Barbara J. ZitwerRezensionen

Joey Rubin es una joven arquitecta y decoradora que vive en Nueva York. En un entorno tan competitivo y dominado por los hombres, su adicción al trabajo la ha llevado a descuidar tanto sus antiguas amistades que al único ser a quien se siente realmente unida es a su perra Tink. Pero su vida dará un vuelco cuando Joey viaja a la campiña inglesa para supervisar la reforma de la vieja mansión donde el mismísimo J. M. Barrie escribió Peter Pan. Cuando Joey llega al pequeño pueblo se siente totalmente desubicada. Pero su mundo vuelve a tener sentido cuando conoce a las chicas del Club Femenino de Natación J. M. Barrie, un grupo de octogenarias que, además de la amistad que mantienen desde jóvenes, comparten una curiosa pasión: bañarse todos los días del año en las aguas de un lago cercano al pueblo. Estas sirenas de carne y hueso, cargadas de historia y de humanidad, ayudarán a Joey a descubrir el verdadero sentido de la vida y la importancia de la auténtica amistad.

What my daddy would have called a "fair to middlin'" story. It was good, evenly paced, well-written. Interesting without being exciting. A page turner without being suspenseful. It was extraordinarily realistic in its portrayal of adult friendships - pretty much all interpersonal relationships - without being dramatic.

A very ordinary story, well done.½

Not too bad, but still like many similar plots: why do seemingly independant still young, good looking and successful women have to travel to another country, preferably to romantic countryside sites, to find their love? Still, it is a quick, relatively interesting read and well written, at least better than most.

Joey Rubin is a rising young architect in New York, battling the glass ceiling and still hurting from the end of a romance with a co-worker. She's developed a hard, cynical edge, and has been losing touch with her friends from college and earlier. She's also starting to realize that maybe it was a mistake to get rid of everything that reminded her of her late mother, after her father remarried, moved to Florida, and deeded the condo they'd all lived in together to her.

Then the lead partner on a project she's done much of the work on is badly hurt in an accident, on the very day they're scheduled to make the presentation to the firm. First she has to make the presentation on her own--and then she finds out that she's going to make the trip to the UK, on nearly no notice, to get the project started.

It's not just any project.. It's converting Stanway House, a house with a strong connection to J.M. Barrie, to a hotel and resort. It is, in many ways, a dream project, but it also pulls her out of her comfort zone. And that's before she discovers the skinny-dipping senior citizens who share her love of J.M. Barrie.

Joey's oldest and dearest friend, Sarah, is married to an Englishman and has been raising a family in London for the last fifteen years. Eagerly anticipating the reunion, Joey and Sarah are both shocked and uncomfortable with how much they've grown apart. At Stanway House in the Cotswolds, the locals aren't exactly welcoming, and the widowed caretaker of the property, Ian, is initially suspicious and a bit hostile.

But when she's out running one day, she finds a group of elderly ladies swimming in a nearby pond. In January. They encourage and dare her to join them, and she has an amazing experience.

It's also the beginning of a breakthrough on her project. Aggie is her friend Sarah's mother-in-law. Lilia is Ian's former mother-in-law. Joey starts to make connections, learn about the tiny community, and grow both personally and professionally. She's in for some emotional upheaval along the way.

This book deals beautifully with the relationships among the women, and matter-of-factly treats elderly women as individuals. It's an enjoyable book.

However, in some ways, it is a bit irritating. There are Americanisms in the mouths of the English characters, and improbable Britishisms in Joey's mouth. Spectators don't cheer loudly at equestrian events on either side of the Atlantic. For a supposed passionate fan of J. M. Barrie, Joey is apparently unaware of the existence of the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Garden, and Zitwer never mentions its existence in the course of the book.

Research, research, research. It's a writer's stock in trade as much as a good and graceful command of the English language.

Nevertheless, a very enjoyable read.

I received a free electronic galley from the author.

Going by the title and the blurb I was hoping for something along the lines of "The Devine Secrets of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood." Unfortunately I didn't get it. What I did get was a lightweight girlie book of a type I usually steer well away from, and if it hadn't answered the criteria so perfectly for my 2017 reading challenge, namely, an author starting with the letter 'Z' I wouldn't have persisted. I enjoyed reading about the ladies and their daily meetings at the pond. I liked the idea of a group of older women, who had been friends a very long time, getting together for a daily swim and then a companionable chat in the hut afterwards. This was their special place where they shared everything, warts and all and at least they were interesting. But this wasn't enough for me. I found Sarah and Joey a tad predictable and the rest of the storyline ran to, what I imagine is, a very bankable formula for the chick lit genre. As many reviewers have already said, there were many glitches with customs and language, etc., and the ending was so predictably clichéd I almost groaned. It would have been nice to get more of the J.M. Barrie connection brought into the story but….oh well.

