Kindred Spirits
Sarah Strohmeyer
Dutton Adult (2011), Hardcover (ISBN 0525952225 / 9780525952220)
Fiction, 304 pages
The following review was originally published in Shelf Awareness for Readers (7/12/2011 edition) and is reprinted with permission.
One of the things that keeps long-term relationships interesting is
that there are always new things to discover about the other person. The
Ladies’ Society for the Conservation of Martinis, which grew out of a
PTA meeting postmortem, learns this after the death of one of its
members. The friendship among Carol, Mary Kay, Beth and Lynne–the kind
of connection that can feel deeper and more reliable than family–is
shaken when Lynne suddenly leaves her friends behind, asking them to do
two last favors for her. Although shocked by what those requests turn
out to be, the other three women want to honor their friend’s requests,
and so set out on a road trip from Connecticut to Pennsylvania to
fulfill their promises.
The trip is not only a source of revelations about Lynne’s life
before they knew her, but a time for the remaining members of the
Society to discover each other’s secrets as well, most of which are
connected to things they’ve not yet shared with their husbands and
partners.
Sarah Strohmeyer hits all the right women’s-fiction notes in Kindred Spirits, but
manages to avoid making readers feel like they’ve heard all of this
before. The framing device she uses is, perhaps, a bit contrived, and
some of the plot points are predictable, but her characters are
convincing and the bonds between them feel true. Kindred Spirits is a novel about friends that readers will want to share with their own friends
