Jun 16, 20213 min read

A Sisterhood of Secret Ambitions: Blog Tour

I am thrilled to be part of the blog tour for A SISTERHOOD OF SECRET AMBITIONS by Sheena Boekweg! This tour is hosted by Turn the Page Tours!

Sheena Boekweg grew up reading books with tree branches peeking over her shoulder. Her novels Glitch Kingdom and A Sisterhood of Secret Ambitions, both with Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan, feature fat positive girls with ambitions, love stories, and sometimes battle axes. She’s a contributor to Every Body Shines, a fat-positive anthology publishing May 2021 with Bloomsbury, and is an alumni of the 2015 Pitch Wars Program and was a Pitch Wars mentor in 2017, 2018, and currently in 2020. Sheena believes that beauty is intrinsic and worth is unquestionable, and thinks you can’t solve all problems with food, but it will always help.

She is well-loved by a tall man with a great beard, her three kids, and the world’s most spoiled puppy. Visit her online at boekwegbooks.com, or follow her on Twitter and Instagram @SheenaBoekweg. She’s represented by Jessica Sinsheimer at Context Literary.

TITLE: A Sisterhood of Secret Ambitions

AUTHOR: Sheena Boekweg

PUBLISHER: Feiwel & Friends

RELEASE DATE: June 1st, 2021

GENRE(S): YOUNG ADULT FICTION--Historical

BUY LINK: https://bookshop.org/a/11727/9781250770981

MY RATING ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Behind every powerful man is a trained woman, and behind every trained woman is the Society. It started with tea parties and matchmaking, but is now a countrywide secret. Gossips pass messages in recipes, Spinsters train to fight, and women work together to grant safety to abused women and children. The Society is more than oaths—it is sisterhood and purpose.

In 1926, seventeen-year-old Elsie is dropped off in a new city with four other teenage girls. All of them have trained together since childhood to become the Wife of a powerful man. But when they learn that their next target is earmarked to become President, their mission becomes more than just an assignment; this is a chance at the most powerful position in the Society. All they have to do is make one man fall in love with them first.

Huge thanks to the publisher and Turn the Page Tours for the chance to be on this book tour!

This has to be one of the most intriguing premises for a book, and I am so happy I got to read it. This book focuses on Elsie as she and her four society sisters go on a mission to woe the future president of the United States in the 1920s.

Elsie is a plus-sized ball of energy, wit, and sass. Let's not forget ambition ;D She finds out a lot about herself as she attempts to gain the heart of Andrew Shaw. She wants to win and she wants to gain favor in the society, but she also sees the flaws in the system that put their men on pedestals while the women succeed in the shadows. Through her efforts to thwart the other girls, she discovers that she wants for herself than being the wife of a powerful man. She herself wants that power too.

I adored the representation of this book and the themes of body positivity and feminism. But there's also a discussion of accepting women who want to be mothers and wives and how that is OK to want just as it's OK for others not to want that sort of life. Elsie is not a perfect character, and she slips and falls often, but in the end, she finds out who she really is and what she wants in life and her journey is beautiful.

The plot is well-paced with enough intrigue and action to keep me hooked. There are some hard-hitting themes and one particular that will make you ugly cry.

This is a diamond of a book that left me wanting more. It's only been a day since I finished and I keep ruminating back to some of the scenes that inspired me. I cannot wait for this book to arrive in my hands. I hope you all love it too!