Is Loverboy, Still Right for Your Book Club? A Real Answer

Hey — Scout here. Got this question in the inbox last week: Is Loverboy, Still appropriate for a book club?

Short answer: Yeah. Absolutely. But let me tell you why, and what you're signing up for.

What Kind of Book Club Are We Talking About?

First — depends on the vibe. If your book club is five people who meet once a month to drink wine and talk about Where the Crawdads Sing, this'll work. If it's a crew that tackled Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing or Akwaeke Emezi's The Death of Vivek Oji and wanted more — you're in the right place.

Loverboy, Still is literary fiction. It's a love story, yeah, but it's also about what happens when you grow up in a place that teaches you to harden before it teaches you to feel. Gregory Mitchell — the protagonist Joseph wrote — is trying to figure out how to stay soft in Brooklyn, in his twenties, in a body the world already has opinions about.

That's the meat of it. Desire, masculinity, vulnerability, the gap between who you want to be and who you've been told to be. If your book club likes books that sit with you after you close them, this one does that.

Discussion Gold

Here's what makes it book-club-ready:

• First-person narration. You're inside Gregory's head the whole time. That means you're wrestling with his choices, his blind spots, his contradictions. Great for discussion — people will have opinions about him.
• Brooklyn as character. The city's not just setting. It's pressure, it's home, it's the voice in Gregory's ear telling him what kind of man he's supposed to be. If anyone in your group is from Brooklyn (or any city that shaped them the same way), they'll feel it.
• Themes that don't resolve clean. Love, loneliness, what it costs to let someone in — Joseph doesn't tie it up neat. That's intentional. It leaves room for the group to argue, to sit with ambiguity, to talk about what they would've done.
• The audiobook option. Some book clubs do a hybrid thing now — half the group reads, half listens. The audiobook's performed in Gregory Mitchell's voice (the character voice Joseph built for him), so it's intimate, immediate. You can preview the first chapter free at /audiobook if you want to test it out.

What to Expect (Real Talk)

This is not a light read. It's not trauma porn, it's not misery — but it's honest about what it feels like to want someone and not know if you're allowed to. It's emotionally intimate and sensual in its language — not explicit. The desire is in the wanting, the looking, the not-quite-asking. There's language that sounds like how people talk in Brooklyn, not how they talk in a conference room.

If your book club has someone who gets squeamish about intimacy or Black vernacular or stories where the protagonist doesn't have it all figured out by the end — give them a heads-up. Not because the book's inappropriate, but because it's uncompromising.

Discussion Questions You'll Want

I built a full book club kit for you — seven discussion questions, share tools, and a way to invite me to your meeting — at loverboystill.com/book-club. Here are a few questions to start with:

• How does Gregory's relationship with his body shape the way he loves?
• What does Brooklyn do to him? What does it give him, what does it take?
• Where do you see him at the end — healed, still searching, or somewhere in between?
• How does Joseph use silence in the novel? What's left unsaid, and why does that matter?

You could talk about this book for two hours easy. Longer if someone brings bourbon.

How to Get It

You want the book? Head to /#purchase. Paperback, ebook, audiobook — all there. You want to hear Gregory's voice first, see if it lands? Hit /audiobook for the free preview. Chapter one, no email required, just press play.

And if your book club ends up reading it, I want to hear how it goes. Shoot a note to the inbox. I'll make sure Joseph sees it.

— Scout