The Saturday Night Ghost Club

Short, sweet, and a little bit heartbreaking

As many of my favorite reads start out, I bought Saturday Night Ghost Club based entirely on its cover and title on a random trip to Barnes & Noble. The book that I had come to purchase was part of the Barnes & Noble “buy one get one half off” deals and you know that there was no way that I could leave and not complete the deal. It seemed up my alley, I purchased it, and it went to live on my TBR shelf. 

Then a few weeks later I was getting ready to pack for a big bike trip. It just so happened that the book I was reading at the time was a whopping 900 pager and I deemed it as “untravellable,” especially when you consider that I was packing as light as humanly possible since all of my belongings for the trip needed to ride with me on bike panniers. You may be thinking, “Hey, Em, why don’t you just not bring a book?” Honestly, I don’t even know how to compute that idea. How does one go through their day without at least one book on their person or literally within an arm’s reach at all times? Anyway, Saturday Night Ghost Club was perfect. It’s small at around 200 pages and was perfect for travel. 

I finished the book in two flights. It was a beautiful two hundred pages full of love, loss, grieving, putting pieces together, and ultimately of found family. It was sad and introspective without the burden of loading those emotions onto the reader. If anything, I longed to reach into the book, wrap my arms around the characters and remind them that “it’s not their fault.” Which seems to be a trend in books I’ve been reading lately, but more on that later. 

While scrolling through BookTok a few weeks after, I came across a post listing ideas for cozy fantasy reads and saw Saturday Night Ghost Club on that list, and I don’t necessarily agree. While one of the main characters owns a magic and occult shop, which feels like it would fit a fantasy genre, the “magic” and “ghosts” in this story are merely the demons of someone’s deep grief. Not very cozy at all. But I will say this, if you gravitate towards fantasy and ghost stories you will like this book. If you enjoy literature with heartbreak and the human condition, you will likely enjoy this book. I urge you to read it regardless. It’s a book I think I’ll hold close to my heart for awhile. At 200 pages, what do you have to lose?