Winter Garden was a good selection for discussion in our book club. It offers several themes that are great for discussion including mother-daughter relationships as well as sibling rivalry. The fact that the father in the story did not share information with his 40 year old daughters was attributed to the way families kept secrets to themselves and often did not share information with children. Most found the ending unrealistic in that after years of neglect they were one big happy family.

The members in our book club all enjoy Chicago and found it interesting to learn more about the history of Chicago. We all agreed that the "creative non-fiction" approach provided a more interesting read and were able to relate this book to past books we have read(The Devil In The White City and Arc of Justice) at a similiar time. Several members felt it was a slow read-perhaps because it was summer. Most would recommend the book, especially if people were interested in Chicago and it's early days of corruption, politics and prostitution.The book provided a good discussion between then and now as well as the role of women in society.

This was the worst book our club has ever chosen and the only one that was not finished by any member.Most gave up at about 25-30 pages in. It just wasn't even funny! The author uses sarcasm and foul language in an attempt at humor. Her writing is a flight of ideas depicting her abusive childhood. Her favorite word is the F word. There are just too many great books to choose from to waste your time on this one. We were all puzzled at the great reviews.

Our book club won copies of this book on book movement and found it to be an interesting read with some surprise twists. It is a romantic and tragic interracial love story and the strife it caused to a southern family in the late 1930\\\'s and early 40\\\'s.It is written from two points of view-a white women in her late 80\\\'s and her younger black hairdresser with family troubles of her own. This was a debut book for the author and we really enjoyed her writing style despite what we consider a few holes in character development of some of the minor characters. Several members also listened to the audiobook and enjoyed the authentic sounding readers. The book lends itself to good discussion on a variety of topics of family dynamics, racism, love, friendship and forgiveness. Well worth a read!!.

The storyline of two young people provided an interesting insight into the plight of young people during WWII. Their story brought to life how people dealt with the war and their circumstances. Great book club read and lots of themes to discuss. We loved it!

An enjoyable read with lots of good topics to discuss.

Sheri Fink\\\'s book was filled with an enormous amount of interesting facts but the bottom line appeared to slant toward the guilt of Dr. Anna Poe and the 2 nurses who were brave enough to stay and deal with the patients that were abandoned by everyone else. The numerous people presented and the minute details of their lives made the book very long and redundant. The book lends itself to discussions of many end of life issues which was an interesting topic for book club, but the book itself was tedious and biased, despite Fink\\\'s claim to be non-biased. Clubs should read memorialhospitaltruth.com for interesting comments from Dr. Poe.

Our club enjoyed the book but found the characters somewhat underdeveloped. We all enjoyed the ending and agreed about half way through we were wanting to read quickly to see who actually committed the crime.

I listened to about 7 hours of the audiobook and gave up. The foul language and gory details of torture were not what I look for in a book club choice. The concept of water shortage is what some members found of interest.