Hi, Taylor Corrien here, Chief Story Stylist and your guide through The Curvy Fashionista Book Club!
And whew, Book Club has a few updates.
We’ve got a new book, a new day, and a new time for our next gathering. Because schedules be scheduling, and we want TCF Book Club to be a space where more of you can actually join us, settle in, talk books, laugh a little too loudly, and have some fun with your fellow romance readers.
But before we get into what’s next, we want to take a moment to honor someone incredibly important to how TCF Book Club began.
In Loving Memory of Ashley Blackwell
When The Curvy Fashionista launched TCF Book Club in 2025, Ashley Blackwell was the original contributor chosen to lead the way.
Ashley wasn’t simply a supporter of the idea. She was at the helm of this new chapter for TCF, bringing her passion for storytelling, fat representation, and books that allowed plus size characters to take up space on the page.
She was our bookish bestie, the person we trusted to help us discover the fat-positive romances, fantasies, and stories that too often get overlooked.
We recently lost Ashley, and as TCF Book Club moves into this next chapter, we want to pause and honor the role she played in helping shape this community.
Because that community was always at the heart of the vision.
Books give us somewhere to gather. They give us reasons to laugh, debate, swoon, yell at fictional people for making terrible decisions, discover new authors, see pieces of ourselves reflected back to us, and connect with people we may never have met otherwise.
Ashley understood the importance of those stories and the joy of sharing them.
As we continue building TCF Book Club, welcoming new readers, discovering new stories, and making even more room for plus size characters to be celebrated loudly, we carry that part of Ashley’s legacy with us.
We are grateful that she helped begin this chapter.
This one is for you, Ashley.
With Ashley’s love of storytelling in mind, let’s talk about what we discovered in our final discussion of 40-Love.
About 40-Love…
This past weekend, we had our final meeting discussing 40-Love by Olivia Dade, and apparently, we are not done with grown-woman lovin’ over here.
Not even a little bit.
Our September Book of the Month, Can’t Get Enough by Kennedy Ryan, is keeping that energy going with a plus size heroine in her 40s navigating ambition, family, desire, and a man who may be more than capable of keeping up with her.
But before we get into Hendrix Barry’s business, we had to finish discussing everything Tess and Lucas taught us.
And baby, there was plenty.
Through Tess and her unexpected vacation romance, we explored insecurity, age-gap romance, instant connections, work-life balance, control, and the kind of freedom that can come from trusting yourself enough to try something new.
Tess reminded us that sometimes you have to get out of your own way long enough to see what might be waiting for you.
Naturally, Book Club had thoughts.
Let’s get into it.
Learning to Live in the Moment
Tess Dunn, our 40-year-old plus size FMC and assistant principal, is celebrating her birthday on vacation when she meets 26-year-old Lucas Karlsson, a former professional tennis player who now works as a tennis instructor at the resort.
And the chemistry?
Immediate.
The problem is that Tess cannot stop thinking about the 14-year age difference between them.
Lucas, meanwhile, could not care less.
Over the course of their two weeks together, Tess slowly begins dropping her guard and allowing herself to enjoy what is happening instead of obsessing over everything that could go wrong.
Well… she tries.
And that got us thinking about our own relationships with “living in the moment.”
Does it come easily to you?
Or are you still learning how to release control long enough to simply enjoy where you are?
For me, living in the moment is absolutely something I’m still learning.
And I wasn’t alone.
Several of the women in the TCF Book Club could relate. We all seem to have at least one area of our lives where letting go feels almost impossible. We want to manage it, fix it, perfect it, anticipate the problem, create the backup plan, and probably make a backup plan for the backup plan.
You know. Just in case.
Other members shared great reminders about delegating, letting go of perfection, and allowing something to exist even when it doesn’t look exactly the way we imagined it would.
For many women, that can be especially difficult.
We are often taught early to be mature, nurturing, responsible, organized, accommodating, and ready to fix whatever needs fixing. And for some of us, repeated experiences with weaponized incompetence only reinforce that little voice saying, “If I don’t do it, it won’t get done right.”
But constantly anticipating the worst can keep us from experiencing some pretty wonderful things.
Tess learns that lesson quickly.
You could miss out on a great love because you’ve already decided someone is too young to understand you.
You could turn a sweet moment into an anxiety spiral because you’re convinced the man you like is judging you for eating the cupcake…
that he bought you.
Ma’am.
At some point, we have to allow other people the opportunity to show up.
