This was a fun read – it feels very much in the same tradition as novels like Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murder or The Thursday Murder Club. To be clear, this one doesn’t have a murder (just an unfortunately timed death when a ceiling partially collapses) but it has a similar mix of zany characters that come together and enrich each other’s lives. I know I have read other non-murder examples of this kind of story but my brain isn’t working enough to think of any. Maybe The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel?
On the morning of her 70th birthday, Daphne decides it’s time to get out of the house and start living again. As a result, when she sees a flyer for a meeting for the senior residents of the neighborhood at the local community center, she decides to attend, even though it totally isn’t her thing.
Through that meeting, we meet our extended cast – the other seniors attend the class; Lydia, the group leader/coordinator, a middle aged woman with a thankless husband who is dealing with empty nest; and Ziggy, a single teen father, who relies on the community center for its childcare program. When the aforementioned ceiling incident leaves the future of the center in question, they all have to rally together along with the AA group and karate class to save their space and prevent it from being sold to developers.
While there is a large cast of characters, only four of them get POV chapters (Ziggy, Lydia, Daphne and Art, a senior out of work actor), though Daphne is the main character. For Thursday Murder Club fans, Daphne is very Elizabeth- coded: highly competent, somewhat abrasive and blunt with her “no time for nonsense” approach, and in possession of a wide variety of unorthodox knowledge and a mysterious past.
Definitely worth a read for an entertaining and heartwarming story!