Member Reviews
This book read like a rom-com in the sense that it was a light and at times funny read (and honestly did have a little romance), but I loved that the main focus was on the careful rebuilding of the mother-daughter relationship between Claudine and Wylie. Claudine, an olympic skier, pushed her daughter too hard to follow in her foot steps and instead destroyed their relationship and they've been estranged for years. When Wylie needs Claudine's help at a pairs fitness competition, Claudine jumps at the chance for reconciliation.
Told in a duel perspective, the reader was getting both sides of the story and really rooting for Claudine and Wylie to patch things up. Tady wrote such a believable relationship between the two (and a valid reason for the estrangement) and the book was such a testament to the often fickle relationship between mothers and daughters. They each really know how to push the other's buttons...
Thank you NetGalley and Zibby Books for the advanced e-copy of this book.
I really enjoyed the setting and premise of this novel. However, I did not love the characters, especially Wylie. I felt that she really gave Claudine a hard time, more so than every necessary. It was frustrating for me to read her behaviors and how she treats/ed her mother.
I loved Super Bloom -- and Bluebird Day did not disappoint! Love the setting, the side characters, and the clever storyline. It was a great winter read and a calm way to ring in the holiday season. Thanks to @zibbybooks, Megan Tady, and NetGalley for the advanced copy and opportunity to share my thoughts.
I love this story about mom-daughter skiers who get stuck in the Swiss Alps and become closer but not before they both come to a reckoning . I love Megan Tady's writing and cannot wait to see what she comes up with next!
Finally after getting tripped up with just life yesterday here's my now belated Pub Day Post for Bluebird Day by Meg Tady - I was excited to read this one after enjoying this author's Superbloom last year!
Bluebird Day is a hilarious and heartwarming tale that follows a mother-daughter duo of former skiing champs as they face restarting their relationship during a snowed-in detour to a Swiss ski village. Claudine Potts, an Alpine skiing legend, and her daughter Wylie were destined for gold-medal glory until life derailed their dreams-Claudine's career ended after a fall, and Wylie quit as a teen due to anxiety and her mother's relentless coaching. Now in her 20s and estranged from Claudine, Wylie reluctantly asks her mom to team up for a Berlin fitness duo competition after her boyfriend is injured.
Set against a picturesque Alpine backdrop - Zermatt and the Matterhorn - the story goes beyond its stunning setting to explore the tender, messy bond between Claudine and Wylie and the original instructor Kipper, Claudine's father now deceased. Meg Tady captures their dynamic with raw honesty, balancing humor and heartfelt moments as both women reflect on their pasts, flaws and traumas and redefine their futures. There's even a skiing scene in this book but really skiing and the World Cup circuit of the late 90s are just a jumping off point for this exploration of a mother daughter relationship.
What hooked me was not just the plot twists or colorful cast of fellow travelers but the authenticity of their relationship. Tady brings lightness to their dysfunction while crafting an emotional, relatable story.
I'll be waiting for whatever Meg Tady writes next!
If you haven’t already added Bluebird Day by Megan Tady to your TBR, please do so immediately. Being a reader that is not a fan of Holiday romances, this book hit the perfect spot. Bluebird Day is a beautiful and realistic story of a strained relationship between a mother and daughter, forgiveness, and letting go. Claudine and Wyatt, are retired skiing champs coming together to complete a fitness competition. Claudine is happily married, living in Oregon, enjoys her current role as a CycleTron virtual cycle instructor, and obsessing over how to patch things up with her daughter. Wyatt is living across the country with a controlling boyfriend and a dream to chase in creating her own art. When her boyfriend backs out of the fitness competition, Wyatt turns to her mother knowing she is physically up for the challenge.
This book is told in alternating POVs, where we get a unique perspective from Claudine and Wyatt as they try to mend their fractured relationship. Full of miscommunication and misunderstandings, I found this book both funny and heartwarming. You will find yourself rooting for our mother/daughter duo who haven’t spoken in years.
Read this if you love stories about women in complex relationships and redemption.
Thank you to NetGalley and Zibby Books for the chance to read this earlier this month.
Bluebird Day
Author Megan Tady
Available now!
Thank you, @zibbybookspublishing and @megtady, for this beautiful book box filled with these super thoughtful goodies and the much anticipated December read, Bluebird Day!
Atmospheric and set in the Swiss Alps, this light- hearted and fast- paced novel is perfect for book lovers who enjoy complex mother daughter relationships, snowy outdoor adventures, friendship, and forgiveness. Bluebird Day is witty, funny, and will make you want to hug your mom and call your best friend. It will also make you cold and crave foot warmers and hot chocolate!
I loved this multigenerational women’s lit, second-chance coming of age story!
Claudine is a phenomenal skier, but has a strained relationship with her daughter, Wylie, an artist who tried to be a skier, but it didn’t quite work out.
They have been estranged, yet come together in the Alps amidst an avalanche to meet some amazing side supporting characters and rebuild their relationship.
So many times the storyline resonated with me, and I found myself laughing out loud at the hostel where they were staying. I loved that it covered many generations of people, included sports but wasn’t all about that, and the mystery of Wylie’s father.
