The Calamity Club has been everywhere lately. Social media is buzzing about it, and the ratings on every book platform are practically glowing. So when I saw the hype, I knew I had to check it out myself.

The first impression of the book is its thickness. But well, with the nice reviews so far from fellow readers, I expected this long story would be impressive. But do I think so as well?

Set in 1933 Oxford, Mississippi during the Great Depression, the novel follows three women: an orphaned girl, an unmarried bookkeeper, and a resourceful down-on-her-luck woman whose lives converge amid the poverty, hypocrisy, and constrained freedoms of the Depression-era Deep South. The orphaned girl is Meg, trapped in an institution that treats her like she’s disposable. Birdie is a sharp-minded bookkeeper struggling to keep her family from going under. And Charlie has her own complicated history. When Meg’s story intersects with theirs, these three women form an unlikely alliance. To fund the rescue, Birdie and Charlie open an underground brothel staffed by women society has discarded.

I found myself absorbed in the world Stockett built and the characters living in it. The pacing moves, the drama unfolds, and you feel this pull to keep turning pages, especially the first half. The real turning point comes when Rory bolts and suddenly Meg’s adoption enters the picture. Those plot turns the story to get messier, more complicated. That’s the plot where I found myself more invested in how everything’s going to play out.

Instead of being drawn deeper into the story and growing curious about how the drama would resolve, I unfortunately found the second half too stretched out. Sure, the story is brilliant and the plot is packed with drama. But in my opinion, the book could have been tighter. Some plotlines are dragged out with unnecessary conflict, as if delaying the resolution for its own sake. It could all hit just as hard, maybe even harder, if it had been trimmed down a bit.

Overall, The Calamity Club is worth reading if you’re into character-driven historical fiction full of personal and family drama.

My Favorite Bits

• Sometimes you’re going to have to lie to get by in life.

• Content means (..) you’re just happy enough. You’re not amazed by the world anymore.

• Just ‘cause you’re poor and down on your luck don’t mean you’ve lost your wits.

• I don’t know when exactly in life I started expecting the worst, but it’s a problem I inherited, evidently.

• If you give a girl a taste of fresh air and then take it away, she will grow fierce and wild to get that fresh air back again.

• I have been told I tend to overthink things. Well I have known enough people to underthink things and could stand to put a little more thought in their decisions.

• My entire life’s assignment is to ask questions. Why else are we even here?

• How are we so quiet with all this noise inside us?

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Author: Kathryn Stockett
Publication date: 5 May 2026
Number of pages: 656 pages

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