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
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