This year, the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize is celebrating the exceptional 2025 shortlist by inviting twelve UK-based book clubs to shadow the 2025 Best Published Novel award. Read on to meet each of the groups, find out what makes them special and what titles they’ll be reading.
Suze’s Reading Group
We are an online book club who meet up on the first Thursday of each month to discuss our book of the month and chat about our latest reads. We have been fortunate to have enjoyed chats with several authors, reading their book as our book of the month, and then chatting to them about it. For the Wilbur Smith Award we are so excited to be joined by two of these authors, Jane Bettany and John Delaney! As we are online, we are all dispersed throughout the country and are always keen to recruit new members.
St Barbara’s Book Group
We are a mixed gender wide-ranging book group, varying greatly in age and experience. The group originally evolved from a church bible study group where we kept finding ourselves getting distracted and talking about books instead, so decided we should set up a separate book group! The group has since expanded to include people outside the group and outside the church and is always welcoming to new members. Many of us had lost the habit of reading and found the group to be instrumental in getting us back into the rewarding routine of regular reading, as well as expanding our reading horizons, getting us to try out new books we might not have read otherwise. Reading has been a valuable form of escape for many members of the group through the difficulties of the last few years. We love reading new and interesting books and find lots to say about them. We first met in November 2018 are based in Coventry and meet roughly monthly. We love sharing our views through our blog and are looking forward to going on this new adventure.
Suze’s Reading Group and St Barbara’s Book Group are reading A House for Miss Pauline by Diana McCaulay.
Gin Club with a Book Problem
A group of gin-loving bookworms who believe the best stories are shared with friends-and maybe a splash of tonic. From heated plot debates to uncontrollable laughter over character choices, our club is where great reads meet great company. Whether it’s fiction, memoirs or a scandalous thriller we gather monthly in Cornwall to sip, chat and celebrate the joy of reading together.
Gin brought us together, books keep us coming back.
Read with Yeovil
Read With Yeovil is a very mixed group, with quite a wide age range of both men and women, who meet monthly for a 2 hour lunchtime session where we discuss two books and talk about whatever else we’ve read that month. Our group is very collegiate as we don’t have a set leader, members simply volunteer to lead the discussions. We also aim to have visits from local authors to talk about their own books. We are regularly spoiled by the wonderful providers of cakes and drinks. We actually celebrate our birthday each August having formally become RWY 3 years ago.
We have a membership of 20+ and enjoy each other’s company so much that we actually plan outings together. This year alone some of us went to Athelhampton House after we had read Joanna Quinn’s The Whalebone Theatre. Others are off to Florence in Italy this summer on a tour of Still Life by Sarah Winman. We are lucky enough to live in an area where writing talent flourishes and have several local authors as members. They join us when their schedules and literary appearances allow. In February this year we accepted a challenge from the Mayor to arrange a day during the half term week to run a Storytelling Day for 90+ children. We managed to scrounge, beg and put pressure on enough locals that we were able to run a totally free event which included 5 children’s authors, a picnic lunch and a new book for each child.
Read with Yeovil and Gin Club with a Book Problem are reading Babylonia by Costanza Casati.
The Three Horseshoes
The Three Horseshoes reading group was formed over 10 years ago with a mission to support their village pub by using it as their venue and their local library through the loan scheme for book clubs.
The literary lunches are held once a month and most meetings are usually punctuated with raucous laughter. Books have been a wonderful form of escapism as well as providing great topics for learning and discussion.
Westacre Book Group
The group has been founded for more than 20 years and adds another element to a small rural independent theatre. We are a very mixed group in terms of age and experience and we all love books and reading, Our book list is created each year by suggestion from the group which has to be reduced and curated carefully to ensure a good mix of books from most genres and authors. We meet once a month on the first Wednesday evening 7-9pm, and we try to source our books through the local library when possible depending on the choices.
We always have a respectful debate on the book and it is always best when someone really did not enjoy the book, we laugh a lot and love to consider other points of view. Having people in the group who have moved from other parts of the world and have widely travelled brings great perspectives to the discussions. We break for coffee, taking the opportunity to break into smaller groups and catch up with everyone’s lives as we have all become close as a result of the group and the lovely members. After the break, we may continue the discussion or move onto other books we have read and wish to rave about and pass on – notebooks are out and the scribbling begins, titles furiously recorded for future reference and additions to TBR piles while simultaneously groaning at the sheer size of their TBR piles. It is a curse we have all been struck with. We also use this time to pass on any information regarding local author events, film adaptations of books we have read, authors we have heard on the radio and new releases. This prompts more jotting down and we all are sad to pack our notebooks and books away and leave at 9.15-9.30pm, wishing we had another two hours! This process is repeated month on month and very long may it continue!
