I never expected to fall in love at a book club. Especially not one where half the members had been dead for over a century.
It started three months ago when I inherited my great-aunt Margery's bookstore in the small coastal town of Moonhaven, Maine. The place was called "Between the Pages," and it came with more than just inventory. According to the lawyer who handed me the keys, it also came with "certain quirks" that I'd "understand in time."
I understood on my very first night.
I was shelving returns in the mystery section when I heard voices coming from the reading nook upstairs. Female voices, laughing and debating something with passionate intensity. My heart hammered as I grabbed the nearest weapon—a hardcover copy of "War and Peace"—and crept up the creaking stairs.
Six women sat in a circle of mismatched armchairs, teacups in hand, arguing about whether Mr. Darcy or Captain Wentworth made the better romantic hero. They looked solid enough, dressed in clothing that spanned multiple decades. One wore a flapper dress from the 1920s. Another sported a Victorian bustle. The youngest-looking wore bell-bottoms and a tie-dye shirt.
They all turned to look at me simultaneously.
"Oh good," said the Victorian lady, whose name I'd later learn was Constance. "Margery said you'd be joining us eventually. You're just in time—we're discussing Austen, and we desperately need a tiebreaker vote."
I dropped "War and Peace." It landed with a thud that none of them seemed to notice.
"You're... ghosts?"
"Well, yes, dear," said the flapper, Dottie. "Margery didn't mention the book club in her will?"
She had not.
But somehow, instead of running screaming into the night, I found myself accepting a cup of spectral tea (which I could actually drink, surprisingly) and weighing in on the Darcy vs. Wentworth debate. There was something inexplicably comforting about these women. They'd all died in Moonhaven over the past 150 years, all of them book lovers, all of them bound to the store by their love of literature.
And they met every Thursday night at eight.
I started joining them regularly. They were better company than most of the living people I'd met in town, and their book recommendations were impeccable. Dottie loved romance. Constance preferred mysteries. Pearl, from the 1950s, was all about science fiction. The tie-dye wearing hippie, Sunshine (born Patricia), only read poetry and philosophy.
My life settled into a comfortable rhythm: running the bookstore by day, hosting a ghostly book club by night, and completely failing to have any semblance of a social life with the living.
Until Marcus walked into my store on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.
He was looking for a birthday gift for his sister, he said. Something cozy, maybe a mystery. He had dark curly hair that dripped rainwater, warm brown eyes, and a smile that made my stomach flip in a way I hadn't felt since my disastrous relationship in Boston.
I recommended "The Thursday Murder Club." We got to talking. He owned the coffee shop two doors down—The Percolator. He'd moved to Moonhaven six months ago from Portland, also looking for a quieter life.
"Would you want to grab dinner sometime?" he asked as he was leaving, book wrapped and tucked under his arm.
I said yes before my anxiety could talk me out of it.
Our first date was perfect. Our second date was even better. By the third date, I was mentally picking out curtains for a future we might share.
There was just one problem: I hadn't told him about the ghosts.
"You have to tell him," Constance insisted during our Thursday meeting. We were discussing "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier, but the conversation had inevitably turned to my love life.
"Absolutely not," I argued. "He'll think I'm insane."
"Better he finds out from you than discovers it on his own," Pearl pointed out, ever practical.
But I was terrified. Marcus was normal. Wonderfully, beautifully normal. He talked about quarterly profits and coffee bean suppliers and his niece's soccer games. How could I possibly explain that I spent every Thursday night with dead women discussing literature?
The decision was made for me two weeks later.
Marcus had started stopping by the store more frequently, always with a coffee for me (he'd memorized my order: oat milk latte with vanilla). On this particular Thursday, he arrived at 7:45 PM, just as I was setting up chairs for book club.
"I thought we could grab dinner after you close," he said, then noticed the circle of chairs. "Oh, you have a book club tonight? That's great! I didn't know there were enough readers in town for that."
