Book review: "The Blue Bottle Club"

One of my favorite "me-time" past times is to read., I would rather read than watch TV because I want to engage my own mind and imagination rather than have someone else's pictures as per their imagination color my mind.  In the not-so-distant past, in  fact for many years, I would read self-help  books (don't we all need that?) But then I realized I was becoming way too serious and introspective while not giving  myself the timeout break which was the reason why I enjoyed leisurely reading so much anyways. So for the last few months, I started reading more fiction, which allows me to paint my own mental pictures of what the words were portraying while not having to exert more energy analyzing myself and my problems.  I  speed read and so I went through several four hundred plus page library books but was not able to get back to the library soon enough. I started looking through my extensive collection and found several that I had never read...one being a thirteen book series that I ran through in a couple of weeks. In searching for more to read, I came across two other books, so old they had yellowed pages. I bought them over twenty-five years ago. (crazy....) One was called "The Blue Bottle Club" by Penelope J. Stokes. (It is still available in Amazon but I can't link it because I am not an affiliate). It is an excellent book which even caused me to shed a few tears. It has several profound meanings and statements in it. It is a real self-thought provoking book.  It is the story of four teenage girls from different social backgrounds who write out and and put their future plans/desires in a blue bottle in the 1920's - about a disenchanted  reporter who on her own  journey discovers a meaning to her life while investigating the life stories of these four. It takes you through the long stories of these girls' lives and the effect it has on the reporter and the changes in life that they all experience. Change does always happens and it is not necessarily according to our own plans. What a story and how it affected me!  A couple of quotes: "Sometimes we do the right thing for all the wrong reasons", "time can make it easier to be wise" and "DON'T GIVE YOUR FUTURE TO YOUR PAST". Check it out. It is outlook-changing.