Book Club 2025

This will be my third year recapping my year in book club, and it’s become one of my favorite traditions! This year, I tried to be on the ball and leave a note for myself about the experience and our discussion about the book. Annnd… I lasted until March and then just completely forgot that I was doing that. Good job, Steph! Ah well. We had another excellent year of book club experiences, and I’m really excited for 2026 and all of the fun that awaits us!

JANUARY

• Book selection: n/a
• Overall book club rating: n/a
• Experience: Breakfast at a local restaurant

We kept things simple for our first book club of the year and met at a local restaurant for breakfast. At this book club meeting, we all brought a few book ideas and a few activity ideas for the whole year. We put each idea on a separate Post-It note, folded them up, and then put them in two bags. Then, every month, we would select three Post-Its from each bag, which would give us three book options and three activity options. From there, we would take a vote on the book and activity for the next month. You guys, this was so much fun. It was so exciting to see what books and activities were going to be selected from the bag. We also made a rule that if a book or activity had been a selection three times and wasn’t picked, we would remove it from the bag to keep things fresh. We’re going to do the same thing in 2026!

FEBRUARY

• Book selection: Good Material by Dolly Alderton
• My rating: 2.5
• Overall book club rating: 3.2
• Experience: Little Words Project

This was such a great book club experience! We started at a small bagel shop for a quick breakfast and then walked over to the Little Word Project to make bracelets! I chose the word “power” for my bracelet and I love how everyone’s bracelets turned out. (Other words chosen: breathe, choose, resilient, and rising.) We all did a fantastic job! It was a lot of fun choosing the beads and color scheme.

Our book this month was Good Material by Dolly Alderton, which had mixed reviews with our group. Only two people loved it, with most of us not enjoying the male perspective. (We did agree that some parts were funny, such as how the men in the book did not know how to take care of a heartbroken male friend, while the women in the book were able to take care of their heartbroken female friend easily. Very true to life!) After making our bracelets, we sat outside on a bench to discuss the book and pick March’s book and activity.

MARCH

• Book selection: The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer
• My rating: 5
• Overall book club rating: 4.7
• Experience: Afternoon tea

This was such a fun book club! While I am not much of a tea drinker, I very much enjoy all of the sandwiches and desserts that accompany afternoon tea. We all got dressed up and truly enjoyed ourselves. I did not enjoy the tea I chose (it was supposed to taste like coffee and it did not taste like coffee), but I have since learned I can’t go wrong with a classic peppermint tea, so that will be my drink of choice going forward!

I adored our book club pick this month. It’s a fantasy story, which normally isn’t my thing, but I loved being in this fantasy world that was so different from reality. Everyone else enjoyed the story, too, aside from one outlier. We mostly gushed about how much we loved the storytelling and the ending. I have a feeling that this book will make my favorites list at the end of the year.

APRIL

• Book selection: Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
• My rating: DNF
• Overall book club rating: 3.2
• Experience: Cheesy photos at JCPenney

This was an epic book club experience! We had such a blast with the photographer choosing the silliest poses, and the photos came out amazing! We all agreed that this was one of our best book club experiences ever. Not only was it fun, but we also now have the most adorable photos of us celebrating our friendship and love for one another.

After our photoshoot, we walked over to a taco place for lunch and to chat about the book. I DNF-ed this month’s book, which I try not to do for book club books, but I was just so bored and I wanted to read something else. Maybe I should have tried it on audio? This book had mixed reviews, with some members really loving it and some finding it a bit “meh.” We all really wanted the author to have an author’s note at the end to tell us what was real and what she embellished.

MAY

• Book selection: Look Closer by David Ellis
• My rating: 5
• Overall book club rating: 4.3
• Experience: Painting pottery

At this book club experience, we went to Practically Pikasso, a local pottery studio, and painted pottery. Most of us chose mugs to paint, although one friend chose a very complicated design on a plate (that turned out so amazing, it was featured in their round-up on social media!). Another friend chose a very cute coaster! I was very impressed with the friends who free-handed designs. I basically just did an ombre pattern on a mug that turned out pretty cute.

While we painted, we talked about the book, which we all really loved. I thought it was such an inventive story that kept me on my toes, and it was one of the only thrillers where I was rooting for the “bad guys” to get away. Everyone else agreed with this assessment!

JUNE

• Book selection: Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson
• My rating: 4
• Overall book club rating: 3.8
• Experience: Dolphin cruise Mediterranean food and ice cream

Oh, we knew we were playing with fire with this book club experience. An outside experience during the summer in Florida? There’s an 80% chance it’s going to get rained out. And that’s exactly what happened. We were all sitting at a restaurant together, enjoying some delicious Mediterranean food before our dolphin cruise, and got the alert that it was canceled due to rain. Wah! We pivoted and walked over to an ice cream shop for dessert. It wasn’t the experience we had hoped for, but we made the best of it.

We picked another thriller this month, and it has been on my TBR for a long, long time. It was excellent! Super creepy, with lots of twists and turns. We talked about the twists we saw coming and the ones that really surprised us.

JULY

• Book selection: Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
• My rating: DNS
• Overall book club rating: 3.1
• Experience: Milkshake night

I didn’t attend July book club because I was in the middle of prepping for a colonoscopy! How fun! They ended up repeating what they did in June – same restaurant, same ice cream shop – but not a lot of people could attend, so it was a small affair. The book was not a winner for our group, and when I brought it up in our final book club of the year, everyone basically groaned about how much they hated the book. Ha! I didn’t even attempt it. I tried another book by Madeline Miller, but I couldn’t get into it, so I didn’t have high hopes for this one.