I froze. "It's... a small group."
"Mind if I sit in? I just finished 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,' and I'm dying to discuss it with someone."
My mouth went dry. The ghosts would arrive in exactly fifteen minutes.
"It's kind of a... closed group," I stammered.
His face fell slightly. "Oh, sure. No problem. I didn't mean to intrude."
The hurt in his eyes killed me. Here was this wonderful man, trying to connect with me over something I loved, and I was pushing him away because of my supernatural secret.
I made a split-second decision that would either end in true love or a restraining order.
"Actually, you can stay. But I need to tell you something first, and you have to promise not to run screaming."
His eyebrows rose. "That's... ominous."
I told him everything. About inheriting the store, about the ghosts, about the weekly book club with women who'd been dead for decades. I talked fast, watching his expression shift from confused to concerned to... was that intrigued?
"So you're telling me," he said slowly, "that in about ten minutes, six ghosts are going to materialize in this reading nook to discuss literature?"
"Yes."
"And they've been doing this for years?"
"Decades, actually."
He was quiet for a long moment. Then: "What's our book this week?"
I blinked. "What?"
"The book club. What are we discussing? I haven't read 'Rebecca' yet, but I can listen and learn."
"You... believe me?"
Marcus shrugged. "My abuela used to say that the world is more mysterious than we give it credit for. And honestly? The way you've been acting all secretive—I was starting to worry you were married or something. Ghosts are actually a relief."
I laughed, feeling tears prick my eyes. "You're insane."
"Says the woman who hosts a book club for dead people." He grinned and settled into one of the armchairs. "So, do ghosts actually drink tea, or is that just for show?"
When the book club materialized at eight o'clock sharp, they were delighted to have a new member. Dottie immediately began flirting with Marcus (old habits die hard, apparently). Constance approved of his manners. Sunshine appreciated his "open aura."
Marcus took it all in stride, even when Dottie accidentally made his coffee cup phase through the table.
As the night wore on and the discussion evolved from du Maurier's Gothic romance to our own relationship dramas (both living and dead), I realized something important: I'd spent so long being afraid of my weird life that I'd almost pushed away someone who could embrace it.
"So," Marcus said as we locked up the store hours later, the ghosts having faded away until next Thursday, "I'm thinking for our next date, we skip the normal restaurant thing."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. I want to hear more stories about your spectral friends. Plus, Dottie mentioned she knows where some prohibition-era tunnels are under Main Street, and I'm extremely interested in exploring those."
I kissed him right there on the sidewalk, under the vintage streetlamp, rain starting to fall again.
Dating someone who knew about the ghosts turned out to be incredibly freeing. Marcus started joining book club regularly. He'd bring themed snacks (the ghosts couldn't eat them, but they appreciated the aesthetic). He learned all their stories—how Dottie had died in a car accident in 1927, how Constance had succumbed to pneumonia in 1889, how Sunshine had died peacefully in her sleep in 1982 while reading Khalil Gibran.
Six months after that first book club meeting with Marcus, he proposed to me in the reading nook, with all six ghosts as witnesses. Dottie cried spectral tears. Constance declared it "most proper." Pearl said she'd known all along.
We got married in the bookstore on a Thursday night, of course, with our ghostly book club in attendance. The living guests thought the empty chairs in the front row were a quirky aesthetic choice. We knew better.
Now, a year later, I'm writing this blog post while sitting in that same reading nook, my wedding ring catching the lamplight, waiting for Marcus to close up The Percolator so we can host tonight's book club together. We're discussing "The Ex Hex" by Erin Sterling—a cozy paranormal romance that feels almost too on-the-nose for our situation.
I never thought I'd find love in a haunted bookstore. I definitely never thought I'd find it with the help of six ghostly matchmakers who take their literature very seriously.
But then again, the best love stories are the ones you never see coming.
Just like the best book clubs are the ones where membership transcends mortality.