Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Wednesday Daughters
    Unavailable
    The Wednesday Daughters
    Unavailable
    The Wednesday Daughters
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Wednesday Daughters

    Written by Meg Waite Clayton

    Narrated by Lesa Lockford

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Hope Tantry arrives at cottage in England's pastoral Lake District where her mother, Ally, spent the last years of her life. Ally - one of a group of women who called themselves the Wednesday Sisters - had used the cottage while she worked on her unpublished biography of Beatrix Potter. Traveling with Hope are friends Anna Page and Julie, first introduced in The Wednesday Sisters, now grown women grappling with issues of a different era. Tucked away in a hidden drawer, Hope finds a stack of Ally's notebooks, written in a mysterious code. As she, Julie, and Anna Page try to decipher Ally's writings, they are forced to confront their own struggles: Hope's doubts her marriage, Julie's grief over her twin sister, Anna Page's fear of commitment.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateJul 16, 2013
    ISBN9781624066740
    Unavailable
    The Wednesday Daughters
    Author

    Meg Waite Clayton

    Meg Waite Clayton is the New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, including The Postmistress of Paris (a Publisher’s Weekly notable book; HarperCollins, Nov. 30, 2021), the National Jewish Book Award finalist and international bestseller The Last Train to London, the Langum Award honoree The Race for Paris, the Bellwether Prize finalist The Language of Light, and The Wednesday Sisters, an Entertainment Weekly 25 Essential Best Friend Novels of all time. Her novels have been published in 23 languages. She has also written more than 100 essays, opinions, and reviews for major newspapers, magazines, and public radio. She mentors in the OpEd Project, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the California bar. megwaiteclayton.com

    More audiobooks from Meg Waite Clayton

    Related to The Wednesday Daughters

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Reviews for The Wednesday Daughters

    3/5

    14 ratings50 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      During the late 1960s, five extraordinary young women - Frankie, Linda, Kath, Ally and Brett - forged an amazing friendship that endured for a lifetime. Although the ladies initially had little in common with each other beyond a shared love of literature and watching the ‘Miss America Pageant’ together, their casual bond quickly blossomed into a much stronger relationship than any of the women could ever have imagined. ‘The Wednesday Sisters’ as they began calling themselves, soon realized that they were seeking out each other’s company more and more - commiserating over the myriad issues experienced in marriage and young motherhood; as well as buoying each other through the triumphs and tragedies faced in real life. And while ‘The Wednesday Sisters’ friendship lasted for four decades, the unique closeness these ladies experienced has extended into the next generation.During the fall of 2011, Hope arrives in the English Lakes District to close up her mother Ally’s holiday cottage. Although she doesn’t anticipate anything going wrong during her visit - especially with lifelong friends Anna Page and Julie along to help - she still isn’t quite prepared for what does happen. Soon after arriving at the cottage, Hope discovers a stack of her mother’s old journals written in some sort of indecipherable code. Equally perplexing is the mysterious stranger who knocks at the door, claiming that the women are actually trespassing on private property.The wealthy Englishman is Ally’s nearest neighbor, although she never mentioned him - either to her daughter or to anyone else. Calling himself Graham, the man invites Hope, Anna Page and Julie to take a tour of the English Lakes - in order to get a more intimate glimpse of the forests, fells, and waterfalls that inspired Beatrix Potter’s childhood classic Peter Rabbit and the poetry of William Wordsworth. However, what begins as a chance for Hope to learn more about the relationship between Ally and her eccentric English friend, quickly turns into something else entirely - something infinitely sweeter and much more meaningful to all three women. These guided tours become journeys through the emotional landscapes of their mothers’ choices in life - as well as their own.As the daughters begin to uncover the true reasons behind Ally’s frequent trips to England - reasons that are as intricate and as personal as the secret puzzlebox that Hope carries with her - they reach a deeper understanding of the complexities of romance, the bonds of family, and the inescapable pull of the past.First of all, let me say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Wednesday Sisters: A Novel by Meg Waite Clayton when I read it back in November of 2015. It only took me four days to read that book, and I was so looking forward to reading its sequel. To be perfectly honest, while I certainly enjoyed reading The Wednesday Daughters: A Novel by Meg Waite Clayton very much, I think that my expectations for this book were almost too high. In my opinion, the contemporary storyline was perhaps the most enjoyable of the two - although I appreciated that the historical storyline was also included.I understand that Beatrix Potter was a prolific children’s author - and that she has ardent fans of her work - but I must admit that I have never read any of her books myself. As a result, I didn’t really follow the historical storyline all that well. Having said that, I would still give this book a definite B+!
