Arroyo Grande native and resident bookworm Jennifer Littlejohn feels the impact of her visits to her high school library even a decade after graduation.
“I was really good friends with our librarian, Brenda Hoover,” she said. “So many people just loved her, and she made the library feel very welcoming and just like a space that you could go into. I feel like because of that and being in there, my love for reading just grew.”
While she read less often once she left school, Littlejohn credited a streetside free little library for introducing her to Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros and Juneau Black’s Shady Hollow. She then exercised her reading muscles at a book club in Santa Maria until inspiration struck to start one of her own in the Five Cities area—Central Coast Book Babes.
“I don’t think any guy has ever messaged to try and join,” Littlejohn said with a laugh. “I don’t know if it’s from the name or what. It’s not like guys can’t come, but if they want to, they can.”
Littlejohn started her book club in April 2024. What began as a circle of three people in the Arroyo Grande Village has now grown to a discussion group of roughly 10 women.
“Because we are a little bit of a smaller group, I feel like it’s really nice to be able to have a little bit more conversation where you actually talk about the book and we can just share our thoughts on it,” she said.
But Central Coast Book Babes is always looking for more participants. The book club’s Instagram page gained followers because Littlejohn channeled the local popularity of her prior personal “bookstagram” page @jennifersbookcart where she reviews her latest reads.
The group usually meets at 11:30 a.m. on a Saturday toward the end of every month—buying readers more time to purchase or borrow and read the assigned book. Every other month, they pick a book for everyone to read. The club members discuss the book at their next meetup. Then, the following month, people bring whatever they’re currently reading.
“That way people can get recommendations and just share other types of books,” said Littlejohn, a romance novel aficionado. “It just is a little easier for people to not always feel like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to read the book, and I haven’t read it.’ It kind of gives you a little bit of a break in between … just finding new books to read.”
Interested participants can visit the book club’s Instagram @centralcoastbookbabes and keep an eye out for monthly posts with the date, time, and book of the month, but the location is kept private for safety reasons. People can RSVP by leaving comments, after which Littlejohn adds them to the monthly group chat revealing the location and giving participants the chance to ask questions. The assigned book for April is How to be Eaten by Maria Adelmann—a reimagination of classic fairy tale characters as modern women in a trauma support group.
Now, Littlejohn is flipping the page to begin a new chapter: starting a second book club. This time, a callback to her own journey moving from Acapulco, Mexico, to the Central Coast when she was 5 years old.
“I am in the role of opening up a different space for BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, People of Color] with one of the current Central Coast book club members,” she said. “We just want to share BIPOC authors.”
Fast fact
• Give a cat a forever home on May 3 through the Cal Poly Cat Program’s Adopt-a-Kitty event hosted at HumanKind Fair Trade (974 Monterey St., San Luis Obispo) from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The cats up for adoption are a mix of kittens and adults that were surrendered, trapped, or rescued. Δ
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Apr 24 – May 4, 2025.