bliss sold to them is not who they really are nor what they want to be. Without realizing, the four women embark on a new era of feminism. They come together to form a powerful sisterhood while discovering their own independence, secret longings, desires and hopes for the future, for them and their children.
The book takes you through many antics the women pursue to prove to their families that they can do it all, that they are more than just a housewife and mother, that they are smart, with feelings, needs, desires and want respect.
This book is funny, sad, serious and hopeful and you find yourself rooting for these four very different women through their journey of self-discovery.