A cozy little book club

In which our heroine reads with friends

Hey there, cozy friends!

I never wanted to be in a book club. I grew up in a house of readers, constantly swapping books between each other. The four of us were known to spend hours in the stacks at Barnes and Noble. At Christmas and birthdays, we give each other what we call “boomerang books” that we hope will make their way back to us after the recipient reads them first. But despite this bookish camaraderie, the structure of a Book Club never appealed.

I am a mood reader to my core. If I accidentally read a book in the wrong season — say it takes place in the summer and I read it in the heart of winter — I’m less likely to enjoy it. I can never stick to my TBR or be guaranteed to read all the books I check out from the library before they have to go back. When there are so many books to read in a lifetime, I never wanted to force my reading into a box.

As ever, the pandemic changed things. I looked at my bookshelves and saw that almost every single book I owned was historical fiction. I felt an urge to expand the genres I was reading. Understandably, I wanted to dive back into fantasy - a genre I had loved so much when I was younger. As an avid fantasy reader, I knew my friend Taylor would be able to help me out. At the time, I was afraid of the commitment to a series and was looking solely for standalone books. As I read through her recommendations and my own discoveries, we started chatting more about them.

the series that started an obsession… leading to me as Feyre for Halloween 2022

Then I stumbled into the Night Court.

On a trip to Asheville in the summer of 2021, I picked up A Court of Thorns and Roses. Thanks to an unfortunate injury on the trip that kept me stuck inside, I ended up binging the entire series in the span of a month. I was absolutely hooked, in love with the world and the characters in a consuming way I hadn’t felt since I read the Twilight books as a teenager. I needed companions on this journey. So I insisted that Taylor read them as well as our friend Kendra, who was wanting to get back into reading.

We hopped on a zoom call after they finished each of the books to discuss. When we had all finished the series, we couldn’t quite bear to let our little gatherings go. So our fantasy romance book club was born. Three years later, it’s one of the most special parts of my life. Our friendship has grown so deeply thanks to our group text where we discuss everything from books to Bridgerton to the goings on in our lives. 

I’ve seen several great suggestions here on Substack for how to run a book club, but none of them ever seem to reflect mine.

So I wanted to offer an alternative and share the ways we’ve made our little club so special.

Kendra, me, and Taylor on our own fantasy adventure in the Wisconsin Dells

Keep it small and flexible:

Ours is a book club of three, which we feel has been the perfect number. Contrary to what most people suggest, we don’t have a regular schedule for when we’re going to meet, though in general we try to meet once a month. At the end of our calls, we set a goal for when we want to finish our next book and put a hold on the calendar. We almost always change it. With just the three of us, it’s easy to move things around to fit schedules or reading paces. Usually I’m the one who hasn’t finished the book and needs to postpone, whoops! But we are always happy to wait for everyone to finish.

Give it a theme:

We are first and foremost, a fantasy romance book club. We do sprinkle in regular fantasy and the occasional romance, but most of the time we want the YEARNING. All of us read books outside the genre, but it’s been helpful to have a specific genre to choose from for the books we read together. It also lets us compare themes, magic systems, and world building between the different series we read. 

Individual picks, but everyone agrees:

Like most book clubs, we rotate who gets to choose the next book or series we read. But everyone always has the opportunity to say no! Since we all read so much outside of book club, we can be pretty choosy about the ones we read together. Though often a book we read individually will become an accidental book club book once we insist everyone else reads it! We have a slightly aggressive spreadsheet of our picks for the year and future series we all want to read.

Given the nature of the genre, we mostly read series together. It’s so fun for us to all become immersed in a world together for a prolonged time. Plus it means we only have to choose books a couple times a year. As we read more, we tend to have lots of “group picks” of new books in series we’ve already read or books we’ve all heard about and are excited to read!

StoryGraph is your best friend:

At the beginning of the year, we all decided to finally ditch Goodreads and switch over to StoryGraph. It started as an attempt to loosen the grip that Amazon has on us, but had a surprise bonus for our book club! StoryGraph has an amazing buddy read feature which allows you to put comments that are tied to a specific percentage place in the book. You can’t see the comments that people have made until you reach that percentage. So even though we all read at a different pace, we have a singular place to put all our thoughts instead of debriefing with our disparate notes apps.

The joy of a bookish weekend:

My friends don’t live in the same place as me, so our book club is virtual ninety percent of the time. But at least once a year, we get together for a magical bookish weekend. We come up with a theme and fill our days visiting bookstores, crafting, and — of course — reading. Long distance friendships can be hard, but with our regular chats and our intentional weekends together, we’ve built something truly special.

just cozy girls in our Suriel Tea Co. sweatshirts

Matching outfits - optional, but a good idea:

We all have A Court of Thorns and Roses themed sweatshirts from Etsy that we wear during our book clubs and on our weekends together. They’re perfectly cozy and it makes me smile every time I wear mine.

For your cozy inspiration this week, I’ve asked Kendra and Taylor to join me in picking their favorite series we’ve read so far:

• Kyli’s favorite: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

• Kendra’s favorite: Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

• Taylor’s favorite: The Scholomance by Naomi Novik

To my Suriel gals - I love you to the Night Court and back.