Kate Storey knows how to reach my heart. The Forgotten Book Club is the most recent book by the author of The Memory Library. Like the previous story, this one has characters I love. It’s a story of grief and growth, friendship and a bookstore. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to befriend a group of readers, and find a place that feels like home.

Grace Bray was married to her husband, Frank, for forty-six years before his death. After he died a year ago, she’s been lost. She didn’t even want to go into his study, a room filled with books. Frank was the social one in the family, but he was also the reader. When Grace’s adult grandson, Jude, suggests she might want to go to the bookstore where Frank had started a book club, Grace is reluctant. She has two reasons to demur. Books En Parade was Frank’s favorite spot. And, the bookstore is in the same spot where Grace worked as an antique dealer for years. She still can’t accept the change.

When Grace finally forces herself to go, she expects to find a typical book club in which everyone reads the same book. That’s not what Frank created. Instead, it’s “Frank’s Silent Book Club” where everyone just read whatever they wanted after a short time to catch up with each other. Grace didn’t admit she was Frank’s wife, but when she fled the bookstore, one woman followed her and listened to her expression of loss and grief and pain. Annie encouraged Grace to return, and try it again. This time, Annie had told everyone who Grace was. Although she still struggled, she was surprised to find out how much everyone in the group loved her husband.

Between the book club and Frank’s reading journals, Grace discovered her husband wasn’t quite the person she loved. But, his book group friends revealed another side to him, as did the journals. Grace had “felt like a prisoner in her own life” for the last year, and she’s starting to discover herself.

There are so many beautifully written lines and comments in this book, along with short summaries of each character’s favorite books. Annie sums up a feeling so many of us readers have. “When I read something that I recognize, even it it’s not the full story, it could be a line, you know, or a phrase that touches something inside me and it makes me feel seen and understood.”

As Grace struggles to understand ADHD, undiagnosed for Frank and Grace’s daughter, and diagnosed for her grandson, Jude, she realizes “There is a book for everything.” And, people in the book club are trying to find the books that move them.

As I said, this is a book about grief and loss, friendship and books. All those topics are combined in Kate Storey’s wonderful novel, The Forgotten Book Club. The author made me cry, but those were tears of happiness for discoveries made, loss a little lessened, and triumphs for the people in the book group. It’s another complex, moving story.

Kate Storey’ s website is https://kate-storey.com/

The Forgotten Book Club by Kate Storey. Avon/HarperCollins, 2025, 306p.

FTC Full Disclosure – Library book