A review by maralyons
The Society of Shame by Jane Roper

4.0

The Society of Shame is a charming and hilarious book about a woman who is experiencing a crisis in her marriage and her life takes some wild turns. I can definitely see the comparisons to Lessons in Chemistry crossed with Where'd You Go, Bernadette? That's a perfect description of the type of writing and content.

Kathleen has returned from vacation and discovered her husband with another woman. To make things even worse, he is a high profile man running for Senate and it gets leaked to the media causing a feeding frenzy because Kathleen is photographed with a stain of menstrual blood on her pants.

Kathleen finds herself as a key figure in a menstrual rights movement and caught up with a group of "canceled" people who have gone viral. The satire is pretty clever, but I found the book to be overly long, so it was tough for me to finish in the second half. Kathleen's character becomes less relatable and self-aware, which was pretty frustrating at times. Overall, it is a fun and thoughtful read. It's very cinematic and I could picture it happening on a screen.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC. All thoughts are my own.