Cheap Cabernet by Cathie Beck

A good book is like a fine (or in this case, cheap) wine. You want to curl up and enjoy it. Cheap Cabernet by Cathie Beck is just the book to enjoy with a glass of wine at the end of a day. It is her memoir about friends, family, life, and living in the moment.

Book Description
“I didn’t know that people come into our lives, and sometimes, if we’re terribly lucky, we get the chance to love them, that sometimes they stay, that sometimes you can, truly, depend on them.

Cathie Beck was in her late thirties and finally able to exhale after a lifetime of just trying to get by. A teenage mother harboring vivid memories of her own hardscrabble childhood, Cathie had spent years doing whatever it took to give her children the stability—or at least the illusion of it—that she’d never had. More than that, through sheer will and determination, she had educated them and herself too. With her kids in college, Cathie was at last ready to have some fun. The only problem was that she had no idea how to do it and no friends to do it with. So she put an ad in the paper for a made-up women's group: WOW . . . Women on the Way. Eight women showed up that first night, and out of that group a friendship formed, one of those meteoric, passionate, stand-by-you friendships that come around once in a lifetime and change you forever . . . if you’re lucky.” – Cheap Cabernet


My Thoughts
Not knowing exactly what life is going to throw at you is something I can relate with. Sure, Cathie Beck and I have lived very different lives, by my age she was married, had a husband walk out on her, had kids, jobs, and plenty of more worries in life than I can say I have had. However, her truth about everything with her wit and wisdom of looking at it now, really let her capture those moments in such a real, honest way that everybody can relate to (at least to some degree).

Cheap Cabernet captures the very real aspects of the friendship between Cathie and Denise. Even though they didn’t know each other for a “long” time, they became closer and really meant more to one another than either of them could have known at the time.

Cathie was in need of friends and started a women’s group called WOW. Denise was the member she was really looking for in the group of friends she made. My favorite story the author shared with us about their friendship was their trip to Jamaica and Cuba. It showed fun times, but also the very real ways friends (when spending too much time together) get on each other’s nerves.

Even though I would have liked more stories about Cathie’s life during the time the book was written, it is a memoir, so she does include quite a few stories about her life growing up and after she was left to be a very young single mother in New Orleans. These stories about her life does help to show you where she was in her life, and how she became who she is.

Cheap Cabernet is really one of those stories that once you read, you’ll continue to think about. It makes the reader think and acknowledge relationships in their own life. It will have you laughing, crying, and hopefully able to make you appreciate relationships in your own life. I highly recommend it, especially when being read with a glass of cheap cabernet.


Thank you to the publisher of Cheap Cabernet, Hyperion, for providing me with a copy for review purposes. All opinions expressed are my own. I was not paid for the review, or to write in favor, or not in favor of this product.