I had really high hopes for this one but it fell incredibly flat. Honestly it felt like I was sitting around a table with a detective telling me every last detail about a group of strangers I had been given no reason to care about. The cast of characters is unique but there are so many that it makes it difficult to actually get attached to one. I feel like the cast is too large and none of them feel lived in. The premise seemed cute but this one just missed all the marks.

This was my first Clare Pooley novel! It made me laugh out loud and cry all at the same time. I fell in love with this book and obsessed with her writing. You really want the best for the characters in the book and it leaves you wanting more.

Lydia takes on the job of running a senior citizen's social club and ends up with feisty members.
As they discuss activities, the group becomes interested in saving the community center which
provides much needed services. The seniors help the daycare stage a Christmas show and enter a
talent contest with the hopes of winning money to save the center. Daphne, one of the seniors,
is a driving force. Her past will be a major help in dealing with the issies. An interesting group of
characters who become family.
#HowtoAgeDisgracefully #PenguinRandomHouse #NetGalley

I really enjoyed How to Age Disgracefully. Just a enjoyable novel with a fun cast of characters. This one will make you laugh and cry. It's a bit much at times, but just made the story line even more fun!

Thank you NetGalley and Pamela Dorman Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and the Publisher for the eARC.
What a delightful book this is. I had never read anything by Clare Pooley and will definitely be remedying that soon.
A group of elderly residents and their 'teacher' get together in a community center to make friends and have something to look forward to while learning new things. When the Council wants to sell the dilapidated community center and grounds, the elderly group, the Alcoholics Anonymous Center and the Children's Daycare Center band together to fight the Council. Tenacity and humour made me feel uplifted . I can't recommend this book highly enough!

This was a zany but heartfelt book about those who often feel overlooked and outcast by society- whether from age, being a teen father, growing up in a poor area, or becoming an empty nester. An awesome cast of characters comes together, at first all having their own reasons for joining the groups at the community center, but after an accident leaves the future of the center in peril, they team up to save it! I love the growth and development of all of the characters and how they come to all care for each other. The plot moves along quickly, and while it’s a bit wild it’s just this side of believable! A great read.

Clare Pooley has once again outdone herself with How to Age Disgracefully, bringing together an eclectic group of strangers with humor, wit and warmth. When the future of their local community center is threatened, a group of septuagenarians and some unexpected accomplices take matters into their own hands. An absolute delight from start to finish. For fans of Richard Osman and Shelby Van Pelt.

How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley is an entertaining contemporary fiction that I really enjoyed.

This is definitely a venture out of my normal categories, and I a, glad I dabbled in something different. It was such a great time joining the Social Club with Lydia. The author did a great job at keeping my interest all the while dealing out heartfelt and hilarious moments along the way.

If you enjoy eclectic and quirky characters with endearing qualities and relationships where everyone comes together for a purpose, this book is for you.

4/5 stars

Thank you NG and PENGUIN GROUP Viking | Pamela Dorman Books for this wonderful arc and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.

I am posting this review to my GR and Bookbub accounts immediately and will post it to my Amazon, Instagram, and B&N accounts upon publication on 3/14/24.

When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens’ Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards. The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign—but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide.

When the city council threatens to sell the doomed community center building, the members of the Social Club join forces with their tiny friends in the daycare next door—as well as the teenaged father of one of the toddlers and a geriatric dog—to save the building. Together, this group’s unorthodox methods may actually work, as long as the police don’t catch up with them first.

So, ya'll. This book won't be for everyone. This book is primarily a general fiction book with a romance as a side plot. If you're aware of that when you pick this up, and the premise seems interesting to you and you love heartwarming stories, this gem will delight you! It's full of eccentric, realistic characters, lots of entertainment, lots of good vibes in this one. I absolutely loved it!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced digital reader's copy (ARC) in exchange for an honest review!

A delightful group of misfits you can’t help but cheer on. This character driven plot is clever, with layers that peel back like an onion as the details unfold, with plenty of laughter along the way. You’ll fall in love with this one.

I’m clearly in the minority based on all the other ARC reviews on Goodreads, but this book was a no for me. Clare Pooley is a go to author for me, but I found this book slow and disorganized. It had a lot of potential and the characters were interesting, but I found it simultaneously felt like it was boring and also that there was too much going on to follow. I’d pass on this one.

This was fun. I didn't really feel like it was a romance, but I also don't know how I'd categorize it. Daphne is the type of person I want as a friend when I'm older.

