A review by shammons
The Sunday Potluck Club by Melissa Storm

3.0

I sort of struggled with this book and am on the fence on how to rate it. For one thing, I decided to try this new-to-me author, because she was listed under my Hoopla genres as being Christian fiction. The book was very clean, but this is not what I consider Christian fiction, as there is no mention of God or faith. In fact, quite the opposite. This is a personal thing for me, but I'm not fond of the me-centric, worldly philosophy of what the book repeated refers to as "say what you need, no apologizing". It's not always about me, and it's not always in everyone's best interest to just constantly tell others what you need, want, have to have, etc. As a Christian, I am called to the philosophy of less of me, and more of Christ, and by extension, others. This book was more in the "self help" headspace of going to therapy and learning to tell everyone what you need, constantly. Also, this book had a lot of dialogue on feelings and emotions, and understandably so. The premise is that a group of friends whose parents were all diagnosed with cancer, meet at a hospital, befriend one another, and for support, they now come together on Sundays for a potluck meal. There, they can find comfort from others who understand what they are going through as caregivers for their ill parents. As the book opens, they are attending the third funeral of the 4. The remaining young lady's father is in remission and she feels a lot of guilt. The other three, including our main character, are dealing with the hole in their lives after the loss of their parent. Our main character, an elementary school teacher, bonds with a student and her father, because the little girl has recently lost her mother as well. When I chose this book to read next, I did not do my due diligence and read a lot of reviews about it, and didn't realize the weightiness of the topic. I was thinking it was going to be light and frilly, and involve a lot of food. It was not, on either count, so I struggled a bit more than most people likely would. I'm a notoriously moody reader and this one was a poor choice for me at the moment in time I chose to read it. It was not a bad book, but between it being touted as Christian fiction and the fact that it was not what I was wanting/needing to read, I did struggle quite a bit. Next time, I'll have to read more snippets about the plot and make better choices, LOL! That being said, it was fairly short and a fairly easy read. There's another in this series, but I'm not sure I will continue. I did choose this one to satisfy a particular category in my 2021 reading challenge, and may end up reading the next one if next year's challenge includes the same category (a book with a day of the week in the title).