Review: The Divorcées

The Divorcées by Rowan Beaird
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Hopefully, if you read this novel, you will like it much more than I did. After all, so many reviewers gave it very high marks. I seem to be in the minority. I may have missed something that everyone else understood.


I rarely do not finish an ARC. After all, the author and publisher are relying on me to give an honest opinion. Most people feel that they can't give a review unless they've read the whole thing. Also, once I start a book, I don't put it down to read something else. I did with this novel. I made it to 50%, and that was enough to tell me that I couldn't do it. I could not finish it; it made me too depressed to keep reading.

Do you really need to drink the whole gallon of milk to tell that it is spoiled? I think not!

I have never read a book in which the characters are just boring, tedious - to each other, and just plain blah, especially for the reader. The best I can say is that this book was filled with interesting information about divorce ranches and that I doubt that any of them were really run this way. But what do I really know? This book was set in the '50s, as the blurb explains. The blurb was the most interesting part of this novel.

I thought we would pick up a little when Greer made her debut at the ranch, and we learned more about her, but no matter how much I read, I learned nothing new except that I doubt if she could be trusted. Perhaps later in the book, we actually learn about Greer and her divorce, or if that was even why she was there!

The main character, Lois, seems to have a girl crush on Greer, and I thought that would be explored- maybe it was at the end of the book, but I didn't stick around to find out.

*ARC supplied by the publisher Flatiron Books/Macmillan Publishers, the author, and NetGalley.

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SYNOPSIS: "Lois Saunders thought marrying the right man would cure her loneliness, but as picture-perfect as her husband is, she is suffocating in their loveless marriage. In 1951, though, unhappiness is hardly grounds for divorce―except in Reno, Nevada.

At the Golden Yarrow, the most respectable of Reno’s famous “divorce ranches,” Lois finds herself living with half a dozen other would-be divorcées, all in Reno for the six weeks’ residency that is the state’s only divorce requirement. They spend their days riding horses and their nights flirting with cowboys, and it’s as wild and fun as Lake Forest, Illinois, is prim and stifling. But it isn’t until Greer Lang arrives that Lois’s world truly cracks open. Gorgeous, beguiling, and completely indifferent to societal convention, Greer is unlike anyone Lois has ever met―and she sees something in Lois that no one else ever has. Under her influence, Lois begins to push against the limits that have always restrained her. But how much can she really trust her mysterious new friend? And how far will she go to forge her independence, on her own terms?"