We can trust someone else to carry their part. We can change directions. We can switch drivers. We can take a different route.
The destination does not become less worthwhile because we didn’t control every mile of the journey.
Are Tess and Lucas Soulmates, Twin Flames, or Just Down Bad?
Over their two weeks together, we watch Tess and Lucas go from denial and confusion to two people who cannot quite imagine going back to life without each other in it.
As the vacation comes to an end, Tess is already figuring out how she can return to see Lucas during the school year, while Lucas is considering opportunities that could put him closer to her.
So, naturally, the TCF Book Club took the conversation somewhere deeper:
Do we believe in soulmates?
What about twin flames?
Is there really one person somewhere in this giant world who is your perfect match?
And what exactly is the difference between the two?
In popular spiritual conversations, a twin flame is often described as someone who mirrors parts of you back to yourself, including the beautiful parts and the messy ones. The connection is believed to trigger some kind of personal or spiritual awakening.
A soulmate, meanwhile, is generally described as someone with whom you experience a deep sense of familiarity, ease, or belonging. And soulmate connections aren’t always romantic. Depending on your beliefs, a soulmate might be a partner, friend, family member, or another person who plays a meaningful role in your life.
Book Club could not decide which category Tess and Lucas fell into.
They experience an almost immediate connection that feels very soulmate-ish.
But they also challenge each other’s fears, expose insecurities, and become catalysts for some pretty major life decisions.
Very twin-flame behavior.
Then there was the question sitting in the middle of the room:
What about the age gap?
Could Tess and Lucas be people meant to deeply affect each other without necessarily being together forever? Can a 26-year-old really know he wants to build a life with someone? Or are we dismissing Lucas’s ability to know himself simply because of his age?
We definitely did not solve that one.
So now we’re asking you.
What do you think Tess and Lucas are: soulmates, twin flames, forever loves, or two people who met at exactly the right moment?
New Book, New Day, New Time!
Now for our next chapter.
TCF Book Club is switching things up!
We have a new book, a new meeting day, and a new time as we make a few adjustments designed to work better with everyone’s schedules and give us even more room to enjoy these conversations together.
We heard your comments, and we want these meetings to be easier to fit into your life. More people in the room means more opinions, more laughs, and, quite frankly, more opportunities for us to lovingly argue over fictional people’s decisions.
And you voted via Instagram for our September Book of the Month:
Can’t Get Enough by Kennedy Ryan.
Yes.
Kennedy. Ryan.
So, prepare yourselves accordingly.
Our next plus size FMC is Hendrix Barry, a successful plus size woman in her 40s with a thriving career, incredible friendships, serious ambition, and enough going on in her life without adding a man to the equation.
Her career in the entertainment industry is flourishing, but she is also navigating one of the most complicated transitions of her life: caring for her aging mother.
Romance?
Hendrix does not exactly have time for all that.
Until Maverick Bell walks in.
A tech mogul with charm, confidence, and the audacity to be one of the first men Hendrix has met who might actually be able to keep up with her.
And because this is a Kennedy Ryan novel, nothing could possibly be that simple.
Maverick comes with a very complicated connection to one of Hendrix’s colleagues, which means the chemistry may be chemistry-ing, but the mess is also most definitely messing.
Forbidden love?
A grown woman who knows what she wants?
A man determined to make it known that he wants all of her?
Career, caregiving, friendship, desire, and grown folks making grown-folks decisions?
Oh, we are going to have plenty to discuss.
And we cannot wait.
Join Us at the Next TCF Book Club Meeting
New day. New time. And hopefully, a few new faces in the Zoom room!
We’re shifting our meeting schedule to make it a little easier for more members of our community to pull up a virtual chair and join the conversation (we heard the requests!).
Even if you have yet to get the book yet, join us Wednesday, September 16 at 4 p.m. PT / 7 p.m. ET for our first discussion of Can’t Get Enough by Kennedy Ryan. Make sure you RSVP to secure your seat to join us!
Bring your book.
Bring your drink.
Bring your opinions.
And absolutely bring the group chat energy, because if Kennedy Ryan gives us the kind of mess we think she is about to give us, we are going to need to discuss it together.
New book. New day. New time.
Same TCF Book Club, with a little more room for community, conversation, joy, and fun.
We’ll see you there.
In loving memory of Ashley Blackwell, TCF Book Club’s original guide, whose love of storytelling and fat representation helped begin this community.
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