The Dubrovnik Book Club
Finished: March 2024
Book Source: NetGalley
Book Publication Date: March 2024
In a tiny bookshop in Dubrovnik’s historic Old Town, a book club begins…Newly arrived on the sun-drenched shores of Croatia, Claire Thomson’s life is about to change forever when she starts working at a local bookshop. With her cousin Vedran, employee Luna and Karmela, a professor, they form an unlikely book club.
But when their first book club pick – an engrossing cosy crime – inspires them to embark upon an investigation that is close to the group’s heart, they quickly learn the value of keeping their new-found friends close as lives and stories begin to entwine…
Trigger Warnings:
Drowning, suicidal thoughts, fake pregnancy, domestic abuse, COVID
Characters
- Claire – Packed up and moved to Dubrovnik with her grandma. She is recovering from long COVID and working through her fear of being in large groups. She will start managing a small bookshop in town
- Luna – works at the bookshop that Claire is running
- Ezra – Luna’s roommate that she has known forever, he works in computer stuff
- Karmela – Professor that is visiting to experience the history and architecture of the city and also help with research of the Ragusans
- Rafael – Karmela’s neighbor that seems grumpy and unpredictable
- Vedran – Chloe’s cousin, he is accused of making his ex girlfriend, Didi, disappear
My Review
When I read the description of the book, it seemed I would be reading a cozy mystery adventure but this book delivered more of a contemporary fiction vibe. As a fan of books centered around book clubs, I was excited to dive in, but it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.
The narrative unfolds through multiple perspectives and at times, it felt almost too overwhelming with how much each of the characters were battling internally. Despite this, the backdrop of Dubrovnik’s beauty, albeit overshadowed by the pandemic, added a captivating layer to the story.
I appreciated the diverse backgrounds of the characters, with particular attention given to the journey of an LGBTQIA+ character embracing their true self. The novel also tackled important themes, but again, almost too many that it felt clunky.
In the end, while I appreciated the depth and complexity of “Dubrovnik Book Club,” it didn’t quite capture my heart as I had hoped.
Spoilers/Summary
SPOILERS BELOW. Stop here if you do not want to read spoilers.
Luna comes out to her family. Nono has dementia.
What happens to the bookstore? They save the bookstore with the help of the whole book club. Karmela recognizes the history in it. She gets Rafael involved with his war connections. Luna and Ezra help make it a spectacle to get public attention to want to save the building. The landlord agrees to lower the rent and to not have the chicken place move in there, to save public image.
What happened to Didi? Didi had been mentally, and sometimes physically, abusing Verdan. She had been isolating him from his friends and family. She staged her drowning. Ezra ends up finding her on social media with his facial recognition software he has been working on. The day she disappeared, she had hid a pregnancy test in the bathroom and had Verdan assume she was pregnant with his child. She asked for money for an abortion but he wouldn’t give it to her – she said she still wouldn’t have his baby. She then went swimming and disappeared. As Verdan starts to go through her things now that he is discovering what she might have done and that she was alive and not pregnant, she finds that her passport and the water proof pouch he used for scuba diving was missing. She must have taken her passport and staged the drowning and swam out to a boat off the beach. Verdan’s name is cleared and he can finally move on now that he has closure.
