The Secret Women

by Sheila Williams

TOP SUMMER 2020 BEACH READ PICK--theSKIMM, PopSugar, Time, Woman's World, Parade, and Bookstr

The author of Dancing on the Edge of the Roof, now a Netflix film starring Alfre Woodard, returns with a riveting, emotionally rich, novel that explores the complex relationship between mothers and daughters in a fresh, vibrant way--a stunning page-turner for fans of Terry McMillan, Tayari Jones, and Kimberla Lawson Roby.

Elise Armstrong, Carmen Bradshaw, and DeeDee Davis meet in a yoga class. Though vastly different, these women discover they all have one thing in common: their mothers have recently passed away. Becoming fast friends, the trio make a pact to help each other sort through the belongings their mothers' left behind. But when they find old letters and diaries, Elise, Carmen, and DeeDee are astonished to learn that each of their mothers hid secrets--secrets that will transform their own lives.

Meeting each month over margaritas, the trio share laughter, advice, and support. As they help each other overcome challenges and celebrate successes, Elise, Carmen, and DeeDee gain not only a better understanding of the women their mothers were, but of themselves. They also come to realize they have what their mothers needed most but did not have during difficult times--other women they could trust.

Filled with poignant life lessons, The Secret Women pays tribute to the power of friendship and family and the bonds that tie us together. Beautiful, full of spirit and heart, it is a thoughtful and ultimately uplifting story of unconditional love.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Book Club, African American, Grief, Adult Fiction, Audiobook

304 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2020

Reviews

[Melanie Sligh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elise Armstrong, Carmen Bradshaw, and DeeDee Davis meet in a yoga class. Though vastly different, these women discover they all have one thing in common: their mothers have recently passed away. Becoming fast friends, the trio make a pact to help each other sort through the belongings their mothers' left behind. But when they find old letters and diaries, Elise, Carmen, and DeeDee are astonished to learn that each of their mothers hid secrets--secrets that will transform their own lives.

Y’all these are my kind of women. They do margaritas and queso each month, they swear and laugh in yoga poses, they giggle Elise’s mother, Marie had so many sets of china... these are my people.

This book was amazing. Hands down. I cannot recommend this enough. Go. Get. This. Book. Joan, Carmen’s mother, was my favorite storyline. Not because it was happy (it wasn’t) but because I know the south and I know a few Joans. Without spoiling the book, I will just say this was very important, especially in today’s society with racism. Joan was a strong, educated woman that moved to New York, but still had her deep southern roots. She was quick witted and outspoken at her school, which could be taken as negative. I saw a passionate woman, and I 100% know Joans and truly cherish the wisdom they have bestowed upon me.

DeeDee’s mother broke me. Laura suffered from mental illness, and they found her diary entries. They found her highs and her lows. The entries showed when she was taking medication, and when she wasn’t and the drastic change. DeeDee digs deeper to understand her mother because she believes her daughter Francis may have the same illness. I cried, and I mean CRIED. “Mommy rationalized that if she didn’t speak, then it couldn’t either” (speaking of her illness). Her journal entries made me cried so much.

I listened to the ALC provided by Booksparks, Libro.fm, & Harper Audio. The narrator, Zakiya Young’s voice is so amazing. I could listen to her talk ALL DAY. If she does any more audiobooks, I want to know because I want to buy them all. 😂

I loved that each chapter is a different perspective of each woman, including the mothers. It helped me get the stories straight. This comes out June 9th and believe it should be on everyone’s shelf.

[Carey]

I made it about halfway through this one, but found that I still didn't really care about anything or anyone in the story so I decided to dnf. The biggest issue for me was the writing, which felt more like everything was being told and nothing being shown to the reader. The writing felt like a little too direct and there were multiple times where the foreshadowing was painfully obvious. The pacing was a big problem with the beginning feeling a bit rushed and then suddenly we're getting an info-dump background of one of the moms and fast-forwarding through like 20 years of her life. Because of the structure of the novel, the characters didn't receive a lot of development so I wasn't able to emotionally connect with them like I thought I would considering this is a story about very emotional things. Yeah...this just wasn't for me!

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really reallllly wanted to love this book, I thought the concept of women building a friendship based on helping each other sort through their late mothers belongings and through this learning more about their mothers and themselves was genius. The writing style was too fluffy for me- a lot of time was spent on frivolous details that didn't matter to the bigger picture. The start was really slow and full of frivolous details that didn't really matter when looking a the bigger picture. The ending was abrupt. I wish more time was spent developing the mother's stories.

[Fareya · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Secret Womenby Sheila Williams examines life and its many mysteries, but mostly it explores motherhood and the complex relationship between mothers and daughters.