    • 3/5
      I wasn't able to finish this one. I'm not sure if it's because I didn't have the background of the earlier book, but these characters did not grab me so it was hard to keep them straight. I will try again later and change my review once I've read the entire book. Overall, the characters seem well-developed, and the plot is interesting, but the Beatrix Potter references just weren't my cup of tea.
    • 2/5
      I was so excited to get this book because I read the Wednesday sisters and loved it so much! This book is not as good as the first one. I am having a hard time finishing it. It flashes back in time unexpectedly and it jumps around in the story. It's like a different person wrote it this time.Sorry. I really wanted to like this book.
    • 3/5
      I had a very hard time following this book, the flashbacks and jumping around made me confuse characters and not ever connect to the book, it was very hard for me to get through. Not my favorite.
    • 2/5
      I loved The Wednesday Sisters, and was excited to read this sequel. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The three main characters were neither well-drawn nor likable, and the story wasn't very compelling. Or perhaps it was that the issues these women are facing were not nearly as compelling as the issues their mothers faced. Gone are the struggles to break away from the strictures and prejudices of the past. The daughters are confronting deaths of loved ones, infidelity, and other relationship crises, any one of which is ordinarily enough to make a story. So why don't we care as much about them as we did about their mothers? Maybe because Clayton seems to want this book to be as weighty as the first was, but it's just not. I don't know. Whatever the reason, this is one case where the the elders really are the betters.
    • 3/5
      Interesting book, but flashbacks were kind of hard to follow...but enjoyed it.
    • 3/5
      I had a difficult time finishing this book (one of the reasons this review is long overdue). I really enjoyed the first book, "The Wednesday Sisters" so I had high hopes for this book. The story is set in England and "The Wednesday Daughters" are: Hope, Julie and Anna, who are the children of “The Wednesday Sisters" which is the first book in the series. After Hope’s mom dies the daughters come back to the cottage that her mom used while she was working on a book about Beatrix Potter. Overall, I thought the book jumped around too much and just didn't keep my interest.
    • 4/5
      This was a wonderful book and I thoroughly enjoyed it, hence the four-star rating. The was the second book in a series and unfortunately, I had not read the first book. This did not take away from my enjoyment, but I would recommend reading them in order if you can. If you can't, it is a terrific book.The title "The Wednesday Daughters" refers to Hope, Julie and Anna, the children of “The Wednesday Sisters" (the title of the first book in the series). After Hope’s mother dies the daughters return to the cottage that her mother used while she was working on an autobiography of Beatrix Potter. The story is set in England and is just charming. This book was so enjoyable that now "The Wednesday Sisters" is on the top of my to-read list. I am going to be on pins and needles waiting for the next book in the series after I catch up and read "The Wednesday Sisters."
