Hello, Taylor Corrien right here, Chief Story Stylist and your information by means of The Curvy Fashionista Guide Membership!
And whew, Guide Membership has a number of updates.
We’ve acquired a new guide, a brand new day, and a brand new time for our subsequent gathering. As a result of schedules be scheduling, and we wish TCF Guide Membership to be an area the place extra of you’ll be able to really be a part of us, settle in, discuss books, snort just a little too loudly, and have some enjoyable together with your fellow romance readers.
However earlier than we get into what’s subsequent, we need to take a second to honor somebody extremely necessary to how TCF Guide Membership started.
In Loving Reminiscence of Ashley Blackwell
When The Curvy Fashionista launched TCF Guide Membership in 2025, Ashley Blackwell was the unique contributor chosen to paved the way.
Ashley wasn’t merely a supporter of the concept. She was on the helm of this new chapter for TCF, bringing her ardour for storytelling, fats illustration, and books that allowed plus dimension characters to take up house on the web page.
She was our bookish bestie, the particular person we trusted to assist us uncover the fat-positive romances, fantasies, and tales that too typically get ignored.
We lately misplaced Ashley, and as TCF Guide Membership strikes into this subsequent chapter, we need to pause and honor the function she performed in serving to form this group.
As a result of that group was at all times on the coronary heart of the imaginative and prescient.
Books give us someplace to assemble. They offer us causes to snort, debate, swoon, yell at fictional individuals for making horrible choices, uncover new authors, see items of ourselves mirrored again to us, and join with individuals we might by no means have met in any other case.
Ashley understood the significance of these tales and the enjoyment of sharing them.
As we proceed constructing TCF Guide Membership, welcoming new readers, discovering new tales, and making much more room for plus dimension characters to be celebrated loudly, we feature that a part of Ashley’s legacy with us.
We’re grateful that she helped start this chapter.
This one is for you, Ashley.
With Ashley’s love of storytelling in thoughts, let’s discuss what we found in our ultimate dialogue of 40-Love.
About 40-Love…
This previous weekend, we had our ultimate assembly discussing 40-Love by Olivia Dade, and apparently, we’re not accomplished with grown-woman lovin’ over right here.
Not even just a little bit.
Our September Guide of the Month, Can’t Get Sufficient by Kennedy Ryan, is preserving that power going with a plus dimension heroine in her 40s navigating ambition, household, want, and a person who could also be greater than able to maintaining together with her.
However earlier than we get into Hendrix Barry’s enterprise, we needed to end discussing every little thing Tess and Lucas taught us.
And child, there was a lot.
By means of Tess and her sudden trip romance, we explored insecurity, age-gap romance, on the spot connections, work-life steadiness, management, and the form of freedom that may come from trusting your self sufficient to attempt one thing new.
Tess reminded us that generally you must get out of your personal approach lengthy sufficient to see what may be ready for you.
Naturally, Guide Membership had ideas.
Let’s get into it.
Studying to Dwell within the Second
Tess Dunn, our 40-year-old plus dimension FMC and assistant principal, is celebrating her birthday on trip when she meets 26-year-old Lucas Karlsson, a former skilled tennis participant who now works as a tennis teacher on the resort.
And the chemistry?
Instant.
The issue is that Tess can’t cease fascinated by the 14-year age distinction between them.
Lucas, in the meantime, couldn’t care much less.
Over the course of their two weeks collectively, Tess slowly begins dropping her guard and permitting herself to get pleasure from what is going on as an alternative of obsessing over every little thing that would go flawed.
Nicely… she tries.
And that acquired us fascinated by our personal relationships with “residing within the second.”
Does it come simply to you?
Or are you continue to studying easy methods to launch management lengthy sufficient to easily get pleasure from the place you’re?
For me, residing within the second is completely one thing I’m nonetheless studying.
And I wasn’t alone.
A number of of the ladies within the TCF Guide Membership may relate. All of us appear to have at the least one space of our lives the place letting go feels nearly not possible. We need to handle it, repair it, excellent it, anticipate the issue, create the backup plan, and doubtless make a backup plan for the backup plan.
You understand. Simply in case.
Different members shared nice reminders about delegating, letting go of perfection, and permitting one thing to exist even when it doesn’t look precisely the way in which we imagined it could.
For a lot of girls, that may be particularly tough.
We are sometimes taught early to be mature, nurturing, accountable, organized, accommodating, and able to repair no matter wants fixing. And for a few of us, repeated experiences with weaponized incompetence solely reinforce that little voice saying, “If I don’t do it, it received’t get accomplished proper.”
However always anticipating the worst can maintain us from experiencing some fairly great issues.
Tess learns that lesson shortly.
You may miss out on an incredible love since you’ve already determined somebody is simply too younger to know you.
You may flip a candy second into an nervousness spiral since you’re satisfied the person you want is judging you for consuming the cupcake…
that he purchased you.
Ma’am.