When Joey Rubin stumbles upon a group of elderly women swimming in a lake one freezing January morning, she thinks they must be mad. But then they dare her to come in - Joey, an overworked New York architect, has come to the Cotswolds to oversee the restoration of Stanway House - the stately home that inspired J.M. Barrie to write Peter Pan. But it hasn't been easy. The local residents aren't exactly welcoming, and then there's the problem of the brooding caretaker, a man who seems to take every opportunity to undermine her plans. She soon begins to feel that she can't do anything right. Until, that is, she begins to take a daily dip with the members of the J.M. Barrie Ladies' Swimming Society in their private, watery Neverland.

Had the book actually focused on the ladies in the swimming society, and their lives, I think the book would have been so much better! There were so many promises in this book, and in the end, I thought it was rather shallow.

I won a free copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway.

I enjoyed this book, but the one problem I had was that the description for this book is somewhat not accurate. The description states that Joey will be met by unwelcoming local residents and have a struggle with the caretaker, but this isn't exactly what happens in the story. Joey is met by some residents that are not welcoming (won't name names, for it's a spoiler), but the problem is that the description makes it seem that all of the residents will be unwelcoming. And the brooding caretaker does not undermine her plans of the restoration of the house. The description made it seem like Joey was going to have a very difficult time with the restoration of the house, but this was not true. But the book is still enjoyable despite this.

The story does follow the restoration of the Stanway House, but not as much as I thought it would. The story focuses more on Joey and how her live is being changed by this trip that her work has required her to take. The story is mainly about friendship; particularly what Joey learns about friendship.

The book is a light read, with realistic issues (ex. topics dealing with friendship, loss, and family).

I like how the concept of J. M. Barrie and everything that is associated with him (ex. Neverland, The Lost Boys, etc.) was used in the story. I thought that the book would be really whimsical due to this concept, but it is not. There are elements of whimsy (ex. the ladies swimming in the icy pond in winter) that resonate with the characteristics of "Peter Pan", but they are not overwhelming in the story and are rather realistic.

I liked this book a lot. This book really made me want to go to England even more. I loved all the references to Peter Pan and JM Barrie.

At first I thought this book was going to be all about the old ladies, but it wasn't.

Joey Rubin, a New York architect, goes to the Cotswolds to oversee the restoration of Stanway House, the home that inspired J.M. Barrie to write Peter Pan. The plot is predictable and simplistic and the characters stereotypical.½

Are you the same person now that you were five years ago? Ten? Fifteen? Twenty? We all change and adapt over time and sometimes that means that we are very different than we once were. But what happens to a life long friendship when each of the friends has changed? Is it something to fight for or is it something to let go of, holding only memories of the past? These questions and more are at the heart of Barbara Zitwer's charming new novel The J.M. Barrie Ladies' Swimming Society.


Joey Rubin is an architect who rarely gets full or even some credit for the phenomenal work that she does, putting in crazy hours and sacrificing any semblence of a personal life for her job. Her last relationship was with a coworker who wanted to keep their relationship a secret and she's drifted away from all of her friends. She is truly the definition of a workaholic but one who never gets the glory, entirely a behind the scenes workaholic. So when her boss is injured in an accident and Joey has to run the presentation on converting Stanway House in England, the lovely estate where J.M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan, into a hotel, a presentation on which she's done most of the work, she is a nervous wreck. But she hits it out of the park with her homage to Barrie and her ideas merging preservation and improvement and she is tapped to go to England to oversee the initial stages of the conversion, a trip that not only gives her the chance to live in a place instrumental in the writing of her favorite book but also to visit with her childhood best friend now living in England.

When Joey arrives in England, she reconnects with Sarah and finds herself surprised at how different the two of them are from the once inseparable, closer than sisters friends they used to be. She is a dedicated career woman while Sarah has settled into chaotic domesticity. They just don't seem to speak the same language anymore. And when Joey goes out to Stanway House to start her project and encounters a group of elderly ladies swimming in a freezing cold pond in the middle of winter, through her connection with them and their example of lifelong friendship and the work behind it, she will come to realize that it isn't her differences from Sarah or their physical distance from each other but her isolation and lack of care in maintaining their relationship that has caused her to forget how to be a friend. With the help of Aggie, Meg, Gala, Viv, and Lilia of the J.M. Barrie Ladies' Swimming Society, Joey will not only plunge into the waters of the pond, but she will plunge back into life, with all the connection, messiness, and relationship work that it implies. Ultimately, Joey's trip to England refreshes and renews her. It gives her confidence in herself. And it helps her achieve a better, more satisfying balance between the personal and professional, teaching her the importance of relationships. Maybe she'll even open herself up to the possibilities with Ian, the dour Stanway House caretaker.

This is a truly lovely book about women's friendships. It is lighthearted and enjoyable but it doesn't shy away from the truth that a real friendship, one worth holding on to, takes work, hits bumps in the road, and faces roadblocks but is ultimately worth it for the love and support and vital connection that it provides. The characters are all quirky and delightful. Joey can be a bit irritatingly obtuse at times but that just makes her realistic. The love story woven through the plot and complicated by her burgeoning friendships with the elderly ladies is a bit abrupt but in this novel's Neverland, it is the love between friends rather than romantic love that is really the main focus. An escapist read, fans of women's fiction will thoroughly enjoy this gentle and appealing novel.