The meet-cute took place in a bookstore. Around the middle of 2019, Elizabeth Held was hunting for great vacation reads at her local independent bookseller, East City Bookshop, a small store tucked below street level in Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. At checkout, Destinee Hodge, a longtime employee of the shop, told Held, a regular, that she was planning to start a book club where people could get together and swoon over romance novels. Held said she’d definitely be there. She was almost out the door when she spun around and told Hodge what she really wanted: to be a co-host of the new club. Hodge gave an enthusiastic yes, and they’ve been paired up ever since.

Some people might balk at a near stranger’s sudden offer to jump on their idea. But it seemed to Held that Hodge d

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