Blind Date Book Club

Meg Tompkins put aside her burgeoning real estate career in Boston to take over her mother's book store, Mimi's Book Corner, in Nantucket when Mimi became ill. With Mimi now having passed several years ago, Meg has an absent silent partner in her Aunt Renee solely to help Meg out financially. Meg has to decide what to do when she learns that Aunt Renee, in wanting a new phase in life in retirement, wants to sell her interest in the store, Meg uncertain if she either can or wants to take on the financial burden on her own especially as the store fell into her lap rather than she ever having pursued it. One of Meg's recent initiatives at the store is what she calls "Blind Date with a Book Club" where she, in wanting to promote the work of unknown authors, being local so much the better, sells books she curates with only a short tag line describing the book, with nothing else about the book known to the buyer, they to return the following week to discuss the book in a book club setting. NPR radio host Raina Breem interviews Meg about the book club, Raina's interest primarily in real blind dates between club members. While unintentional, Meg does realize that the club can bring together people in a romantic sense in their connection to the books. One person who hears the interview is Graham Sterling, a best selling author of a YA series, he currently struggling on writing book eight of the series, the second to last in his current contract, in he instead wanting to write his great American novel. He has completed a historical romance as such, the manuscript which his publisher does not want to publish both in it being off his brand and they considering it good but not great. As such, Graham decides to self-publish it under the pseudonym Dylan Turner and wants Meg to curate it for the book club to get an untainted opinion by real readers. In meeting "Dylan", Meg ultimately learns his true identity and decides to include it for the book club to help him out despite she having the same opinion of the book as his publishers. In the process, the two start to fall for each other. What happens between them is affected by the fate of the book in the club which may inadvertently impact the store.—Huggo