READERS GUIDE

1. Why do anonymous notes catch April and Laura’s imaginations in a way that a more mundane form of communication wouldn’t? Do you think texting—even with a stranger or someone you know little about—can have the same effect as a handwritten note?
 
2. Though April and Laura on the surface seem quite different, they have many things in common: a love of books, a younger brother/brother figure (Ben/Sydney), a loss of a loved one (April’s mother/Laura’s husband), a sense that their lives are slightly on pause. Did you think, before the characters met, that they would be friends?
 
3. April and Laura pass notes back and forth throughout the book, looking for a romantic connection with their mysterious pen pal. Do you think they would have felt different about the exchange had they known it was a friend on the other end of the pen instead of a potential romantic partner? What gave them the courage to forge the connections they needed—platonic or otherwise?
 
4. Most people associate Westley’s name with the beloved storybook-style character in The Princess Bride, but he doesn’t enjoy the questions people ask him about it. Why do you think this reference annoys Westley?
 
5. Storybook Ending plays with themes of fate and serendipity. How much of the interactions and missed encounters in the book do you think were meant to be, and how much do you think was the result of happy accidents?
 
6. After finding the first anonymous note, Laura compares her life to the movie You’ve Got Mail. In You’ve Got Mail, Meg Ryan’s character ponders, “So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around?” In Storybook Ending, how do books (and what’s within them) help change the characters’ real lives?
 
7. We hear about the making of Donna Wolfe’s Shelf Consciousness, a movie about a young man who goes looking for his girlfriend and gets pulled through a portal into the world of a book on a shelf. How does this movie being filmed at Read the Room create another layer in the book of a story within a story?
 
8. Discuss the purpose of the interstitial chapters with the other employees of the bookstore, each answering the prompt about the most unusual thing they found in the pages of a book. What do we learn about the bookstore, our main characters, and the world they live in through these chapters?
 
9. How do objects or letters left between the pages of books symbolize the characters’ emotions and connections in the story? Have you ever left anything in your books (besides your heart)? What have you found in a book?
 
10. By setting this story in a bookstore and having the main form of communication between our main characters take place through books, what do you think the novel is saying about the role of books and bookstores in our society?
 
11. If you were to leave a note in a book at a bookstore, what book would you choose and why?