Blind Date Book Club - Hallmark

Sat-Sun April 6-7 was big weekend for Erin Krakow! Hallmark released her new rom-com the night before season 11 of their hugely successful series, When Calls the Heart premiered.  Was it a hit? Well, let’s get right to it and talk about it! 

Hi, I’m Stephanie and welcome to the Magical Movie Club where, like you, I love to watch and chat about Hallmark movies. This week's recap and review is about Blind Date Book Club, which premiered on Hallmark Channel on April 6th and stars Erin Krakow and Robert Buckley. 

Both of these stars are from successful Hallmark TV series. I’m sure most of you already know Erin Krakow as Elizabeth in When Calls the Heart. And, like so many of you, I absolutely LOVE that series, too!  She was in Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen. And I also enjoyed her in The Wedding Cottage last year.

This one also stars Robert Buckley, who was in Chesapeake Shores, but not an original character from the beginning. He came in much later after Jesse Metcalf left the show. Those were big shoes to fill, at least in my humble opinion.  Other than that, he hasn’t done too many Hallmark movies so I haven’t seen him in anything else. But somehow, going into Saturday night’s premiere, I just had a feeling this was going to be a fun movie.   

So, let’s talk about Blind Date Book Club!  The movie opens with a scene showing us a closeup of some books that are being wrapped up in a classic brown paper bag-type paper. And then we see someone writing notes on the outside of them like, “Smart and funny, you might cry,” just to give a tiny hint as to what they might be.

In the next scene, Meg, played by Erin Krakow, is riding a bike down a really cute Nantucket street. When she gets off she carries a handbasket full of these wrapped books into a quaint little bookstore called Mimi’s Book Corner. I’ve mentioned I like the movie You’ve Got Mail before, yeah, this little store definitely reminded me of it. And actually, this store was even cuter. I would love to have a bookstore like this in my neighborhood!

So Meg ends up putting the books down on a table next to a sign that reads, “Blind Date with a Book Club,” although her assistant prefers to call it Blind Date Book Club. She thinks it’s catchier.  

And in this short conversation right off we learn that Meg’s aunt Renee is coming to town to talk about the bookstore. She hasn’t seen her aunt in about 3 years and she’s very nervous because she doesn’t know why she’s coming. 

Just then, Raina Breem from NPR walks in the door, played by Johannah Newmarch (also from When Calls the Heart). She’s there to interview Meg about her bookstore. It seems her Blind Date with a Book Club has caught her attention!

Next I believe we’re looking at the New York skyline here. Graham Sterling, played by Robert Buckley, is meeting with his agent about a new book he’s written. It turns out Graham is already a successful writer who has spent many weeks on the best seller’s list. He’s known for writing a “coming of age” series called Parachutes for Beginners that’s very popular among young adults. But now he’s trying to write about something completely different. What does he call it, “an Historical Epic that happens to center around a love story?”  Well, his agent is not impressed. He said he liked it, but he didn’t love it.

Hmm, where have I heard those words before?  I can so relate here. Every week when I sit down to watch a new Hallmark movie premiere I really want to love it pains me when I just don’t. Some weeks it’s the direction, some weeks it’s the acting, and sometimes it just doesn’t start with a very good story.  But when I’m live posting on Twitter I know Hallmark is reading them. Sometimes even the writers and actors are following along, too. So I’m trying to be careful and find the right balance between being completely honest and not being insulting when that happens. I certainly never want to insult or offend anyone. But I’m also here to say what I think. I’m just saying it can be a fine line to straddle.

Anyway, back to Graham and his agent. Graham is determined to have this new book published, and since his own publisher has turned him down (he’s still under contract with them to write two more books in that Parachute series), he decides to self-publish the new book. But he’ll have to do it under a pseudonym. So, he decides to go by the name Dylan Turner.

And we’re back to Mimi’s Book Corner where Meg is about to start her radio interview. This is significant because the interview is being aired live on the radio while Graham is driving in his car. Meg talks about highlighting local and unknown authors in their book club. Apparently they feature two books per week, and no one knows what they're buying. All they have to go on is the note written on the brown paper cover. And then they meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays to discuss what they’ve read. 

The meetings are actually more than just book discussions, they’re small parties where people can make deeper connections with the stories and with each other. She mentions they’ve made crepes from Paris, pottery from Zimbabwe, and origami from Japan.

Now, when Graham left the publisher’s office he was still on the fence about this self-publishing idea. But after a pep-talk with his sister over the phone, and hearing Meg’s interview over the radio about featuring unknown, local authors, he decides to go for it. Although he’s from Boston, not Nantucket. That’s a detail that even Meg calls him out on later.

So Graham self-publishes his book and heads over to Nantucket to pay Meg a visit at Mimi’s Book Corner. Although they don’t realize it, yet, they first run into each other at the Ferry landing. This was a cute scene with the French tourists when they insisted on taking Meg and Graham’s picture together!

They run into each other again, literally, at the bookstore. I noticed this bookstore has different rooms as though maybe it used to be a house that was converted? I’m not sure, but will say I very much appreciated the fact that both Meg and Graham were understanding that the collision was an accident and they both apologized to one another!

You know I’ve come to realize it’s a pet peeve of mine when an accident like this happens in a Hallmark movie and one of the characters is downright rude to the other. I’ve seen it from time-to-time and there’s just no excuse for that and it takes me a while to warm up to a character who’s like that. I know, I’m also speaking from the heart because I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve been guilty of that in my own youth and I try to always remember that now.

