By DAVE DOMESCIK | Staff Writer

PELHAM – The Pelham Public Library is introducing a book club based on a popular TikTok community.

The BookTok Club, based on the BookTok community, plans to meet on Saturday, Feb. 22 from 10:30-11:30 a.m. in the MakerSpace of the Pelham Public Library. It is designed for an adult demographic.

The program was created by Young Adult Librarian Liz Winn, and the idea for the book club arose from the library’s addition of an Adult Fiction subsection called “New Adult,” which features protagonists in the 18-30 age range.

“(It) often deals with life events or challenges faced by those in college or in their 20s,” Winn said. “Many titles discussed by the BookTok community fall into this category.”

Winn talked about the inspiration behind starting the club.

“I’ve been advertising the New Adult section by word of mouth, and I realized that we have a lot of BookTok fans in our patron-base,” Winn said. “I figured there would be a lot of interest.”

Winn knew that there would be interest in the club based on her day-to-day experiences.

“I’m not an extremely active member of the BookTok community, per se, but I have noticed a lot of adults walking around with titles,” Winn said. “I was also in the Starbucks drive-thru when the lady handing me my coffee asked me about the book I had on my passenger seat, and then she said, ‘Oh, I’ve heard of that one!’”

Winn elaborated more on the New Adult section of the library, explaining that it can’t be defined as a genre.

“’New Adult’ fiction isn’t so much a genre as it is an age bracket that recognizes a gap in literature that needs to be filled,” Winn said. “It used to be that readers would graduate from teen books to adult books about middle-aged adults having mid-life crises. What about the in-between years? What about the insane, chaotic period that is your early 20s? There’s also a lot of freedom in those years that people get nostalgic for.”

Winn has also noticed some patterns on what kind of books BookTokers like to read.

“Many books on BookTok are what I call ‘comfort reads,’ I’ve noticed a few genres that show up often,” Winn said. “Cozy fantasy, which are gentle fantasy stories where nothing intense happens, dark romance, which are gritty, intense romances and romantasy, which is romance-saturated fantasy. That said, though, there are all sorts of books on BookTok, so I’m prepared to be pleasantly surprised.”

Winn also took the time to share the planned structure of the first meeting.

“The first meeting will be about discovering what participants want out of a group like this, but one idea I have is we take turns giving one BookTok title that you’d recommend, and one book that you didn’t like,” Winn said.

Finally, Winn closed by sharing one of the key values of the BookTok club and reading in general.

“Life is too short to not take a chance on a book,” Winn said. “Who knows? You might just discover your next favorite book and a new friend.”

For more information on the Pelham Public Library’s BookTok club, visit Pelhamlibraryal.gov.