    • 3/5
      I have a wonderful group of friends, of whom I could ask anything. Many of us live in the same neighborhood and we all have children. Our children, with only a few exceptions, are not really friends. Perhaps this is because the kids' ages are so wildly varied. Perhaps it's because we mothers met when the kids were old enough to have friendships of their own independent of us. Perhaps there's another reason altogether, one that I am missing. It interests me when I hear of kids who are friends because their parents are friends, probably because I definitely don't see that in my own life at all. In Meg Waite Clayton's book, The Wednesday Daughters, there is this kind of relationship, at least between three of the adult daughters of the women she wrote about in The Wednesday Sisters. I enjoyed the first book and was curious to see where the second would take me. Unfortunately, it was less engaging than the first. Hope has enlisted the help of fellow Wednesday Daughters (their mothers were all dear friends of decades long standing), Julie and Anna Page, to help her go to empty out the tiny writing cottage her mother kept in England's Lake District after her mother Ally's unexpected death. Hope wants to understand why her mother was so attracted to the place and what it meant to her, knowing only that her own grandmother, who cut off all relations with Ally when she married an Indian husband, was originally from around there and that Ally herself loved Beatrix Potter and was writing a biography of sorts of Potter when she died. Because the group is so close, each of the three women is dealing with Ally's death but Julie is also dealing with her twin sister Jamie's death from breast cancer a year prior as well as a failed marriage, Hope is facing the possible breakdown of her marriage over the issue of children and race, and Anna Page is forever unwilling to open herself up to emotional intimacy in a relationship, always choosing awful men for herself and busying herself making the good matches for her friends. While the three women are obviously close enough to be clearing out Ally's cottage together, by choice, they also have tensions and disapprovals of each other pervading the atmosphere as well. When they first arrive, they are rowed over to the cottage by Robbie, a boatman who tells them of the legends and old scandals in the area and Anna Page immediately tags him as someone for Julie. Then they meet Graham, the local lord, who they originally assume that Ally had been having an affair with but who turns out to have more complicated connections to her than that, being, perhaps, a key to the mystery of why Ally's mother was so horrified by her marriage to Jim. As they tramp around the Lake District countryside together, Hope carrying Ally's ashes in her pocket, each of the three women is looking for a way to heal her own wounded heart. As a sequel, the reader is expected to dive right into the relationships with these women, remembering the tight friendships of their mothers. The problem is that the daughters weren't a huge part of the first book and it can be hard to remember which daughter belongs to which Wednesday Sister and why that would be significant in forming their personalities. The only Wednesday Sister who makes an appearance here, aside from Ally in memory and in the brief pages of her journal, is Kath, who seems quirkier, more full of southern colloquialisms than ever before, and completely out of place in England. The novel is told both from Hope's first person perspective and from a third person omniscient narration as well, blending the two of them together in a somewhat uneasy mix. Added to that already jumbled narration is the fact of Ally's journals, which seem to be the seed of her unpublished work on Beatrix Potter. These felt unnecessary and odd given that they are presented as journal entries but have animated Potter's ghost, who has conversations with Ally. It is an awkward and distracting construct when simple, unvarnished journal entries would have shown her feelings and experiences just fine. Also, the focus of the novel isn't tight enough, trying to incorporate too many major plot threads at once and then tying them up very neatly in the end. The physical descriptions of the Lake District were lovely and definitely contributed to the healing that needed to occur though. This wasn't a bad book but it just wasn't everything I had hoped either.
    • 3/5
      While there's nothing technically wrong with it, I just didn't connect with this book the way I did the first book. The story was ok but I found it hard to follow and had a hard time keeping track of what was going on. It's really too bad because I really wanted to love this book. Will look for more of her books in the future, though I would be ok with a whole new book rather than a continuation of this series.
    • 4/5
      I did not read the prequel, The Wednesday Sisters, but this is about their daughters who go to England to accompany Hope, who will spread her deceased mother's ashes in the place the mother loved so well. While there she finds her mother's journals in the little cottage in which she would stay. The story progresses slowly, I might add, about each of the mothers and their daughters. Interjected is a concurrent theme about Beatrix Potter, the author, whom the deceased mother admired. I found the book rather long, and the interjections about Potter distracting. The writing was good, the story line by itself good, but altogether it seemed to drag.
    • 2/5
      Honestly, this book has made no sense to me from the very beginning. Since, I can't seem to follow what is going on, I'm moving on to something else. This doesn't happen to be often and I am saddened when it does but I cannot get into this book.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this novel and felt the premise and story was compelling and engaging. I felt like I was hanging out with friends and I felt it was real and true situtations that played out on the page! 3 stars
    • 1/5
      Such a disappointing read. Unfortunately, I felt like this was slogging through mud, it was tedious reading at best, especially all the Beatrix Potter parts. At no point in the story did I become invested in any of the characters. They were not only flat and boring but just downright unlikeable. Such a shame too, because the premise is a good one and could have been done much better.