The characters weren’t perfect, and that made them feel so much more realistic.
Highly recommend it!
Thank you @zibbybooks for my early copy that I just dropped in a local #LFL!
An outstanding read from Megan. I loved her first novel, she has an amazing way of writing thought seeking while still being light novels. This one follows a mother-daughter duo, working through some complexities of their past and present. I love the Olympic theme involved in this, and I highly recommend reading this especially to get you into the mood for the Winter Olympics!
This novel is about mother-daughter duo Claudine and Wylie. Claudine is a former champion skier and Olympic medalist who then coached her daughter til Wylie quit skiing as a teenager. Now in her 20s, Wylie is working at an art museum and hasn’t spoken to her mother in years, until her boyfriend gets injured just before they are set to compete in a fitness duo competition, and she asks if her mom will step in. But before the competition in Berlin they stop in ski town Zermatt in Switzerland, where things just might change for them in ways they didn’t expect.
This is a book that puts the fun in dysfunctional - Wylie and Claudine have major issues, yet the book is also written with a light tone. The book explores not just their family dynamics, but also each woman rethinking their past and reassessing what they want for their future. I enjoyed Meg Tady’s debut novel Super Bloom, but thought this one was even better, and I look forward to seeing what she writes next!
Mini Review 💙 Read this if you love:
Mother-Daughter Relationships 🔹Swiss Setting 🔹 Alpine Ski Racing 🔹Paternity Issue 🔹 Finding Your Passion 🔹 Diverse Characters 🔹 Acapella Group
Themes of Mental Health, Forgiveness, and Competitive/Achievement Culture
Huge thank you to Zibby Books for the ARC!
First of all, I just need to state that this is one of the cutest winter covers I've ever seen. It's perfection!
Second, I love books based around mother/daughter drama, so was so looking forward to diving into this one!
Overall, I thought it was a good story and enjoyed getting to know these characters. I loved the added element of them being snowed-in together and thought that made for some of the best moments!
There were a couple tiny surprises in there that I thought were great as well. My only critique is that I did feel like it was rather slow at certain points and was waiting for a little more drama (maybe it's just that I love drama).
I hope this is a huge success!
3.5 stars rounded up for GR!
This is the perfect book for the winter season! If you’re not a big fan of holiday themed novels, but want something with cold weather vibes, this is it! BLUEBIRD DAY takes readers on a skiing adventure to Switzerland! This novel checked so many boxes for me and included a lot of my favorite elements: family drama (and secrets) with a major focus on mother/daughter relationships, complicated female friendship, dynamic characters, a hint of mystery throughout, and even a touch of romance. Tady’s sophomore novel is full of humor and heart, and absolutely perfect to curl up with on a cold winter’s day.
This one is about a mother daughter relationship, which was refreshing to read about. I haven’t read many mother/ daughter relationships. While I found the premise to be interesting I felt the story was a little slow.
An avalanche on the way to the ultimate showdown between ultimate skiers born to win is the inciting spark that ignites the warm, wonderful fire that is BLUEBIRD DAY by Megan Tady. Snowed in on the way to the championship, the accomplished mother and supremely talented daughter set aside their ongoing battle over being the greatest of all time to trade barbs, memories, and tenderness, reminding me of the mothers and daughters I've known in real life. Relatable with twists of humor and searing revelation, Tady kept me rapt throughout this excellent story, perfect for a winter's read for one who does not ski, but who can definitely empathize from a safe, warm, comfortable armchair. I received a copy of this book and these thoughts are my own, unbiased opinions.
A dysfunctional family drama about a mother and daughter who are forced to confront their relationship issues and long-held secrets when they get trapped by an avalanche in Zermatt, Switzerland on their way to a fitness competition in Germany.
Claudine is a former Olympic champion skier who expected her talented daughter to follow in her footsteps. Except that Wylie’s debilitating anxiety forced her to quit the sport as a teenager, and mother and daughter haven’t spoken in years. Living on opposite coasts and missing each other terribly, when Wylie’s boyfriend gets injured just weeks before they are set to compete in a European fitness competition, she reaches out to Claudine to ask her to step in.
Told in alternating POVs, we get an inside perspective from Claudine and Wylie as they try to mend their relationship. Full of mishaps, miscommunication, and misunderstandings, this book is both funny and heartwarming. It will have you rooting for the women to finally get it together and express what’s in their hearts.
Read if you love stories about women in sports, complex mother-daughter relationships, romance, picturesque European villages, and redemption.
I loved Megan Tady’s last book, Super Bloom, and Bluebird Day was just as good if not better! Add this cozy winter read to your TBR.
Thank you to NetGalley and Zibby Books for this advanced reader copy. All opinions are my own.
Reviews to be posted to Instagram, Goodreads, and Amazon on release day.
Happy Pub Day to another gem from @zibbybookspublishing and @megtady!
I read Megan Tady’s debut Super Bloom last year and really, really enjoyed it. If you haven't read it, I really suggest you do. The main character, Joan works at a spa and you are going to love her!