Three women, Elise, Carmen and DeeDee meet in a yoga class and gradually become friends over after-yoga tacos and margaritas. They discover that despite their differences, there is one thing they have in common - their mothers have recently passed away and neither has had the courage to sort through their mother's belongings. They decide to help each other out and while going through old photos, letters and diaries each woman discovers life altering, staggering secrets.

As the story unfolds, we see all three women, dealing with their own grief while supporting their new friends. This is a poignant and emotional story, uplifting, heartwarming and also full of life lessons. It starts a bit slow and ends abruptly, but otherwise it's a pretty decent read, and I plan on checking the author's other works too.

"A free finished copy was provided by Booksparks as part of their Summer Reading Challenge #SRC2020. All opinions are my own."

[nadia | notabookshelf · Rating 3 out of 5]

a perfectly decent read. would've been a 4-star if not for the unnecessarily long, detailed descriptions of the clutter in the characters' houses and such. bittersweet in its exploration of grief for one's mother – more specifically a woman's grief for her mother, in three different cases, and at least one of them i thought was done really, really well.

overall this was fast and pleasant, and i enjoyed my evening with this book.

[Joani · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love this author and I loved the idea of the book; however, the story felt off balance to me. The friendship aspect is wonderful and dealing with the losses and secrets of their mothers was interesting and relatable. I would have liked more character development and more particularly about Dee Dee’s mother, rather than just a few chapters crammed at the end before the abrupt ending. A quick and good read, just not my favorite.

[Pippindemie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75/5.

[Mahoghani 23 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't see how the title related to this book. We all have mothers & we don't know everything about them. The best secret was from Carmen's mom, Joann. I would prefer to give this book a 2.5 because the only interesting section was Carmen's.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this one. Three very different women - Elise, Carmen and DeeDee- become friends after meeting in yoga class. They learn they share something in common - they’ve all lost their mothers recently. As they each work through their grief and take care of their mothers’ belongings they discover secrets that their mothers have been holding onto. This book is written from the perspective of each woman, then also dips into the voices of their mothers and the reader learns about those secrets. This is a beautiful story about family and the love of mothers. I loved seeing the friendship between the three women and how they supported each other and pushed each other to address the secrets they’ve learned. This is a great heartwarming family drama.

[Never Without a Book · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh

[Coffee&Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this, specifically in audio. Part 1 was a lil slow for me but the story started to pick up in part 2 and the last two parts, I was carrying around the bluetooth speaker everywhere because I didn't want to turn it off. Vivid descriptive writing, dialog that snaps, and a friendship between three women that is warm and enviable. This is a book that I'm going to want to re-read when I get some time. Dee Dee's story line in particular is so poignant. Would love to hear the author speak about writing this book.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this one. Three very different women - Elise, Carmen and DeeDee- become friends after meeting in yoga class. They learn they share something in common - they’ve all lost their mothers recently. As they each work through their grief and take care of their mothers’ belongings they discover secrets that their mothers have been holding onto. This book is written from the perspective of each woman, then also dips into the voices of their mothers and the reader learns about those secrets. This is a beautiful story about family and the love of mothers. I loved seeing the friendship between the three women and how they supported each other and pushed each other to address the secrets they’ve learned. This is a great heartwarming family drama.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in about 4 hours. It is very well written and has the perfect amount of romanticism. The parts about mental illness are raw, authentic, and beautiful. This story shows what healing looks like.

[Trigger Warning Database]

Trigger & Content Warnings

Grief & loss depiction
Death of a mother

[Amy-K Nunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read showing that the universe sometimes puts people in your path for a reason. These ladies needed each other and formed a lifelong friendship.

[Shell (booksbythecup)]

Is anyone else in a reading mood that has you reaching for an author's back list title after reading their recently released?

I read THINGS PAST TELLING (historical) by Williams not long ago; it was an engrossing read with a character I don't think I can ever forget.

I decided to reach for this one because the author was familiar but I didn't bother to read the synopsis. Initially I thought OK, 3 women bond after yoga class. But this book was much more than I anticipated.

THE SECRET WOMEN really showcases so much about life as a Black Woman at different times and stages of life. But what spoke to me most is how we have the tendency to "get on" with life and not take the time to process our feelings in a healthy way. Is that the way of women in general?

Finding our tribe or people that will allow us to have and work through difficult times of life, even when we try to put them away and deal with them later, is what we all need. As daughters of women who have done the same thing, we often judge our mothers for brief moments in time. The times we can remember and color them as we've always known them...as our mothers.

The women in this book have all recently lost their mothers to death, their grief shared, but the mothers they remember, still teach them.

