[I’ve read many good books in the past few months. I’m reviewing some of them in a series of blog posts. So, if you’re looking for a summer read, maybe you’ll find a book to enjoy in one of my book review posts.]

Why did I read this book?

Three reasons. One, Christina Clancy’s novel Shoulder Season is set in East Troy and Lake Geneva, an area of Wisconsin where I spent time during my growing-up years. Two, the novel’s main character takes a job as a Playboy Bunny at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin; I wondered “What would that be like?”* And three, I attended a writer’s residency at Write On, Door County in April, and Christina Clancy was my roommate for part of my stay. She is a kind, funny, and interesting person, who generously gave me a copy of her novel Shoulder Season before she left.

What is this book about?

Shoulder Season is a coming-of-age story that takes place around 1980. Nineteen-year-old Sherri Taylor is an orphan. Her mother, after a lengthy illness, has recently died, and her father has been dead for several years. After caring for her terminally ill mother, Sherri wants to leave East Troy, her hometown. She craves fun and adventure and an escape from grief. She also needs to earn a living. Sherri’s best friend convinces her to interview for a job as a Playboy Bunny. Sherri, much to her surprise, gets the job and fun and adventure. But being a Playboy Bunny is difficult and at times demoralizing work. Left without family and alienated from her best friend, loneliness, confusion, and insecurity cloud her judgment, and she makes choices that lead to heartache.

What makes this book memorable?

Shoulder Season grabbed me from the first page and didn’t let go. Clancy’s story-telling skills compelled me to repeatedly wonder: What’s going to happen next? And how is it all going to shake out in the end? I was never disappointed.

Clancy’s main characters are well-developed with shades of nuance. Like real people they have strengths, weaknesses, insights, and blind spots. And she has taken care to develop secondary characters that are engaging also. We care about her characters, even if we don’t always like them all the time. If her novel were a movie, I’d say it has great casting from the leading roles to the supporting and minor roles.

Clancy’s power of description and setting bring East Troy, the Lake Geneva Playboy Club, and other locations in her novel to life. I grew up near East Troy and Lake Geneva and often visited those areas. I saw Journey play in East Troy in the early 1980s. Clancy nails the feel of those places during the early 80s. She smoothly weaves setting and story together, each element adding to the power of Sherri Taylor’s journey into adulthood.

Shoulder Season is a moving coming of age story for adults. Without ever becoming sappy or sentimental, Clancy’s beautiful prose takes readers on an emotional ride with Sherri Taylor as she struggles to follow her dreams, while at the same time taking readers back to their youth when they too were filled with dreams and so much was possible.

[* As a teenager, I’d heard about Hugh Heffner and his magazine, his playmates of the month, and his Playboy Clubs. The Playboy magazine came to our house every month. My parents hid it, but my siblings and I sometimes “read” it. Well, actually, I often did read the short stories because they were very good, better than the syrupy romantic stories that appeared in the women’s magazines my mother bought; although, as a teenager with starry-eyed romantic notions, I read those too. I came of age in the late-1970s, and I also remember hearing about Gloria Steinem and her undercover assignment as a Playboy Bunny.]