Crimes Against A Book Club 

Title: Crimes Against A Book Club
Author: Kathy Cooperman
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Release Date: May 1, 2017
Rating: ★★★★★

Annie has just joined a prestigious book club in La Jolla, an expensive area of San Diego. But she doesn’t fit in. She has a PhD in Chemistry, while all the other women stay at home all day. Annie’s world comes crashing down when her son is diagnosed with Autism. The doctors recommend that he gets lots of therapy, which would cost $84,000 per year. Though they have a lot of money, Annie’s family can’t afford that price tag. Annie’s best friend Sarah also has some financial problems. She abruptly quit her job as an associate at a law firm. She has been trying to have a baby for years and she has gone through IVF treatment twice but nothing has worked. She wants to try it one more time, but she doesn’t have the money now that she’s unemployed. Annie comes up with an idea to get them both the money they need. They will sell a homemade face cream to the rich women in La Jolla, under the guise of a celebrity doctor. Annie mixes up a special cream to sell for $2,000 a jar. But they both run into trouble when Annie’s secret ingredient is discovered. 

This was a really funny book. The premise of selling the face cream was so absurd. But I could see this happening in real life. When a celebrity’s face is associated with a product, it can sell for way more than its worth. 

Though the book club isn’t as prominent in the story as I thought it would be, there was a book theme running through the story. Each chapter focused on one character, and it opened with a paragraph about a book they read. It set the stage for what was going to happen to them in that chapter. 

There were so many other women in the story that Sarah’s and Annie’s stories got lost in the mix. Though they were still the main characters, some chapters went into detailed subplots about minor characters. I don’t think there needed to be quite as much detail about the women who bought the cream from Sarah. 

I recommend this book for some good laughs!