Serial Readers Book Club: "The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 8"

Some stories take more than one book. Join Sammi Snow as we read a series together, one volume at a time. New readers can jump in anytime! The Serial Readers Book Club is for stories that take more than one book to tell. Together, we'll make our way through a series from beginning to end, one volume at a time. You don't have to start with us or make it to every meeting—jump in whenever you'd like! This book club is led by the lovely Sammi Snow. We've made it to Volume 8 of Beth Brower's beloved The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion! After seven volumes of wit, mystery, friendship, misadventure, and life in the wonderfully eccentric world of St. Crispian's, we're reading the final installment in our first Serial Readers series—and finding out where Emma's journals leave us. By now, Emma M. Lion hardly feels like a character we've been reading about. We've followed her through the ordinary and extraordinary details of her life, watched relationships form and change, collected clues and suspicions, met an unforgettable assortment of friends, neighbors, relations, and questionable acquaintances, and spent enough time in St. Crispian's that it has begun to feel a little like our neighborhood, too. That's what makes Volume 8 such a satisfying destination for Serial Readers. The details we've been filing away since Volume 1 matter more now. Relationships carry the weight of everything that's come before them. Questions we've been asking across multiple journals are begging for answers. And the small moments—the conversations, observations, jokes, and everyday occurrences that might have seemed incidental hundreds of pages ago—are part of a much larger story we've had the pleasure of watching unfold. For our final Emma M. Lion meeting, we'll talk about where Emma began and where we've ended up, the characters and relationships that surprised us most, the mysteries and moments that kept us reading, and all the things we understand differently now that we can look back across the series as a whole. We'll also talk about what it was like to read a series this way: slowly, together, and with plenty of time to speculate along the way. And while this may be our last visit with Emma, it's not the end of Serial Readers! We'll say goodbye to St. Crispian's, compare notes on eight volumes' worth of adventures, and get ready to begin an entirely new series together. After all, some stories take more than one book—and there are plenty more waiting for us. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Beth Brower is the author of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, The Q, The Beast of Ten, and the Imirillia Trilogy consisting of The Queen’s Gambit, The Ruby Prince, and The Wanderer’s Mark. She also writes the popular Substack ‘Beth Brower Scribbles Away’ https://bethbrower.substack.com/ and can be found on Instagram @BethBrower. She lives in Utah with her husband.