Uplifting Women's Fiction Review- Eliza Starts a Rumor by Jane L. Rosen
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Publication Date: June 23, 2020
Page Count: 320
Affiliate Links: Amazon | Bookshop
Publisher: Berkley (gifted)
Why I Picked It Up: The publisher reached out to me to host a giveaway! Enter here to win a copy of Eliza Starts a Rumor and a candle from Burkelman!
Plot Summary: (From Goodreads) It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. When Eliza Hunt created The Hudson Valley Ladies’ Bulletin Board fifteen years ago she was happily entrenched in her picture-perfect suburban life with her husband and twin preschoolers. Now, with an empty nest and a crippling case of agoraphobia, the once-fun hobby has become her lifeline. So when a rival parenting forum threatens the site’s existence, she doesn’t think twice before fabricating a salacious rumor to spark things up a bit. It doesn’t take long before that spark becomes a flame. Across town, new mom and site devotee Olivia York is thrown into a tailspin by what she reads on the Bulletin Board. Allison Le is making cyber friends with a woman who isn’t quite who she says she is. And Amanda Cole, Eliza’s childhood friend, may just hold the key to unearthing why Eliza can’t step out of her front door. In all this chaos, one thing is for sure…Hudson Valley will never be the same.
Opening Sentence: “Eliza Hunt has always been a fan of the sisterhood.”
Major Themes: Sisterhood, Female Friendship, Infidelity, #MeToo
My thoughts: I really liked this! I hadn’t heard anything about it but I got sucked into the story right away. Eliza is a recent “empty nester” who’s finding it’s gotten harder and harder to leave her house since her twins moved away. She eventually makes a reluctant trip to the grocery store, where she overhears two younger women talking about a Facebook Group called “Valley Girls”- a younger, edgier version of her page, “The Hudson Valley Ladies’ Bulletin Board”. She decides to spice things up by telling an anonymous little white lie on her page- a lie that turns out to be too close to true for some of the women in her neighborhood. We also meet Eliza’s childhood best friend, Mandy, who has recently come back to the area after her husband gets involved with a major scandal, Olivia, a young wife adjusting to new motherhood, and Alison, a high powered lawyer who’s also a new mother who has taken a year away from work to get out of the city.
When I first heard the story centers around this Facebook group, I thought it was going to be cheesy. But as I read on, I was so happy with how the author used it. It’s used to link the neighbors in the Hudson Valley and it kicks off the drama, but once the characters start to interact with each other it becomes much more about their friendship. The drama wasn’t petty AT ALL- which is really hard to do, I’d think, when you’re writing fiction that starts with social media drama. It was honestly really realistic- as you meet the different characters, they sometimes bring up a post they saw on the board and the neighborhood drama gets pretty amusing. There is depth here too- as it turns out Eliza’s rumor was rooted in truth for some of the neighbors and the women come together to help each other out. All of the characters are dealing with some of their own issues, but the plot walked a really nice line between serious and heartfelt. There’s even a little bit of really well used romance. I came to really enjoy these characters and loved how things came together. Someone recently asked me for uplifting book recommendations, and this would definitely make a good addition to that list. I recommend!
Quotable: “I mourn the person I may have been if this hadn’t happened to me.”
You Might Also Like: Happy and You Know It, Little Fires Everywhere
Rating: 4.25/5
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