It was a dark and stormy night … yeah, ok, not really.  It was actually a sunny, frigid winter afternoon.  We were on our third annual Girl’s Weekend at an AirBnb in Spruce Grove, AB.  These weekends typically involve a hot tub, good food, wine, movies, wine, games, wine, and talking. The conversations are the best part.  Everything from answering online quizzes to find out which superhero is our soulmate, all the way to those beautiful, unfiltered and raw conversations that you can only have with your closest girlfriends at two in the morning.  

Collectively, we had been friends for only 3ish years at that point.  Corinna and Sharaya have been best friends since grade 5, so there’s LOTS of history there.  As a young adult, Megan travelled to Capernwray in New Zealand, and met some mutual friends who were also attending.  When she got home, Meg met Sharaya and Corinna. Sharaya was looking for a roommate at the time, and so Meg moved in and they were roommates for the next six years.  Lydia was the last to join, becoming fast friends after she started dating Jerran, Sharaya’s cousin.  Now, are we saying that Sharaya is the central focal point of our foursome? No, we just think she has really good taste in people. 

So, anyway, we were all sprawled out on the couches one afternoon, and surprise, surprise, we started talking about Harry Potter.  It didn’t take long for us to be sorted into our Houses.  And as it turned out, we had four girls for four houses.  Every house was represented. Corinna is our Gryffindor (well, Gryffinclaw if you want to get fancy), Lydia is all Slytherin (no surprise there), Meg is our Hufflepuff (like, duh), and Sharaya is a proud Ravenclaw (actually, a proud Ravendor – we think this is why they are besties).  And boom, the Four Houses was born.

The other thing that came out of that evening was the decision that we would start a book club.  Just like our houses, we are pretty varied in our book tastes, but there is a lot of overlap as well.  Two months later, after talking to some bookish friends, we had our first meeting, January 2019, and we’ve been going strong ever since.

And that’s really how this blog has come to be! Discussing books has become a big part of our friendship, and because of book club, we have been reading even more of the same books.  Lydia was the one to suggest that we start a blog that could give a wide variety of reviews, instead of just one person’s opinion.  Sharaya jumped on board first (she’s the writer), and Corinna and Megan were quick to follow.  

We love doing this! It brings us together as friends and as readers, and we hope that it’s helpful to you.