“Well-bred girls from good southern families are not supposed to get shot. Vivien Armstrong Gray’s mother had never come out and actually told her this, but Vivi had no doubt it belonged on the long list of unwritten, yet critically important, rules of conduct on which she’d been raised.”

Vivian Gray Armstrong is an investigative news reporter in New York City – a long way from her southern roots in Atlanta, Georgia. Her family has not approved of her job choice, or her choices of what people and topics to report, but when she gets shot in the backside and the entire world sees the video on the Internet, the embarrassment for them is too much. Circumstances lead her back home for a while to recover where she learns how important family really is in life.

Magnolia Wednesdays was the February book for a book club I am in. The host’s sister had recommended it for our group. It reminded me of a Lisa Scottoline book where it’s almost a soap opera in a book with lots of characters, lots of topics and a climactic ending right at the end.

Vivian loses her job and starts writing a column about life in suburbia as she lives with her widowed sister. She tries to help her sister with her two teenagers, but she first has to figure if and when to tell her war-reporter boyfriend that they have a baby on the way. She starts taking a dance class at her sister’s studio and meets two other women whose problems eventually help Vivian put things in perspective.

If you like fast-paced books with lots of characters, this would be a book you’d like. I prefer more in-depth stories with fewer characters, but this wasn’t a bad story at all. It would be for adults only as it covers suicide, unplanned pregnancy, self-esteem, marriage problems, teenage promiscuity, war and homosexuality. It did make for an interesting book club discussion, so it would be good for a book club.

Buy the book here (affiliate link).