Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week, I wrote about my excitement for the British Grand Prix. Charles Leclerc from Monaco took the win with Ferrari. But Brits took the other two places on the podium, George Russell was second for Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton was third for Ferrari. Lando Norris also had a good race for McLaren (a British team) and took fourth. Rookie Arvid Lindblad finished seventh, tying his top-placed finish so far for the Racing Bulls. The final Brit in the race, Ollie Bearman, driving for the American team Haas, had a disappointing result after being pushed into a spin by another car in the first lap.

Book: The Seaside Book Club by Helen Rolfe
Genre: Uplit
Publisher: Boldwood Books
Publication date: 2026

Source: E-audiobook borrowed from the library

Summary: The Seaside Book Club has recently undergone numerous changes. The founder died and the new leader is Faye, her niece. The name was changed to The Midnight Book Club because many of the members, including the founder, are British insomniacs who join the meeting at midnight their time. Faye, however, lives in Australia where she begins the meetings on Zoom at 9am her time.

Faye hasn’t told the book club about things that have changed in her life. Britain is a long way from Australia and her on-line friends aren’t aware of the scandal caused by her twin sister and future father-in-law, an Australian politician. Faye is relieved to get to talk to people who are blissfully unaware of the gossip.

Two people show up mostly reliably for the weekly meeting: Margot and Howard.

Margot has a secret of her own. The Midnight Book Club is her sanctuary, the only thing that is hers and not somehow tainted by her husband’s controlling ways.

Howard is everyone’s favorite. After retirement, he bought a bookshop in a seaside village in Dorset, rescuing it from developers. The villagers are grateful to Howard for saving their bookshop. Members of The Midnight Book Club are grateful to Howard for his wise thoughts on books and on life.

When Howard doesn’t show up to their meetings for several weeks in a row and doesn’t answer his emails, Margot and Faye get worried. They know the developers were still hounding Howard to sell the bookshop. Has something gone wrong?

Thoughts: Marg of The Intrepid Reader shared her review of The Seaside Book Club by Helen Rolfe with British Isles Friday a few weeks ago. It sounded like the perfect summer read! Marg is in Australia, so she is headed into winter, but we’re dealing with heat waves here in Missouri. A delightful story featuring cool sea breezes along the Jurassic Coast of Dorset sounded perfect.

Unfortunately, I don’t always have easy access to the books that Marg recommends since we’re on two different continents with two different book markets. In this case, one of the two libraries that I usually frequent had the audiobook available on Hoopla. The reader, Karen Cass, was brilliant. She convincingly spoke in both male and female voices as well as British and Australian accents. Quite impressive!

I was sad that we were on the Jurassic Coast but never ventured out to look for fossils. Still, I have had plenty of those experiences in books and movies (Ammonite, Lyme Regis fantasy trip, Kate Humble’s Coastal Britain, and Remarkable Creatures). I was compensated for the lack of fossils with the bookish conversations that are a result of a novel featuring many characters who love to read.

Have you read The Seaside Book Club? What did you think?