“If you had the chance to be anyone… who would you be?”
Beth, along with her sister, were orphaned as very young adults, and while Elspeth had a successful career and marriage, both have fallen by the wayside. Beth herself is stuck in an unfulfilling graphic design job, and one day, finds she’s able to slip into another persona for a short while, and just be someone else – someone fun, someone successful, someone that just isn’t…. her.
After another afternoon spent as someone else, she meets up with Leila, who introduces her to the Players Club – a group of women who have been doing the same thing. It’s not just a cosplay exercise – they create the personas and embody them fully for a short while. The group don’t talk about their lives outside of the club – though we get the sense that they all have stories to tell. This is their chance to live in the moment, to be free and play. They have rules and regulations to make sure no one gets hurt, and Beth begins to feel invigorated in her new found family.
But when Beth’s real life starts to unravel, she finds herself more frustrated by the Players Club, and steps away from the group to take on the role of a lifetime…
A story of identity and belonging, I found myself fully invested in the characters, and I do recommend having a box of tissues nearby, as what starts out as a bit of fun packs an emotional punch with Mills’ writing.
“‘The irony is,’ said Leila, ‘people are playing with different identities every day. Trying them on to see what fits, seeking reinvention, or trying to be the person they think the world wants them to be.’”
Diagnosed late with autism, the novel resonated particularly strongly with me. I’ve spent 40 something years “masking” – mimicking the actions of people around me to fit in, putting on a face and trying to pass as neurotypical. And it’s exhausting. Like the social interaction is set to manual to you have to force all the steps, while neurotypical people are on automatic and don’t think about it.
The questions the novel raised about identity and the value of your self were incredibly poignant. Excellent read.
Many thanks to Random Things Book Tours and Rachel Mills for the opportunity to read and review this fabulous novel.
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