The Three Horseshoes and Westacre Book Group are reading Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis.
Boozy & Bookish
Boozy & Bookish are a lively book club that meets once a month in a small function room above a pub in central Brighton. They formed in May 2024 after an advertisement on Instagram successfully brought them together. None of them knew each other before joining, but they have quickly become a tight-knit group of friends who share a passion for both books and tipples! Their meetings have a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, making it easy to discuss their book of the month, while sharing drinks and laughs.
They participated in this process last year very shortly after their formation and found it a fun and exciting experience to be a part of that really helped build on their friendships, so they are thrilled to be part of the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize again this year.
Methley Bookgroup
We are a large, friendly book club, based in Methley, near Leeds. The group was founded in 2012, and we continue to attract new members on a regular basis. There are often 20 or more of us at our monthly meetings, held in the lovely Rivers Meet Café.
We enjoy reading books from a wide variety of genres which we choose from Leeds Libraries readers’ group collections or from members’ recommendations. We always look out for literary offers from The Reading Agency, so we are very excited to be given the opportunity to shadow the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize.
Boozy & Bookish and Methley Bookgroup are reading Redemption by Jack Jordan.
2 Bee or Not 2 Bee
Our book group is a lively bunch that meets once a month at The Endeavour, an award winning and welcoming pub in the heart of Chelmsford, Essex. We first met back in December 2016 at Foyles bookshop, and since then, our journey has been anything but ordinary. From in-person chats to virtual meetups during lockdown, we’ve powered through over a hundred books and made countless unforgettable memories along the way.
This group is more than just a book club, it’s a community. Over the years, we’ve celebrated weddings, welcomed a new baby, and toasted to lots of new grandchildren! Our get-togethers often spill over into dinners out and long, laughter-filled evenings. We all joined to broaden our literary horizons, and we have done that! We rarely agree on the books we read, but that’s exactly what makes the discussions so spirited and fun. Every meeting is a chance to dive into new genres, challenge each other’s opinions, and see things from a fresh perspective.
Now, we’re absolutely buzzing to be reading Sycorax by Nydia Hetherington. With all the rave reviews it’s been getting, we can’t wait to read it, and we’re thrilled at the chance to discuss it with Nydia herself!
Busy Lizzies
Our 14 members really are ‘Busy Lizzies’, very involved with local community improvement projects and family commitments, and therefore we seldom have a full house for our monthly meetings in Bishopton Library. We vary the days on which we meet in order to accommodate everyone. We are all keen to read a variety of novels and to take turns at leading our very lively discussions over tea/coffee and cake. Most of us have been friends for many years having lived in this beautiful rural area in Scotland just south of the River Clyde with views to the Kilpatrick Hills beyond.
2 Bee or Not 2 Bee and Busy Lizzies are reading Sycorax by Nydia Hetherington.
Filipino Mothers UK Book Club
Filipino Mothers UK Book Club is a vibrant online community of Filipina mums who find joy, connection, and strength through stories. Based across the UK, we gather to read books that spark conversation—whether they reflect our heritage, explore motherhood, or simply offer a well-deserved escape. More than a book club, we are a sisterhood that celebrates our identity, nurtures our voices, and shares the joys and challenges of life away from home.
Coundon Library Book Club
Hello! We are Coundon Library Book Club! We have been running for 2 years, and we formed after I ran a book club in my old workplace which ran for 5 years – I missed it and started a public group which has been very successful! We’re a mixed group of all ages, backgrounds and abilities, who meet to make friends, get back into reading, and just share books with like-minded people!
We’ve been on several outings as a group including to the cinema and you’ll often spot us at our library book sale – you can never have enough books. We always bring books to our group and swap between us, so we never seem to have less books!
We read a mix of recommendations and popular titles and it’s fantastic when we all have such strong opinions! We meet in our tiny local library in Coventry, and we always have a great laugh and giggle. We are so excited to have the honour of taking part in the Prize!
Filipino Mothers UK Book Club and Coundon Library Book Club are reading Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao.
Get involved
Are you interested in reading any of the shortlisted titles? Find out more about the shortlist here.
If you work in a library or workplace and would like to promote the prize, you can order free display packs from our shop.
What do you think of the 2025 shortlisted titles? Which have you read and what will be added to your TBR pile? Add your comments below, or click any title above to leave a review.
Share your thoughts with us on Facebook, X and Instagram using #AdventureWritingPrize. Don’t forget to follow and tag The Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation (@Wilbur_Niso_Fdn) and The Reading Agency (@readingagency)!
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