[Pam Cowperthwaite · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book (it was the featured book in a book box my daughter gave me for my birthday), but it felt very disjointed. The contemporary story of three women coming together to support one another as they unpack the things their late mothers left behind, is just not very convincing. However, the stories that are unearthed about their mothers were much more interesting and engaging. I would have preferred a book with just those stories.

[Marlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published at Reading Reality

I picked this up because the story was wrapped around family secrets that three women discover in the process of grieving for their mothers’ deaths. This was also the central theme of another book that I read recently, the excellent but completely different Millicent Glenn’s Last Wish by Tori Whitaker.

Although the stories share something besides their theme, as both are set in my own hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio.

I’m attracted to stories like these because I lost my own mother three years ago this December. Everyone’s grief process is different, although stories like this certainly all live up to that old saying about all happy families being alike while misery seems to have a thousand mothers – and fathers.

But stories like this one have resonance for me, especially this time of year, and especially when the women are somewhere in mid-life or thereabouts, as Elise, Carmen and DeeDee certainly are.

All three women are somewhere in mid-life, all are black, and all are having difficulties dealing with the deaths of their mothers – however recently or not. And all of them are stuck wading through the detritus left behind, both in the sense of physical material and emotional baggage.

Elise in particular has an entire apartment full of stuff to go through and make decisions about. Her mother was a ruthlessly organized woman, which is the only thing that kept her from being featured as a hoarder. Her condo and its storage area are full to the brim with her many, many collections, starting with, but definitely not ending with, 15 complete sets of dishes. Not 15 place settings of dishes, 15 sets of 12 or so place settings each. Along with similar amounts of clothing, jewelry, collectibles, knick-knacks and whatnots. Lots of whatnots.

So these women bond, a bit over their yoga class and their snarky comments about their rigid drill instructor of an instructor, somewhat over the losses they haven’t managed to process, and definitely over a shared need to make peace with the women their mothers’ were by dealing with the secrets they left behind.

And the boxes. Boxes of jewelry, boxes of letters and especially boxes of secrets that bring home the realization that none of them really knew their mothers, not the secret women that their mothers really were.

Escape Rating A: Elise, Carmen and DeeDee have reached this point from three very different journeys, and the secrets that they uncover, both about their mothers and about themselves, are all equally different. They cover a spectrum of mother-daughter relationships and women’s lives that will have a lot of resonance for any woman.

Elise is the one with the most regret, DeeDee is the one who has the most to remember, and Carmen is the one who uncovers the biggest revelation.

There, that was cryptic.

Elise has both the hardest journey, because her loss is the most recent, but also the simplest. She has to empty her mother’s condo and she has to forgive herself for not accepting her mother’s new romantic relationship. Her mother moved on from her father’s death, while Elise mostly didn’t. But there are relatively simple ways for Elise to still find closure and forgiveness, and she eventually does. Her issues aren’t easy – none of this is easy, but they are simple.

DeeDee, whose mother has been gone the longest, has to reach back into her own memory to reset what she thinks and feels about her mother, and how those memories have affected her relationships with her sister and her own daughters.

Bipolar disorder runs through DeeDee’s family, and her mother suffered from both that disorder and severe postpartum depression, which most likely exacerbated each other. The traumatic childhoods of both DeeDee and her sister – who inherited the disorder – still haunts her. In finally opening the boxes her mother left behind, DeeDee is finally able to remember the good as well as the bad, and to begin to let her own daughters know the artistic genius their grandmother was.

The secrets that Carmen uncovers change her perception of who she herself is and her place in the world, as the boxes her mother left behind reveal her life as a young woman, before she married Carmen’s father and became a preacher’s wife. A time when she traveled the world. A time when she married Carmen’s natural father. When she became a very young widow, and when her young husband’s mother erased both Carmen and her mother from her dead son’s life. Because his mother never accepted her son’s black, gentile wife and their mixed race child.

Carmen’s mother believed that her first mother-in-law’s rejection and erasure was solely because she was black. It’s possible that at least some of that attitude was religiously motivated, as it was not unheard of for Jewish parents at that time to consider a child who married outside the religion to be dead and to perform funeral rites over them, to sit shiva and say kaddish. Whatever the motivation, it was despicable treatment that sent Carmen’s mother back home to her family, to her childhood best friend, to the man who Carmen knew as her father for her entire life.

Until she opened those boxes and discovered her mother’s past.

But all three women find a marvelously supportive friendship with each other. A burden shared is, after all, a burden halved. Or in this particular case, thirded. They all find some much-needed closure, they all make a bit of peace, and they all move forward. For this reader, the story was tremendously cathartic, especially as I found touchstones to my own journey among theirs.