What a fun read! If you’re looking for a light, easy read that will make you feel good, then this is your book. I thoroughly enjoyed this read. Funny characters and a cute plot.

This book is delightful! It has a large cast of characters who are all connected through their use of a community center. There is a group of senior citizens in a social club who all have their secrets, the leader of their group (a middle-aged mom coping with her own struggles of being an empty nester in a loveless marriage), and children in the childcare at the center (and one of their teenage fathers). The book starts with a scene from the end of the book to introduce the characters, and then the book goes back in time to explain how the characters got to where they are today.

The story has a little bit of everything: mystery, romance, friendship, and humor. I especially loved Daphne, who is one of the senior citizens in the social club. Another character compares her to the character Evelyn Hugo (from Taylor Jenkins Reid's book), and I can totally see it! Daphne is such a vibrant person, and her presence and influence encourages the other characters to be confident in who they are. It did take me a while to sort out the characters because there are so many, and the point-of-view changes frequently. Once I sorted the characters out, I loved reading about how they came together to support each other and their community. I also really loved the message of the author's note at the end.

Thank you Netgalley, Viking Penguin, and Claire Pooley for the chance to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

“How to Age Disgracefully” by Clare Pooley is a hilarious piece of contemporary adult fiction that provides multiple POVs of folks who come together to save their community center. I will admit this is not the type of book that I typically read, but it was nice to immerse myself in something different.

Elderly Daphne and Art join middle-aged Lydia and teenage Ziggy (with his infant daughter Kylie) in this quirky story about friendship. I must admit that I am not the target audience for this piece, but I still found a lot of enjoyment in what it had to offer. My mother worked in a senior assistant living center while I was growing up and I spent a lot of time socializing with the folks in that environment — when I was in my 20s and early 30s I worked in early childhood education with children aged 6 months to 10 years old. I found the premise of the young coming together with the elderly to be endearing. The execution of this was well done and I found myself laughing out loud and reflecting on the experiences that each generation in this story was dealing with.

I did find that this book was a slower pace than what I’m used to - which may be more appealing to other readers. I found myself feeling bored and disengaged at times, having a challenging time focusing on what was happening in the story. There were certainly parts that kept me interested and these characters each had a charm that kept me curious to learn how things would turn out. I did think some of the conversations were unrealistic and a bit contrived, but it didn’t put me off from the story completely.

I would certainly read more from Clare Pooley. I recommend this story to older folks (50+) looking for a wild cast to laugh with. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Viking for making this ARC available.

3 stars!

I read this book with a smile on my face the whole time. It is such a fun read! This book follows a group of senior citizens as they fight to save their community building from being destroyed. These same seniors are in a social club run by Lydia who definitely got more than she bargained for. The club isn't your average group of senior citizens either as they are eccentric and they don't always follow the rules. As an added bonus this book is told from multiple povs so you get to hear from almost all of the club members. I truly laughed out loud at some of the antics these seniors pulled. This group would make such fun grandparents. I felt like I was in the club with them. It also has heartwarming moments as well that might make you cry. It is delightful. It is different than other books I have read recently but in the best way possible. I have never read a book by Clare Pooley before but I will have to go and read her other ones now.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book.

I loved this book. It is in parts laugh out loud funny, heartwarming, but doesn’t hold back with thought provoking lines about aging that made me take a minute to think.

The story follows a crew of what seems to be misfits in a senior group at a community center that is threatened to be shut down. The gang of seniors along with their leader, plus an orphaned dog and the children from the nursery also in the center take the charge of keeping it open, along with taking care of a handful of other problems encountered by the group.

This is a story that will stick with me and I’d love to see the next chapters for Daphne, Art, Lydia, Ziggy and the others.

Thanks to Negalley and the publisher for the ARC.

What true and utter perfection this book is. This was my first time ever reading anything by Clare Pooley and it will not be my last. Her characters are so rich, so vibrant, and so wholly themselves. Humor can be hard to pull off in novels and oftentimes comes across as stiff but it flowed like honeyyy in this book. The ending was so sweet, I cried. The easiest 5 stars ever!

The premise was promising, but I had trouble keeping track of so many characters. I had not connected to any of them at 50% in, so I did not finish this one.

Laugh-filled senior capers. Delightful set of quirky characters. Perhaps a bit predictable but the characters were so fun I overlooked it.
Only thing I didn't like was so many narrator shifts.
I received an ARC from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.