    • 3/5
      I received this book as an early review on august 24 and have spent several days reading reading the book. I find it heartwarming and filled with memorable characters. Captivating novel about mothers and daughters, friendships, love affairs and betrayals.Ally's friend takes them to forests and waterfalls that inspired Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit, hikes through the landscapes of their mothers' choices and their own. They reach a new understanding of romance, the bond of family and the pull of the past.
    • 1/5
      I received this book as part of the Early Reviewer program. After enjoying The Wednesday Sisters, I was so excited to read this sequel about their daughters. While I loved the opening setting of the Lake District in the UK, I put the book down after the first chapter. I just could not attach to the characters and hated the dialogue.
    • 4/5
      Having never read the Wednesday Sisters, I had no idea what to expect. It took me a while to catch up with the characters, which is probably my main criticism of the book, but once I did I enjoyed reading this. It's older woman chick lit, but not so old that the younger readers will feel it an inappropriate read.
    • 2/5
      The Wednesday Daughters is the sequel to the book The Wednesday Sisters. Without having read the first book I found it difficult to follow what was happening and to really get to know the characters. I enjoyed the references to Beatrix Potter and also liked the resolution that each of the "sisters" found at the end of the story.
    • 4/5
      Meg Waite Clayton's The Wednesday Sisters was my very first Early Review Book. When I saw The Wednesday Daughters on the list, how could I not request it?This sequel finds Hope (Ally's daughter), Anna Page (Kath's daughter, and Julie (Linda's daughter) on a trip together to the English countryside to spread Ally's ashes and close up her cottage after her death.The three are not the only Wednesday children, but they were three of the four closest friends growing up. The fourth was Julie's twin, Jamie. She, Ally and Jim all died over the previous year. The women are all middle-aged, accomplished in their careers (lawyer, cardiologist and librarian), and each faces a crossroads in their life.Hope has struggled her entire life with her own identity. Born to a white American mother and a dark Indian father, she has always felt "other" and, perhaps, unworthy of the love of her husband, Kevin.Julie has also struggled with her new identity as the surviving twin. Having left her husband soon after her sister's passing, she had begun spending time with her sister's husband and son - creating a private little grief support group, with benefits. Anna Page has not seemed to struggle with anything beyond which man to sleep with and discard. Later in the novel, we get to know her real struggles, but she has always been the oldest of the Wednesday girls and the self-appointed leader and matchmaker.How the three girls deal with the mysterious neighbor (Graham), the boatman (Robbie), the archaic cottage, and the mysterious, encrypted journal that Ally left behind at the cottage, becomes the meat of the novel. The first half of the novel drags a bit, but it is well worth getting through to finish the story of these three women.I found myself slightly distracted by the first person narration of Hope but with chapters alternately focusing on the different girls. I think I would have preferred third person, all knowing narration rather than assuming the Julie and Anna Page told Hope all of the details that are described in their chapters.I will nestle this book right next to its parent on the shelf of honor - Early Review Books that I have loved and aim to keep.
    • 3/5
      Three daughters (Hope, Anna and Julie) from the Wednesday Sisters travel to England to help Hope clean out her mother's cottage after her passing. When they discover Ally's notebooks, they discover secrets about Ally that even her husband and son didn't know! Although the story wanders and lags for the first half, I did hang in there. I would recommend reading the first book before reading this one.
