The Calamity Club: A Novel

Published on Peeking Between the Pages (https://peekingbetweenthepages.com/2026/05/the-calamity-club-by-kathryn-stockett.html) Like many I was a huge fan of The Help so I was very excited to see Kathryn Stockett had a new book coming out – The Calamity Club. Often when an author has a book as amazing as The Help you find the next one just doesn’t measure up. No fear of that with The Calamity Club – it is such a beautiful story of family, friendship, strength, and love. It’s hard to know where to start since I loved everything about this novel so I’ll start with one of my favorite characters. It’s 1933 and eleven-year-old Meg is left abandoned by her mother on Christmas Eve and ends up in an orphanage. It’s a hard life for her there as the woman who runs the place really dislikes her but she is so spunky and funny. She’s a strong girl determined to have life despite her circumstances. Then we have Birdie who is unmarried and most certainly has a mind of her own. I just loved her. Her family is struggling to make ends meet so she travels to visit her well-off sister to ask for money. However it turns out her sister isn’t doing as well as she thought. Then Birdie meets Charlie and the plan they hatch to earn some money was nothing less than shocking. As the story unfolds secrets are revealed and lives converge, especially those of Meg, Birdie, and Charlie. This is a chunky novel at over 650 pages but it flew by for me. I was so engrossed in the lives of Meg, Birdie, and Charlie not to mention all the side characters as well. Turning the last page on this novel left me feeling as though I had lost some special friends and I know this novel will stay with me for a long time. If you enjoy stories of female friendships and women who persevere even in a time when most didn’t you need to pick up a copy of The Calamity Club which is releasing on May 5. What a perfect novel to sit outside in the sun with! Highly recommended! Review copy provided by the publisher for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

https://cerebralspice.wordpress.com/2026/06/08/book-list-the-calamity-club-by-kathryn-stockett This is a must-read, that will make you laugh and cry and feel everything in between.

A great read....I absolutely loved it!!!!

Birdie Calhoun sets off to pay a visit to her newly married sister only to discover her husband has left her and her mother-in-law broker than the Ten Commandments and with prospects as dark as the wrong side of a coffin lid. The slims are pickin. So Birdie sets to work to save the home and its women from financial ruin–and she’s not afraid to dirty her hands or her reputation along the way. “In a few weeks, I’d fallen in love with a married man, had my eyebrows plucked, started a dance club when my sister was out of town, and was getting dropped off at church by five prostitutes…Life with prostitutes and a party line teemed with the unknown.” “Besides the aforementioned Charlie Club and Ruby Slipper Club, the names the girls had come up with were: the Twat Club, the No Customer Club, the Tart Club, the Cheap-Ass Ain’t Got No Furniture Club, the Supperless Club, because last night they’d had to spread the pimento cheese on the bread themselves, the Sorriest Strangest Club I Ever Worked In Club and the Calamity Club. If these were really the choices, I suppose I’d choose the last…there was a lot yet to do to set up a dance club that was also a boardinghouse that was actually a speakeasy that was truly a brothel.” “‘Try and tell me which one a us here ain’t damaged?’ There were looks around the quilt, like we were measuring it in each other…I’d always thought I was the most damaged person in the room until I’d lived with five prostitutes and a madam…It makes me think how this house is sort of like those color crayons I found. It does not matter how many exotic assorted colors you got to choose from, if you take the best ones away, the ones that made sense, all you got is a big fancy box of crazy crayons you can hardly use.” These women were the best colors around. “This slapped together band of misfits had made me feel, for the first time in my life, that I truly belonged. How the hell, I wondered, did I ever get so lucky?” My sentiments exactly when I finished the last page of Kathryn Stockett’s The Calamity Club. The book hangover for this one is going to be a doozy!