However, I love swimming and I’ve experienced the same good feeling once in a very cold lake in Switzerland and it was amazing, exhilarating, and unforgettable. The Calendar Girlsmeets The Lido, a story of friendship, taking chances and finding a new lease in life – no matter your age.

A story with a nicely woven plot and some wonderful highlights—the ladies swimming in the altogether at midnight is a vision of warm friendship and individual courage. Dan has worked in the TV business but now, with an unexpected and forced time-out, he decides to re-evaluate his life. Their relationship had been hard work and distant for some time, but after he dies Elizabeth is left reeling when she discovers that he had a gambling problem and has left her thousands of pounds in debt. While Niall is quickly bored with village life, wishing he could go to live with his father in Australia, Lucy is enjoying the country practice much more that she would have expected, and then a more compelling, if worrying, reason to stay on is revealed.Her latest novel is The Guest House By The Sea - set in the west of Ireland - this is a book to fall in love with. She manages to draw her friend into trying it, and during this intimacy Elizabeth reveals her problem. Those of you who are familiar with the west of Ireland, will recognise Ballycove as a hybrid of so many little places dotted along the north west Atlantic coast. Jo is a prominent part of the community in Ballycove with a stunning, cosy cottage looking out over the bay where Elizabeth feels more at home than when she's within the four walls of her own house.

The book takes the journey with them as they set out not only to change their own lives, but also the lives of others – this hasn’t been compared to the Calendar girls for nothing! I’m not always a lover of multiple points of view but I’m not sure this book would have been so touching and intimate had we not heard from them each individually.The Ladies’ Midnight Swimming Club is a beautiful story of friendship, grief, forgiveness, loneliness, heartbreak, second chances, and so much more. She knew he drank, but not that he gambled, and to her dismay, he was more prolific at both than he was at being successful as a GP. I have never been to Ireland and every time I read one of her tales it ignites my desire to see the land of leprechauns and distant ancestors.

Book Clubs: Ply your members with THE LADIES’ MIDNIGHT SWIMMING CLUB, cold Guinness, hot Shepherd’s pie, crusty soda bread, and melt-in-your-mouth Baileys truffles as you gab about grief, friendship and the healing power of the Irish Sea. Haunting and atmospheric, but real and authentic, with love and loss, humour and sadness, this poignant and thoroughly enthralling and captivating novel will completely draw you in. While on their own paths these women offer emotional support to each other, forming tight bonds regardless of their age and experiences. Killing two birds with one stone Elizabeth hires Lucy as interim GP at the surgery helping Lucy have more free time while also earning.For some, perhaps it was better than the alternative - many of the girls came from simple farming backgrounds.

They all have their own problems but their midnight swims help them connect, talk, laugh and be inspired. I had to skim many pages while keeping an eye out for the characters that I enjoyed reading about the most.These three women, Elizabeth, Jo, and Lucy, are thrown together by circumstance and become fast friends.