AUGUST

no book club 🙁

SEPTEMBER

• Book selection: What the Wind Knows by Amy Harmon
• My rating: DNF
• Overall book club rating: 3.8
• Experience: Top Golf

This book club experience ended up being a favorite for everyone, and I’m so happy about that because I just adore Top Golf. Am I good at it? Absolutely not. But it’s still fun. Mostly I love the food and drinks, ha. We held book club on Bri’s birthday, so we surprised her by decorating our golfing bay with unicorn-themed decorations! There were balloons and streamers and lots of cute unicorn party hats. Some of the Top Golf servers even wore unicorn party hats, which was super fun! It was a delight to surprise Bri, too, who is someone who wants people to forget she ever has a birthday (while making everyone else’s birthday a priority!), so I like that we were able to celebrate our dear friend this way.

After we spent a few hours golfing, we found a table inside so we could talk about the book. This was my second DNF of the year, as it was another book I just couldn’t get into. There was some magical realism elements to the book, which normally don’t bother me, but they just weren’t working for me. I think I would have enjoyed this book so much more on audio, but there were no options for that—not Libby, not Hoopla, not Spotify. Bah! Maybe it’s time to finally purchase a Librofm membership? Anyway, the ladies who did finish this book really loved it.

OCTOBER

• Book selection: Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors
• My rating: 5
• Overall book club rating: 3.4
• Experience: BINGO night

You guys. You should have seen the reaction when we pulled “Bingo Night” out of the activities jar. There was no doubt that was going to be our choice! We were delighted! I wasn’t sure what all the bingo usuals would think of our group of 30/40-something women crashing their evening, but hopefully, they wouldn’t hate us too much. We had a blast, even though it went so much faster than I expected, and it was hard to keep up at times! We even got bingo a few times! Our friend Kim took to shouting “BINGO!” as loud as possible, and after the third time it happened, I heard one of the woman nearby mutter, “Okay, it was funny the first time…” Eeks! Some bingo drama! Anyway, we had a lot of fun and definitely want to go back soon. Maybe we’ll just give the other bingo-goers time to forget us before we infiltrate their party time again.

After bingo, we reconvened at a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. We chatted about the book, which had very mixed reviews. Only two of us really liked it and everyone else struggled with the unlikable characters and boring plot. I’m surprised I loved this book as much as I did, but it might be one of my favorite books of the year. It was unexpectedly poignant and touching. I can definitely understand why some of my friends didn’t love this book, though.

NOVEMBER

• Book selection: The Silence That Binds Us by Joanna Ho
• My rating: 5
• Overall book club rating: 4.3
• Experience: Cozy night in

We had a smaller group for November book club and opted for a cozy night in at a friend’s new place. (This friend is living alone for the first time ever, and loving it, and it is so amazing to see her so happy!) We brought appetizers to share, and I brought way too many bags of candy for popcorn surprise. We also indulged in the new dirty soda phenomenon that is apparently all over TikTok these days, which is basically adding coffee creamer to soda. I wasn’t sure about the trend until a friend showed me the combination of Dr. Pepper and peppermint mocha creamer. UM YES PLEASE. It was surprisingly delicious! While we brought books to read during our cozy night in, not a single one was opened. We had too much to chat about! This is a book club that I won’t soon forget because there were tears and hard news shared and a lot of love and support to go around. I love our silly book club experiences, but I also love the times when we can get deep and real with each other.

The book we read in November was also a serious, deep, and thought-provoking book and was well-liked by everyone. We mentioned how hard it must have been to fit in all these different topics into one book (mental health, suicide, racism, Asian exceptionalism, family, etc.), but how the author weaved all of these topics seamlessly. We had a good conversation about how mental illness can show up so differently for teenagers and the impact our words can have on other people.

DECEMBER

• Book selection: Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell
• My rating: 4
• Overall book club rating: 3.8
• Experience: Annual holiday celebration at Bri’s house

Oh, this book club experience was the best! Every December, we gather at Bri’s house for our annual holiday celebration and this year, Bri went all out with a book fair theme! We were told to bring books to give away and we could earn “book fair cash” by bringing books, bringing a snack to share, hugging everyone at book club, telling Bri we loved her, etc. She even had tiny Monopoly money that we used to “buy” our items at the end of the night. And Bri definitely went above and beyond with the book fair items. There were cute totes, bookish stickers, bookmarks, beauty items, candles, and even a “free gift with purchase,” which was a thrifted holiday-themed mug. We had an absolute BLAST “shopping” at the book fair and I came home with three books, a cute tote, five stickers, two candles, a notebook, and a slew of beauty products. I made out like a bandit!

Our final book of the year was another thriller, and it’s one I read years ago. I didn’t reread it for book club, even though I probably should have, because I definitely had to ask ChatGPT for a full spoiler synopsis of the book, and I was shocked by the plot! What the what! We agreed that the plot itself was kinda gross and didn’t sit well with us, but it was nice to see some people get their comeuppance.

Book Club Stats

• Genre breakdown: literary fiction (2), fantasy (2), thriller (4), historical fiction (1), YA (1)
• Overall rating: 3.7
• Highest-rated book of the year: The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer (4.7)
• Lowest-rated book of the year: Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (3.1)
• My favorite book club book this year: Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors
• My least favorite book club book this year (that I finished): Good Material by Dolly Alderton

Have you read any of these books?