How to Age Disgracefully
Finished: April 2024
Book Source: NetGalley
Book Publication Date: June 2024
A senior citizens’ center and a daycare collide with hilarious results in the new ensemble comedy from New York Times- bestselling author Clare Pooley
When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens’ Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards.
The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign—but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide.
When the city council threatens to sell the doomed community center building, the members of the Social Club join forces with their tiny friends in the daycare next door—as well as the teenaged father of one of the toddlers and a geriatric dog—to save the building. Together, this group’s unorthodox methods may actually work, as long as the police don’t catch up with them first.
Trigger Warnings:
Drugs, death
My Review
This book is an absolute gem that sparkles with charm and wit from start to finish. Pooley created a whimsical voyage through the complexities and joys of growing older with a rebellious spirit. With her signature charm and wit, Pooley crafts a narrative that captivates from the first page to the last.
What truly sets Pooley’s work apart is her ability to breathe life into her characters, making them feel like old friends/enemies from the very start. The characters leap off the page with their quirks, flaws, and endearing qualities. The way they intertwine and interact is a testament to Pooley’s skill as a storyteller.
What a joyous celebration of life, love, and the beauty of growing older with grace, humor, and a healthy dose of rebellion. Clare Pooley will be a forever auto read for me!
Spoilers/Summary
SPOILERS BELOW. Stop here if you do not want to read spoilers.
She decides to join a social club to make friends for her 70th birthday.
She helps get revenge on Lydia’s husband and expose his cheating.
Ziggy had a baby young, Kylie, and had to resort to selling some drugs to pay for things. He is going on his last run but gets mugged so they hold him accountable and he’s in debt to them. Daphne saves him by talking to the boss of the drug ring and exposes their scheme knowing that the boss was the one who mugged him to make sure he was in debt and couldn’t leave. He lets ziggy off the hook but wants daphnes necklace so she gives it to him. It turns out it was stolen a long time ago in a jewelry heist
She had been the girlfriend of a mobster who she ended up snitching on when she found out he was into drug dealing and murders as well. She kept the jewelry.
She gets away with the help of her friends distractions. Her and Art have a thing. He goes to visit her in hiding. Ziggy asks her to be Kylie’s godmother.
The community center is saved with a go fund me that raises enough money
Arts daughter agrees to see him and eventually let him meet his grandchildren, his wife and daughter left him when his other daughter died and he didn’t leave the set of a show he was working on to be there at the hospital
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