“The Busybody Book Club” by Freya Sampson

Title: The Busybody Book Club
Author: Freya Sampson
Publisher: Berkley  
Year: 2025    
Genre(s): mystery
Part of a Series: No

Why I read it: Once Upon a Book Club pick

Summary: Nova has recently gotten at the community center in the small English town where her fiancé grew up. While dealing with a boss who doesn’t really like her and an overbearing future mother-in-law who is essentially planning her wedding, Nova also runs the small book club at the community center. When money turns up missing and a book club member goes missing, the book club members take it on themselves to solve the mystery – and Nova soon learns if you can’t beat them, join them.

Rating: 

Review: I’ll be honest – I almost didn’t finish this book. The main thing that drove me to finish it was to see if Nova married her fiancé or not – because I was really rooting for “not.”

I won’t spoil the answer to that.

I did like the parts that focused on Nova as I enjoyed her character and her story. She was a fish out of water and it was clear that she wasn’t getting the support she needed even as she convinced herself she was. I grew invested in her and (as you can tell) really rooting for her to stand up for herself to everyone in town.

Now, that doesn’t mean I didn’t like any of the other characters but I think I might have enjoyed them more as secondary characters in Nova’s story rather than as other protagonists. However, I loved Arthur and his budding friendship with Ash. I wish we got a chance to see more of Ash but there’s always a character who gets the short end of the stick when an author is balancing multiple storylines. And while it took me some time, I did end up warming up to Phyllis. I thought a big reveal about her at the end of the book was well done and very poignant.

As for the mystery, it took a while for me to also care about that. I think if we had gotten to know Michael a little bit more than I might’ve been more invested sooner. However, I did get there and I did think that Sampson built it pretty well.

Bottom line: Come for the mystery, stay to see if Nova will go through with the wedding.

Sex: Not really

Moonlight Musing

How far would you go to prove something isn’t true?