Jessica Strawser’s 2024 novel The Quitters Club is a work of contemporary  fiction that explores the complexities of midlife reinvention. The story follows four close-knit college friends who reunite for a 40th birthday getaway. Each woman is secretly struggling with a life that has diverged from her youthful dreams. During the trip, their private frustrations culminate in a pact to quit the things making them unhappy, creating a support system for the massive changes to come. As they navigate the fallout, the novel explores themes of Learning to Live with Grief, Friendship and Collectivity as the Foundation of Individual Change, and Boundaries Providing Empowerment.

Strawser is a USA Today bestselling author known for novels that blend domestic drama with psychological suspense. Her personal connection to the novel’s setting, Athens, Ohio, adds a layer of authenticity; as an alumna of Ohio University, she draws on her intimate knowledge of the campus and town that serve as the backdrop for the friends’ shared past and their attempts to build a new future. The Quitters Club joins Strawser’s other acclaimed works, including The Last Caretaker (2023) and A Million Reasons Why (2021), in its focus on the complex and often difficult choices women face.

This guide refers to the 2024 Lake Union Publishing paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of illness, death, mental illness, suicidal ideation and a suicide attempt, substance use, sexual content, and cursing.

Plot Summary

Marie, Brooke, Lucy, and Collins have been friends since college and are now all around the age of 40. They face different challenges in their life circumstances. Marie, a professor who teaches at Ohio University, feels overwhelmed by the logistical and emotional labor of raising two young sons and increasingly alienated from her husband, Kyle. Brooke lives in Colorado and adores her husband, Mitch, but is frustrated after years of unsuccessful infertility treatments. Lucy is a writer in Chicago and increasingly questions the precarity of her career path. Collins lives in Athens, Ohio, and has recently been widowed; she manages the estate of her late husband, Sullivan, who was a renowned visual artist. 

During a reunion trip in the early autumn, the friends discuss their frustrations and make a pact to quit the things making them unhappy. They vow to support one another through the fallout of these decisions. Putting their pact into action, Marie moves into Collins’s home in Athens, Ohio, with her sons, Connor and Wade. The trial separation from Kyle is intended to give Marie time to reflect on the unequal distribution of labor within her marriage. Lucy publicly quits her career in a viral essay titled “Why I Love Books Too Much to Keep Writing Them” and enrolls in an MBA program at Ohio University, moving in with Marie and Collins. Brooke tells Mitch she is done with IVF; he supports her, and they decide to sell their house and travel the world. 

Over the Christmas holidays, Collins goes on a singles’ ski retreat where she suffers a near-fatal accident, falling from a ledge on the mountain. As Collins begins a slow, painful recovery, doctors discover a mass in her lungs, diagnosing her with Stage III lung cancer. The news creates a new urgency: Collins must heal from her injuries quickly enough to be a candidate for chemotherapy. Amid the stress, Brooke discovers she is pregnant. She insists that Mitch go ahead with their travel plans alone, since she wants to stay in Ohio to help Collins and not jeopardize the pregnancy. 

As months pass, Marie’s separation from Kyle becomes more fraught as he fails to understand the depth of her unhappiness and refuses to consider any serious changes to their life. Lucy, meanwhile, is overwhelmed when her viral essay makes her a celebrity and revitalizes the writing career she had tried to abandon. Collins struggles with her ongoing grief and mental health alongside the fallout of her injuries and her cancer diagnosis. She becomes irate when she learns that, contrary to her instructions, the friends visited Sullivan’s studio and have been in contact with his adult daughter, Sara. Collins initially perceives Sara as a threat who wants to interfere with Sullivan’s legacy and believes her friends have betrayed her. The consequences of their pact leave all four women questioning their decisions. 

Eventually, the friends reconcile. Marie realizes that there is no path forward in her marriage and she and Kyle decide to divorce. Brooke becomes curious about the possibility of travelling and living abroad with a young child; she is delighted when Mitch returns to America and explains that he has been offered a job in London. This future gives them the possibility of combining both adventure and stability as they become parents. Lucy, with guidance from her agent and her new boyfriend, Enzo, realizes she can merge her passions. She partners with Marie to create a multimedia brand, combining Marie’s academic content with her own new “How to Quit” concept, allowing her to embrace her writing voice on her own terms.

Meanwhile, Collins makes peace with Sara, who becomes an unexpected source of support. Collins moves to an apartment in Columbus close to the cancer treatment center; she eventually decides not to return to the Athens house, which she sells to Marie. Collins relinquishes day-to-day management of Sullivan’s estate to Sara while retaining some legal rights and control. Collins plans to move to Michigan after her treatments are complete so that she can begin a new career stage managing artists via Sara’s professional network. 

Two years later, Collins’s friends travel to visit her in Saugatuck, Michigan, where Collins has built a new life for herself. Brooke and Mitch are parents to a toddler, Lucy and Enzo are engaged, and Marie and her sons are thriving in their new home. Collins watches them, reflecting on a secret she will never share: Her fall was not an accident. In a moment of deep despair on the mountain, she intentionally let go. She recognizes that her attempt to end her life is what ultimately saved her, leading to the early cancer diagnosis. At peace with her past, she embraces her second chance, grateful for the friends who, despite everything, helped her find her way back.