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.
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…
Ma’am.