    • 3/5
      This book is the long awaited sequel to The Wednesday Sisters; a group of 5 women who weren't really sisters, but became life long friends. This is the story of 3 of their daughters, Hope, Julie and Anna Page.It follows the women as they close up Hope's mother Ally's cottage after Ally's death. Ally's purpose for going to England was to write a biography about Beatrix Potter, but they soon discover through the journals that Ally left behind that she had a whole other life that no one else knew about; not even Hope, or her father or brother.As they work together to unravel the mystery, they are dealing with their own personal problems. Hope is dealing with a marriage that is unraveling, along with grief; Julie is still coming to terms with the loss of her twin sister, and Anna Page, a successful heart surgeon, is dealing with her fear of commitment. Through Ally's journals, we also learn about the complications in Beatrix Potter's life.I have to admit, as much as I was looking forward to this sequel, I did not enjoy it as much as I did The Wednesday Sisters. The story dragged for me in spots, especially during a couple of hikes through the woods they took that seemed to be never ending; the description of the scenery was beautiful though. I also felt that Julie's story was never fully resolved.What I did like was a couple of unexpected plot twists, and what happened when family secrets came to light. I also liked learning about the background of Beatrix Potter, because even as an adult, I still love her books and illustrations.I won a free paperback copy of this book from Library Thing.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book. It weaves an interesting story about the bonds between a mother and a daughter. The inclusion of the Beatrix Potter elements were a nice addition to the story. This is a well-written book.
    • 3/5
      This novel begins with the three Wednesday Daughters, Hope, Anna Page and Julie, traveling to the cottage where Ally, Hope's mother, was working on a biography of Beatrix Potter prior to her death. Hope is struggling with grief and difficulty in her marriage. She discovers new aspects of her mother's life as she sorts through Ally's personal effects, including a set of notebooks that are written in code. Julie and Anna Page also have personal issues that need to be resolved so there are multiple story lines in this novel. Even though there are several stories intertwined, not much in the way of action takes place in this book. I personally found it rather dull at first but it did improve and became more interesting later in the book. Maybe because I did not read the prequel about their mothers (The Wednesday Sisters), I did not feel connected to the characters. I also prefer there to be multiple narrators when there are multiple story lines. Having only Hope narrate just didn't work well. I also was not interested in the many Beatrix Potter references. I would give this book 2 1/2 stars.
    • 4/5
      The Wednesday Daughters: A Novel by Meg Waite ClaytonOnce upon a time in a year called 2008 The Wednesday Sisters: A Novel by Meg Waite Clayton. It was a book of women's literature, and it was good. It was a story, not of sisters, but friends. A story of young women and their friends and all of their children. Love, loyalty and friendship, mixed with laughter and a little bit of sad.A few years later, in the year of 2013, there came along a book of women's literature, it was called The Wednesday Daughters: A Novel by Meg Waite Clayton, and it too was good. It was very good. They young children of the women who became friends and a sort of chosen family to each other in The Wednesday Sisters, had grown up. They were married or not, but they were friends. They were perhaps more like sisters than their mothers were having known each other for all of their lives. Their shared history gave them a deeper friendship, a deeper loyalty, and a stronger, but not without flaws, love for each other.One of the young women was dealing with the death of her mother. She mourned the great loss, as we all do, and was joined and supported in that mourning by Aunt Kath, one of the original Wednesday Sisters, and by her friends Anna Page, Aunt Kath's daughter, and by Julie, the surviving twin of another of the original group. Julie's own mother, dad and even her twin sister had all died in the year just passed. They had gone together to visit a small cottage in England where Ally used to go to visit and to write. They had gone to pack away the remnants of her life that she had left behind. They found not only a small cozy cottage, but journals and in fact an entire life that none of them had known a thing about. Not just friends, but unknown family members.What had begun as a good-bye to a part of life of one of the members of their unique family, ended up being a discovery of riches for them all. They learned more about Ally than they had ever guessed, and each of them learned a few things about themselves as well. This is a story that begins like a cool grey rain, moves forward to become a huge and complex rainbow, and eventually, the sun comes out to warm the faces and the lives of the women, and all of those in their lives, old friends, and new. Relationships took on a new richness. A final gift from Ally?This was a good read, I recommend it. Even thought each of these novels stand up well on their own, I believe that reading The Wednesday Sisters first will make reading The Wednesday daughters even better.
    • 3/5
      This is the story of the daughters of The Wednesday Sisters which was a very good read.In this story, the daughters go to England to clean out the cottage of one of the mothers who is deceased. Many emotions are dealt with as the girls support Hope in her efforts to pack up the cottage and deal with the journals that are discovered. I am thankful to LibraryThing for selecting me to read this book.