Anyway, back to the bookstore. Meg and Graham seem to be getting along, you can tell they’re almost interested in getting to know more about one another, when Graham brings up the topic of his self-published book. Meg is clearly disappointed that he’s had an angle all along, to have his book as one of the wrapped books selected for the club.

She turns him down and gets back to her work, but, Graham’s next little speech tugged at her heart just enough to get her to agree to at least read his book. I had to keep reminding myself that she doesn’t recognize him as a famous author. So, he’s doing a good job at staying incognito.

Next we see Meg’s aunt Renee coming into the store, and Meg still doesn’t know why she’s here. I think her character was intentionally being hard to read. When she walked through the door she said, “My goodness, you have made some changes.” But when Meg said, “good changes, I hope,” that was met with silence from her aunt.

The good news is while the two of them went for a quiet walk, Aunt Renee told her she does like the changes she’s made to keep the store going since Meg’s mom passed. But the bad news is Aunt Renee wants out of it now so she can travel. They talked about Meg’s options, whether to keep running the store solo or go back to her original passion which is real estate. 

Later that evening when Meg has trouble sleeping, she picks up a magazine to read but then her eye catches Graham aka Dylan’s book on the table, so she decides to go ahead and read it. Now I am seriously jealous of anyone who can read this fast, because the next morning Graham walked into the store to offer to pay her to read his book. And that’s when she confessed that she already read it. Seriously?! How are her eyes not puffy and bloodshot? Oh well, I’ll continue. 

This turned out to be a more delicate conversation because Meg didn’t want to hurt his feelings but she really didn’t care for the book. So that’s his agent and now Meg who seemingly share the same opinion.  I was intrigued by this because clearly he knows how to write a best seller and he’s very passionate about this new book, but that’s 0 for 2 at the moment!

Of course Meg’s assistant, Alice, who hasn’t read the Dylan turner book, becomes instantly star-struck when she finds out his true identity, and she convinces Meg to give him a chance. To help a writer struggling against being type-cast. And, with that, Meg caves and offers to wrap his book and let the book club decide what they think about Dylan Turner’s debut novel.

As she explains to Graham, the way the book club works is… people choose a book blindly to read based on the clues that she leaves and if they like it enough to discuss they come back the following week.

One thing I didn’t mention that was really cute in this scene is that everyone who talks to Meg about the book club calls it a dating club and it absolutely rubs her the wrong way. Well, Graham read one of her clues to her current book and he said… it sounds like a dating profile!

Now, as I see it, the biggest difference between the two main crises here is that whatever Meg decides to do, whether it’s to sell the store and go back to real estate or try to keep the store going on her own, she has the full support of her friends and her aunt. Graham is in a different situation. He wants to find his passion for writing again and he thinks it’s by changing his writing genre. However, his agent and his publisher are pushing him for book #8 in the Parachute series. He’s under contract so he doesn’t really have a choice. And did I mention he only has 3 weeks to turn in the next book? Yeah! So, what choices will these two make and will they ever be happy with their choices? Oh, and what will the book club think about his mystery book? That’s what we’ll find out as the movie continues.

And without giving away too much more detail, the book club meeting didn’t quite go the way I expected.

You know early on in the movie I thought it would be great if Meg could find a way to keep the book store and stay involved in real estate somehow. And after seeing it the first time Saturday night I was happy she kept the bookstore but disappointed that she gave up on real estate. I’ve seen many Hallmark movies where one of the main characters, who’s successful in a big city, winds up in a small town, perhaps against their will, and ultimately falls in love with the small town and finds a way to continue doing what they’re passionate about while staying in the small town. So I felt let down when Meg gave up real estate.  

But you know, after seeing it a second time I paid more attention to Graham and Meg’s character growth together, and I realized her passion had changed after spending a few years in the bookstore. I believe Meg’s heart-to-heart talk with Graham about why she believes so many people love his Parachute series not only helped him find his passion for writing again but also made her realize just how much she loved owning the bookstore.

That is what I believe makes a good Hallmark love story. The acting was wonderful, the direction was great, the scenery, the characters, the relationships. And the chemistry! If this isn’t chemistry on screen I don’t know what is. 

But that’s just my own opinion. As you can see, I really enjoyed this Hallmark movie - even more so the second time around. They even answered the one lingering question that had been in my mind about no one recognizing Graham in a book club where all of his real books are right there on the shelves!

And on that note, I’m giving this one a 4½ out of 5. Why the 4½? Well, early on I had hoped they would find a way to let Meg keep the store and stay connected to the real estate business at the same time. I was looking forward to finding out how she would be able to pull that off, and it didn’t happen.  I’m just a tad disappointed that she let that go entirely. Not to mention, they never discussed exactly how she would buy out her aunt’s half of the store. That topic never even came up. So again, I thought if they could somehow incorporate her passion for real estate to keep the bookstore and not worry about the financial risk so much, that would have tied up the ending a little neater for me. 

How about you?  What did you think of Blind Date Book Club?  Did you enjoy this one, too, or was it not for you this time? I’m always up for a discussion, so please share your thoughts about the movie, too, in the comments below.

Well, I think that wraps up my review of Blind Date Book Club. As always, thank you so much for being here and being a part of the Magical Movie Club. We'll be back next week to chat more about our favorite magical movies!  

Hallmark Channel's Original Preview:  Blind Date Book Club - Preview

Hallmark Channel Movie Site: Blind Date Book Club