I really wish I could take that yoga class with them – although I’m not too sure about maintaining the headstand pose. But friendship like theirs would definitely be worth the effort!

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this one OK. I almost felt like with the three stories, that the book felt diluted. In particular, Dee Dee's story is a whopper and I felt like stuffing it into a few chapters toward the end didn't really do it (or the complex subject matter) any justice. I guess I maybe liked the IDEA of this story more than the execution.

[Lulu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Descent story.

Reread: August 2024: Enjoyed this one so much more the second time around.

[Krys F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three women meet in a yoga class, not knowing that they have something in common outside of yoga, the loas of their mother's. A fast friendship was born as these women understood each other's grief and decided to help each other through it by helping each other sort through their mother's personal belongings. What they thought would be just weeks of sorting and packing turned into secrets unearthed for Carmen, understanding of an illness that leads to a better understanding of a daughter with Dee Dee and guilt and regret for being a brat and not able to apologize for it with Elise. As these bombshells and reminders unfolded in each woman's lives, they had the other women their to hold them down and pick them up even if one of the women were trying to push the others away. I thought this was a beautiful story of friendship and growth proving that bpnds can be unbreakable rather if they were built for years or just days.

[Gabrielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book out of desperation: I had several books on their way to me and nothing at home that was sparking joy. I stumbled across this book on my Kindle and started reading it because I needed something to do. I'm so glad that I did. It has all the elements I love like a narrative centering Black women, mother-daughter relationships, intergenerational perspectives, and more. I appreciate that this book was about how yoga and grief made space for three women to develop friendship. And it didn't hurt that letters, scrapbooks, and other personal papers were a key component of the story. I'm rating it 4 stars because the writing and story line started very strong and lost some steam towards the end. This could have been because "Carmen" had the most interesting story and it was resolved earlier in the book. Definitely recommended.

[Wrenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you @2bookaddicts Shakila and Shonda for another great buddy read!
This story about women friends and their mothers really touched my heart.
Elise, Carmen and DeeDee meet in yoga class and begin to bond.
When they go for drinks afterward, they realize they all lost their mothers and are still grieving them.
Their friendships strengthen and they decide to help each other process their loss and go through the belongings left to them.
Slowly we learn more about their lives, and the secrets of their mother's lives.
A beautiful, poignant look at friendship, motherhood and coming to terms with loss.
This one made me laugh and cry a little, certainly a book you should read too.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Three women have been in the same yoga class for months before realizing they are tied together by similar experiences-- all of them have lost their mothers, and are still coming to terms with their grief, whether it's been 10 months or 15 years. These maternal relationships were complicated; most of the time, family is never simple. Elise, Carmen, and DeeDee help each heal and tie up loose ends, and in the process, they each have something huge to discover about their mothers that they didn't know before. I was completely swept away in Williams' bittersweet, interwoven friendships of love and support.

[Emily Zieser · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was different than I was expecting. I didn’t like the narrator from the very beginning which definitely affected my enjoyment of the story. It follows 4 women who connect through shared grief. It also goes back in time to show some details of their mothers’ lives. Unfortunately, because of the number of characters and their complexity, each character felt kind of undeveloped and their individual stories were impactful but short.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

When yoga and grief connects three black women who decide to navigate how to go through their mother’s belongings after their passing.

There was a lot happening with this book. I enjoyed Carmen’s story and how it resolved. So much that took place while at the same time reminded me that I still have boxes of my parents belongings, where I am constantly learning something or seeing a new picture from their lives before they eloped.

Quick read and a reminder about the importance of community healing. 💛

[Faree · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I loved how these three women came together and helped each other through the difficulties of facing their mother's deaths I felt the book diverted into too many subplots going into separate stories of the mothers themselves . It was like I was reading 4 different novels, when just a quick summary of what they discovered would have suffice.

[Tammy Washington · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not sure how I stumbled upon this book. Maybe it was the cover. Heck no! Who am I fooling?! I wanted to know the secret.
Imagine learning the most life changing news about the person you love more than anything, after their death.
How much do we truly KNOW our family, ourselves.
Go for it. Get the book. This is a good read.

[Nursebookie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading books about friendships, life lessons, and uplifting stories about families and unconditional love! The Secret Women surely had it all!

The narration is perfect - Zakiya Young really brought the fun in this amazing Chick Lit!

[Sandy Kosiek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I definitely related to Dee Dee and all about her Mother and what Dee Dee lived with.
Not to mention what each of the girls went thru with having one of their parents remarry or have another significant other, like Elise. It’s hard.