    • 4/5
      Hope heads to England to clean out the writer's cabin left behind by her mother passing. She is accompanied by the remaining Wednesday Daughter, who are there to both lend moral support and to get away from their own emotional issues. The journey reveals more to Hope than she had ever expected; both of her mother and her family history. The book itself plods along at first in an attempt to expose the reader to all the characters and their back stories, although none of them are particularly exciting. Journal entries allow us to hear from Ally, Hope's mother and reveal her own difficulty in accepting what her place in the world.
    • 2/5
      This book is a followup to The Wednesday Sisters which I enjoyed. However, it took me two tries to read this one. The first time was several months ago when I lost interest at 40 pages. And the second time was last week when I lost interest at 40 pages but forced myself to finish the book. Hope, Anna and Julie grew up together under the blanket of their mothers' friendship. They have come to England to help Hope clear our her mother's cottage. Hope is dealing with the death of her mother, Julie lost her twin the year before and Anna is facing the emptiness of her life. Interwoven in their stories are the journals of Hope's mother and her "conversations" with the long deceased Beatrix Potter. Frankly, it was all a mishmash to me. I just didn't feel a connection to the women, individually or as a whole, which is what I look for in women's fiction.
    • 4/5
      This was a perfect read for me as a huge fan of Beatrix Potter as well as the Cottage Tails of Beatrix Potter by Susan Wittig Albert. I absolutely loved the quotes from Beatrix Potter's books as well as Ally's journal entries of her visits with Bea's ghost.
      My favorite character was Asha/Hope as she dealt with the recent death of her mother and the many discoveries about her mother in the Lake District of England. Graham and Robbie were also favorites, dealing with loneliness and grief.
      I will definitely read the Wednesday Sisters to find out more about the families depicted here. It was a very enjoyable read.
    • 3/5
      I'd been looking forward to this sequel of sorts to Clayton's earlier Wednesday Sisters, after having very much enjoyed that one. I also really enjoyed her follow-up, The Four Ms. Bradwells, so it seemed logical for me to be anxious for this most recent novel. However, I have to confess to being disappointed in this one. As a novel on its own, I think I would've felt lukewarm about it. But as a sequel (and that's a loose term, as it's not so much a sequel as a novel with some recurring characters, or rather, daughters of previous characters), I had a preconceived notion of what it should be, and when it wasn't, I was disappointed. So I guess I blame some of my disappointment on myself. But still.You can read a plot summary for more details, but this one centered primarily on three particular daughters of the aforementioned Wednesday Sisters (of which there were five). Hope, whose mother Ally has recently passed away, travels to England with two of the other "daughters" to try to understand why her mother enjoyed and spent so much of her later life in a cottage in the rural English countryside. While there, the reader learns a little about the three daughters and who they've become, their varied personalities, etc. In the meantime, there are a couple of "mysterious coincidences" that are slowly revealed, as well as a recurring Beatrix Potter theme. It took a long time for me to really get into the storyline. I was nearly halfway through before I felt anything really happened. And while the Beatrix Potter theme was nice and quaint, there was something about it that just didn't seem to flow with the rest of the story. While the overall story was "okay", I was just never gripped by the storyline and nothing about it really made me want to care about any of the characters. I think maybe Meg Waite Clayton was trying to go in a different direction with this book -- a more mature writing style perhaps, but I found that it fell flat, was downright confusing at times, and just wasn't particularly appealing to me.
    • 3/5
      When I requested this book to review via LibraryThing I apparently missed the fact that this was a sequel to The Wednesday Sisters which was a story about of five friends who gather and talk of raising kids, marriage, etc. it sounds like a book I would might have read. Now, will I go back and read it. Probably not. Had I read it first I think I would have like the daughters version more so. There was no lead in the sequel as to what transpired in the first story so I spent most of the time grasping for clues as to who, what, why, where the story was going. There was some reflecting in the past but that was confusing too because that was a character from the first book having imaginary conversations with a dead woman. Sigh. It was a bit of a struggle but I did like the English setting and the description of scenes were lovely. Verses from Beatrix Potter stories headed each chapter which I enjoyed.I wish I read the first book.