Cover Image: Girls' Club

Girls' Club

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Member Reviews

Girls Club is an endearing look at how Sally Clarkson cultivated relationships with her daughters and all the women in her life. Instead of waiting around for life to happen, Sally cultivates her sphere with tea times, book readings, family meals, day trips, and quality time. This is a sweet look at what could be if mothers everywhere invested intentionally in the people God has brought into their sphere. Written in a friendly, conversational tone, and very encouraging for mothers in the trenches or grandmothers who might be wondering what the next steps in their life could be filled with. Highly recommend.

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Girls' Club by Sally Clarkson, Joy Clarkson, and Sarah Clarkson is a call to deep connection among women. It is a lovely book written in the Clarkson style-- full of grace and wisdom. It is full of stories and gems to remember. Read this book and share it with the women in your life. I highly recommend it! I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher with no obligations. These opinions are entirely my own.

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This book made me happy to read. It encouraged me to start a girls’ club of my own with my three girls. The chapters are written in story form to share about the original girls’ club and how they carried the club into their grownup lives. Their girls’ clubs have included women all over the world as God has moved them.

I started focusing more on what I can do to instill this sense of sisterhood in my own girls. I have begun taking them each on dates and coordinating a girls’ club of my own.
It’s a great encouragement.

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Are you looking for close-knit friendships, for that bosom friend that Anne of Green Gables longed for and found in Diana? Are you just hoping it will drop in your lap with no effort on your part? Well, you are in for a real surprise, but this book will help you learn to cultivate the qualities of friendship in your own life so you can be that friend that you want someone to be in your own life. It will also help you to reach out and take the initiative to make friends.

In full disclosure, I started to read this book with a bit of bias. I struggle to fully connect with Sally--she seems so idealistic and so perfect in her motherhood that in my struggling, bumbling attempt at motherhood, I feel pretty imperfect and unqualified. But I thought adding in her daughters, this might be a good book. And I was right. I did appreciate this book. There were a lot of good thoughts and good ideas that I would like to incorporate into my own life. Yes, there was still some idealism, but in some ways it felt more real than I expected.

Sally has done a very good job of cultivating friendships with her daughters and that is a trait that I admire and want to emulate. No, we won't be sneaking off to coffee shops every Saturday and likely we won't be going globe-trotting, etc as a mother/daughter team, but I do want to cultivate a real and deep friendship with my daughter. I also want to have good deep friendships with the people in my community as well.

"Mothers (and fathers) are often the ones who can give their children a strong foundation in relationships that will enable them to build deep and lasting friendships for their whole lives...Mothers become the conduit for God's love to be felt through all stages of life. "

"The profound role of mothers, uniquely ordained by God, has significant influence on generations of future adults."

Along with the role of mothers in establishing the groundwork for relationships, there were five actions to the powerful cultivation of friendship that really stuck out to me in this book. The first is to invite, it means being the initiator and working to create friendships instead of waiting for them to happen. Second is to plan, good friendships rarely happen, it takes intention. Third, we need to provide, to open up our house and have it be comfortable for the friends we want to invite in. The fourth action is to stay, which is a commitment to friendship. And finally, to pray and I think I way underestimate the necessity of this in friendship.

I did really enjoy this book and I want to keep it to reread as a reminder of what I need to do to be a good friend. One final thing that stuck out to me is that to be a good friend, a queenly friend is to have a deep and abiding relationship with God and a daily commitment to be in His Word.

I received this book from Tyndale Momentum and NetGalley and was not required to write a positive review.

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This is one I read on my Kindle (thanks to NetGalley and a pre-release copy) and I SO wish I had it in paperback! I've highlighted quite a few passages which unfortunately won't transfer over to GoodReads for me.

That said, friendships are something to treasure, and often we feel alone in today’s world. This book speaks to the heart of that, offering encouragement and ideas from three ladies you will love: Sally, Sarah, and Joy Clarkson.

The three offer varied perspectives on friendships that they have nurtured over the years - between the three of them (the Girls' Club) and as they have individually embarked on life's adventures. There's something bonding about hearing that others, regardless of their stage in life, struggle to find deep connection as well. All three share ways they have fostered new friendships, connected with others, and do so while being vulnerable and encouraging with readers.

A few quotes to love from the book:

"...loneliness no longer has the final word. Love has a new story to tell us, one that can define the whole of our existence and renew our capacity for relationship. The catch is that we have to learn to listen for the voice of love as it speaks healing into our hearts, calling us out of isolation and into our identity as those who are deeply beloved."

"...the creation of community is an act of redemptive, holy defiance, one that is a lifelong work of artistry and love, one that costs everything we have to give."

"I want my home and my days to be the space in which the story of a new community begins. But that can only happen if I learn to pour out my heart and effort, my life and joy in acts of love. A huge shift of identity transpires when we begin to see ourselves not as waifs and outcasts looking for community but as agents ready to bring it to the lonely spaces we encounter."

Girls' Club will inspire you to dig deeper into fledgling relationships, go deeper in those you have already established, and step out to bring community closer to you in new ways.

You will LOVE IT and be inspired to be known - and know others deeply.

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I have enjoyed many of Sally Clarkson’s books and podcasts, so I was excited to read her latest book that she wrote, Girls’ Club: Cultivating Lasting Friendship in a Lonely World, with her daughters, Sarah and Joy.

I always find Sally’s books to be delightful and this was no exception. This book discussed various things about friendship. I found it to be a quick but insightful read. The different chapters were a mix of personal stories and values of lasting friendships.

I recommend this book if you are looking to examine the friendships in your own life. It will give you motivation to be the kind of friend we all long to have. It will inspire you to reach towards that friendship goal in the midst of all circumstances.

I was blessed to receive an electronic copy via the publisher. All opinions are my own.

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I enjoyed reading this book. Very well written and it showed the loving relation between a mother and her daughters. I thought the different shorts stories from each other meshed well and didn't take away from the other writer's story. I would buy this book.

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