And the book club winner goes to...

2016 book club winners and it was just okay

Happy new year book friends!  How is your reading going so far for 2017? I raise my book to you for all the amazing new novels you will soon be discovering this year and beyond.  Here's hoping Go Beyond Book Club will help you find them!​

Just a few days ago I started a new post about starting or joining a book club for 2017. It's time to get the word out and I will gladly be your cheerleader to make this one of your new year resolutions. Before I can complete that blog post I wanted to go over some book club favorites from last year. Feel free to snatch up these winners and read them yourselves because they make fantastic book club reads!  Our favorites are always based on:
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• Storyline - pulls you in from start to finish
• Group discussion - everyone sighs joy of happiness at the end
• Question - would we read this author again? Answer: heck ya!​
• Book club party appeal - easy to find book club ideas because the book was that memorable

Book Club Winners for 2016

Captain Blood on Amazon.com

There is something powerful in a narrative when the hero is wrongly accused and has to fight to have their name cleared. Classics such as The Count of Monte Cristo, Les Miserables, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Ben Hur all the main characters had to seek justice while struggling to stay alive. Captain Blood falls into that same storyline and it was a total surprise and delight to our book club. Literature sometimes can get a bad rap for being downright boring or that feeling of being bogged down in thousands of pages but Captain Blood is nothing like that and with my favorite quote from the book, "You do not take her while I live!" he cried. "Then I'll take her when you're dead," said Captain Blood  rocked my reading, classic world.  It is a ship battling, pirate frenzy, romantic, adventurous book and discussion. You will not be disappointed.

A group plus was our Captain Blood book party with a yo ho a pirate's life for me with an ocean theme and Caribbean food! 

The Nightingale on Amazon.com

How fitting to pick a classic and a newly published novel to be the top two favorites for 2016. The Nightingale, published in 2015, became a bestseller with an 86% high star review on Amazon.com.  This historical fiction, based in 1939 France during WWII, touched our reading group to the core and created a very deep and moving book discussion.  Our book selections tends to favor historical fiction and we're so glad to have the opportunity to experience this author's fantastic writing and storytelling. Best quote from The Nightingale, “If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.” See The Nightingale wine labels in book club ideas in celebration of one our favorite novels of 2016!

It was just so so

My book club reads eight to nine books a year together on average.  We want to love our picks very much or at the very least like them but alas that is not always the case. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry was a 50/50 split among my book friends. The book description sucked us in but that is where it unfortunately ended

Pros:  

• Don't judge a book by it's cover but we really liked this one
• Takes place on a fictional east coast island
• Book clubs are mentioned in the novel as well a bookstore and titles of books
• Our discussion was animated with heated opinions flying and that is a good thing!

Cons:

• Characters are sad and unlikable
• The revealing mystery was a let down
• The ending made you want to throw the book against the wall

Even though The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry failed to deliver that doesn't mean your book club won't be into this quirky but sweet book cover novel. To each their own is what we say book friends! 

We are sad to say goodbye to our 2016 book club reads but are so very excited to see what 2017 will bring. Hello to new book discoveries and stories that will, again, rock our world!