“Daring Chloe” is the first book in a new series by award-winning author Laura Jensen Walker. The series is entitled “Getaway Girls” and is about a group of women who comprise a book club, and have decided to live out some of the adventures they read about.
Chloe’s fiancé showed his true colors the night before their wedding. He sent her a text message in the middle of the night, telling her he couldn’t go through with the ceremony, and then he went backpacking out in the wilderness. Chloe can’t understand what went wrong, and she really can’t understand why everyone keeps telling her it was for the best. She remembers that several of her friends expressed their concerns about her marrying this particular guy in the first place, but that just didn’t seem to connect in her brain. Were they all seeing something she wasn’t, and why was she so blind?
Throwing herself into her books, she also discovers she has to throw herself into something else – the new apartment she was supposed to live in after the wedding. She signed a lease on a huge contemporary apartment and now, without his income to supplement hers, she’ll never be able to afford it. But Becca, friend from the book club, is in need of a place to live, so the two decide to become roomies and split the costs.
But something is still missing, something that will help launch Chloe into her new life. When her Aunt Tess suggests that she use her tickets and take her honeymoon after all, Chloe is a little worried, to say the least. How do you take a honeymoon by yourself? Well, you don’t—you take along two good friends. Tess and Becca go with Chloe on her fabulous exotic trip, and decide it was so much fun, they want to go to Paris the following January. The book they’ll be reading for their January book club selection is about French cooking, so the ladies in the club decide to save their money for a year and make the trip. Along the way, they experience life through blind dating, camping in the great outdoors, and other things they never thought they’d see themselves do, and Chloe learns more about herself than she ever dreamed.
I liked the story quite a lot, and I love the narrative tone. It was a beautiful experience to see Paris through the eyes of these characters, although there were times I felt we were seeing a little much of Paris and a little less of the characters themselves, but I enjoyed “Daring Chloe” a lot and will return for the other adventures in the “Getaway Girls” series as they become available.
(This book was published in 2008 by Zondervan.)
Related Blogs:
Laura Jensen Walker on Her Other Books