Five Fortunes

Rating:
Summary: GREAT SUMMER READING!
Review: Loved the characters, loved the story line. LOVED IT! I finished the book over the weekend while the laundry piled up!!! Oh well! Treat yourself to some new friends ... Laurie, Rae, Jill, Amy and Carter. What a group! Rae is a wonderful older woman who I'd love for a mother-in-law! Jill and Amy have the usual mother/daughter relationship but you are able to watch it mature and grow. What every mother hopes for ... to be friends with her teen-age daughter. Carter is the immortal 'girl most likely to not ....' She turns out to be a real friend to Jill at the lowest point in her life. And Laurie ... who could not like Laurie. She just lost her husband, has 5 kids and is burned out. Wow! Does she come a long way! Take a chance and read this book ... it won't disappoint you!

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully-crafted story
Review: My mom handed me this book and said, "Here, you have to read this." Skeptical, I opened the first page and couldn't put it down until the end. Gutcheon crafts a wonderful, thought-proviking story of 5 different women and the trials and tribulations of their lives.

Rating:
Summary: Five Fortunes
Review: Not a literary masterpiece, but something very fun when you don't want to think too hard! Thoroughly engaging, because the characters are well drawn out.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Good Read About the Lives of Five Women
Review: Once I got into the first few pages, I liked this book pretty well. It is about 5 wealthy women who are enjoying themselves at a luxurious spa for a week. They enjoy a week with fitness, watching their diets, and other heavenly treatments, (as I call them). They all make friends, and afterwords, their lives intertwine with one another.

We'll meet Rae Strouse, the older lady whose husband at home is beginning to suffer from dementia. He was a very wealthy philanthropist.

Laura Lopez is a politician, and has five kids. She recently lost her husband to an illness, and is recovering yet from the shock. She is working on running for senate.

Jill and Amy, mother and daughter have issues. Jill, the daughter has deep issues with her weight along with everything else in her life. Amy, the mother, is married to Noah a surgeon, who unbeknownst to Amy is having a secret affair.

Then there is Carter who is divorced from her husband Jerry, and trying to find a new life for herself. She is a private investigator, and her main theme in that field is to capture drug dealers. Later in the book, she tries to adopt a child from a friend who got killed and left her daughter an orphan.

The book is very true to life and you can relate to many of the events that happen here.

Rating:
Summary: One-dimensional characters
Review: The premise of the book was intriguing, but the characters weren't realistic or likable. I especially didn't like the one who decided to run for public office -- her husband had recently died and she had five children who needed her at home, not running around campaigning! And every one who knew her kept telling to go for it, which was simply ridiculous. I had to practically force myself to finish this book; it just didn't hold my attention.

Rating:
Summary: Like toilet paper -- use it and forget it
Review: This book was a page-turner but I really disliked it. All the characters are upper-class (after all, they meet at an exclusive spa that costs some ungodly amount) and the challenges they face are not, for the most part, of a life-or-death nature. Interesting characters are introduced to move the story along and then dropped as unneccesary, the reader can see plot developments from a mile off, there is no real tension to the various plots, and everyone lives happily ever after. Vast amounts of money make "happily ever after" a lot easier to attain. The moral of the book seemed to be that friends are nice to have but only if they are really rich. I read "Domestic Pleasures" several years ago, enjoyed it immensely and recommended it to several friends who felt similarly about it. Other Gutcheon books that I have read ("The New Girls," "Saving Grace," and "Five Fortunes") have been tremendous let-downs. I think I'm giving up.

Rating:
Summary: best book i have read all year!!!!!!
Review: this is a fantastic read. you really get to know and care about all the characters. unusually well wrtitten!!!

Rating:
Summary: Overwhelmingly Stereotypical
Review: This is a quick read with a cute plot and amiable characters. If you like Oprah books, you'll like Beth Gutcheon.

Rating:
Summary: Cute novel
Review: This is a quick read with a cute plot and amiable characters. If you like Oprah books, you'll like Beth Gutcheon.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but not Gutcheon's best
Review: This is definitely an entertaining read, but it's far from being Gutcheon's best. The characters are well-drawn, but their various situations don't always ring true; everything seems to be wrapped up a little too neatly in the end for all concerned. The story tends to meander from one incident to the next, leaving the book with a somewhat unfocused feeling. Still a good read, but I'd recommend starting with "Domestic Pleasures" or "The New Girls".