In some unspecified time in the future, now we have to permit different individuals the chance to indicate up.
We will belief another person to hold their half. We will change instructions. We will swap drivers. We will take a unique route.
The vacation spot doesn’t develop into much less worthwhile as a result of we didn’t management each mile of the journey.
Are Tess and Lucas Soulmates, Twin Flames, or Simply Down Unhealthy?
Over their two weeks collectively, we watch Tess and Lucas go from denial and confusion to 2 individuals who can’t fairly think about going again to life with out one another in it.
As the holiday involves an finish, Tess is already determining how she will be able to return to see Lucas throughout the faculty yr, whereas Lucas is contemplating alternatives that would put him nearer to her.
So, naturally, the TCF Guide Membership took the dialog someplace deeper:
Can we imagine in soulmates?
What about twin flames?
Is there actually one particular person someplace on this big world who’s your excellent match?
And what precisely is the distinction between the 2?
In standard non secular conversations, a twin flame is commonly described as somebody who mirrors elements of you again to your self, together with the attractive elements and the messy ones. The connection is believed to set off some form of private or non secular awakening.
A soulmate, in the meantime, is usually described as somebody with whom you expertise a deep sense of familiarity, ease, or belonging. And soulmate connections aren’t at all times romantic. Relying in your beliefs, a soulmate may be a companion, buddy, member of the family, or one other one that performs a significant function in your life.
Guide Membership couldn’t resolve which class Tess and Lucas fell into.
They expertise an nearly quick connection that feels very soulmate-ish.
However additionally they problem one another’s fears, expose insecurities, and develop into catalysts for some fairly main life choices.
Very twin-flame habits.
Then there was the query sitting in the course of the room:
What in regards to the age hole?
Might Tess and Lucas be individuals meant to deeply have an effect on one another with out essentially being collectively perpetually? Can a 26-year-old actually know he needs to construct a life with somebody? Or are we dismissing Lucas’s capacity to know himself merely due to his age?
We positively didn’t resolve that one.
So now we’re asking you.
What do you assume Tess and Lucas are: soulmates, twin flames, perpetually loves, or two individuals who met at precisely the fitting second?
New Guide, New Day, New Time!
Now for our subsequent chapter.
TCF Guide Membership is switching issues up!
We have now a new guide, a brand new assembly day, and a brand new time as we make a number of changes designed to work higher with everybody’s schedules and provides us much more room to get pleasure from these conversations collectively.
We heard your feedback, and we wish these conferences to be simpler to suit into your life. Extra individuals within the room means extra opinions, extra laughs, and, fairly frankly, extra alternatives for us to lovingly argue over fictional individuals’s choices.
And also you voted by way of Instagram for our September Guide of the Month:
Can’t Get Sufficient by Kennedy Ryan.
Sure.
Kennedy. Ryan.
So, put together yourselves accordingly.
Our subsequent plus dimension FMC is Hendrix Barry, a profitable plus dimension lady in her 40s with a thriving profession, unimaginable friendships, critical ambition, and sufficient happening in her life with out including a person to the equation.
Her profession within the leisure business is flourishing, however she can also be navigating one of the sophisticated transitions of her life: caring for her ageing mom.
Romance?
Hendrix doesn’t precisely have time for all that.
Till Maverick Bell walks in.
A tech mogul with attraction, confidence, and the audacity to be one of many first males Hendrix has met who would possibly really be capable of sustain together with her.
And since it is a Kennedy Ryan novel, nothing may probably be that straightforward.
Maverick comes with a very sophisticated connection to considered one of Hendrix’s colleagues, which suggests the chemistry could also be chemistry-ing, however the mess can also be most positively messing.
Forbidden love?
A grown lady who is aware of what she needs?
A person decided to make it identified that he needs all of her?
Profession, caregiving, friendship, want, and grown people making grown-folks choices?
Oh, we’re going to have a lot to debate.
And we can’t wait.
Be a part of Us on the Subsequent TCF Guide Membership Assembly
New day. New time. And hopefully, a number of new faces within the Zoom room!
We’re shifting our assembly schedule to make it just a little simpler for extra members of our group to tug up a digital chair and be a part of the dialog (we heard the requests!).
Even if in case you have but to get the guide but, be a part of us Wednesday, September 16 at 4 p.m. PT / 7 p.m. ET for our first dialogue of Can’t Get Sufficient by Kennedy Ryan. Be sure you RSVP to safe your seat to hitch us!
Deliver your guide.
Deliver your drink.
Deliver your opinions.
And completely carry the group chat power, as a result of if Kennedy Ryan provides us the form of mess we expect she is about to provide us, we’re going to want to debate it collectively.
New guide. New day. New time.
Similar TCF Guide Membership, with just a little extra room for group, dialog, pleasure, and enjoyable.
We’ll see you there.
In loving reminiscence of Ashley Blackwell, TCF Guide Membership’s unique information, whose love of storytelling and fats illustration helped start this group.
MORE TCF GAMES