Bluebird Day is the perfect book to kick off the winter season. I don’t know about you but I was basking in the warmer temperatures the last couple of weeks while really looking forward to things cooling off and getting to cozy up with a good book. Getting to meet Wylie and Claudine was a real treat and now I want to go skiing and take a quick trip to Switzerland. I loved the exploration of their mother daughter relationship and getting to meet more quirky and lovable side characters!
DEFINITLY add this one to your December TRB!
Also a big thank you to @libro.fm for the early listening copy. The narrator Rachek Fulginiti really brought this story to life!
Thank you Zibby and LibroFM for review copies (the audiobook was a perfect way for me to finish listening to this book this morning!). I enjoyed Tady's previous book and this one is even stronger, an author to watch!
Bluebird Day by Megan Tady is one of those rare books that sneaks up on you, wrapping you in its warmth while hitting all the right emotional notes. Set in a snowed-in Swiss ski village, it delivers more than just a stunning backdrop; it’s a story about a mother and daughter—Claudine and Wylie—trying to mend a bond that life and ambition have strained. What hooked me wasn’t just the plot twists or the colorful characters stranded in the village but the raw, relatable honesty between the two leads. Tady nails the push-and-pull of their relationship, crafting moments that are tender, messy, and deeply human. It’s impossible not to see pieces of your own relationships in their journey, and by the end, I felt both moved and uplifted.
What makes this book so special is how personal it feels. Tady gives readers a front-row seat to Wylie and Claudine’s thoughts and fears, making their struggles with self-worth and connection achingly real. I found myself rooting for both women, sometimes switching allegiances from one to the other in a single chapter. The pacing is just right—there’s enough drama to keep the pages turning but not so much that it feels contrived. And the setting? It’s like a cozy winter retreat with emotional depth to match. This isn’t just a book about reconciliation; it’s about rediscovery, resilience, and finding beauty in the imperfections of relationships.
The perfect book to pick up on a snowy day, this latest from Megan Tady is a funny, heartfelt mother-daughter story between two former ski champs who get snowed in together when an avalanche traps them in a Swiss hostel. Told in alternating POVs, Claudine and her estranged daughter, Wylie, find themselves teaming up to compete in a European fitness competition, however what they weren't expecting was to find some romance and have to deal with long-held secrets surrounding Wylie's birth father.
If you like stories about women in sports, complex female characters dealing with chronic pain and anxiety, female friendship, redemption, forgiveness and so much more, this is the book for you. Switching between the ebook and audiobook formats, I really enjoyed both, especially the narration by Rachel Fulginiti. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest review!
BLUEBIRD DAY – Megan Tady
Zibby Books
ISBN: 978-1958506868
December 3, 2024
Contemporary Fiction
Switzerland – Present Day
Claudine Potts is an alpine skiing legend, having won numerous contests and Olympic medals. But she has mostly disappeared from the public eye after she failed to get her daughter Wylie to become a top skiing competitor. In fact, the two are now mostly estranged. Claudine currently lives in Oregon and is employed as a virtual running trainer. Unknown to Claudine, Wylie is one of her “students.” One day, a writer comes to her home wanting to write her biography, hoping to find out about Wylie’s paternity. Even Wylie doesn’t know who her father is. After the writer threatens to go to an old skiing friend in Switzerland to find answers for the story he’s determined to write, she realizes she needs to get there first. Then, Claudine is given an unexpected gift: Wylie needs Claudine to be her partner in a competition in Berlin.
Wylie was supposed to go to Berlin with her boyfriend, but he got injured. She could have refused to go, but after finding out why he needed the money, she agreed to go and turned to her mother. Their relationship is strained, especially since Claudine refuses to tell her about her father. They arrive in Switzerland for an overnight stop to spread Wylie’s grandfather’s ashes, but an avalanche changes everything for them. They are stranded.
Claudine and Wylie go on a journey that brings them together as they learn to survive in BLUEBIRD DAY by Megan Tady. Claudine’s father pushed her to be a top-tier skier and that drive then extended to Wylie. But her daughter suffered from panic attacks and often didn’t finish races. It tore their relationship apart. Both have supposedly found peace, but deep down there is still that friction, especially when it comes to Wylie’s father. The answer may end up being found in Switzerland. Along the way, the two discover a lot about themselves—and each other as they spend several days stranded. Wylie is still determined to get to Berlin but with the way out blocked, she can’t. What happens if she doesn’t make it to the race? Then she will be a failure in her boyfriend’s eyes. Wylie’s lack of self-esteem plays a part in BLUEBIRD DAY, and even Claudine has her own issues.
In BLUEBIRD DAY, the points of view are shared by Wylie and Claudine and readers get to know what their fears are. Part of the problem is that they don’t share them at first. Each woman will tug at the hearts of readers. They have had a bumpy road, despite their early successes. Wylie is all about pleasing her boyfriend, while Claudine worries about hers as he is ill. Maybe it is time they take care of each other. There is plenty of angst and drama, especially as Claudine tries to reach out to her old friend before the author does. Will she succeed? Will Wylie make it to Berlin?
An intriguing tale about two women on a road of rediscovery. Will they mend fences? Find out the answer by picking up a copy of BLUEBIRD DAY.
Patti Fischer
Romance Reviews Today