Many of you probably belong to a book club. I do. Here’s our tried and tested formula: chatter, snacks, chatter, drag ourselves off to comfy chairs to eat more snacks and talk about the book, rip book to pieces then move off to the kitchen to eat a home cooked supper. The only real stress involved is the actual choosing of the book.It’s amazing how upset you can feel if you’ve picked something you think will be THE BEST BOOK EVER, only to find that your friends wholeheartedly disagree and, even if you didn’t like it, you feel you’ve got to stick up for it and justify its worthiness. To keep emotions low, we choose a book that no one has read before but, even then, if it turns out to be a turkey and you don’t like it either, you can’t help but apologise, as though you’ve written it yourself.Imagine how terrifying it is being a guest at a book club, all of whom have bought and read your book and are waiting to discuss it with you. One particular event, late Summer, was (thanks to Covid) conducted live and on Zoom. The subject: my psychological thriller. I was hooked up to a microphone, camera focused on me, with the live audience, socially distanced, either side. The group were delightful, funny, polite and courteous, a few difficult questions, but all good.Then, as I drove home in the car feeling quite pleased about the whole thing, it struck me: a couple of them, at the very least, must have been lying! Out of the dozens of novels I’ve read in my book club we’ve yet to agree on one we’ve all liked. In fact, we go at a book like we’re the audience watching a gladiator get pierced by a trident and the talk gets toxic. But, then I thought about it a bit more – did I really want to be confronted with people telling me they didn’t like what I’d written? Absolutely not! Instead, I arrived home, humbled at the thought these lovely people had given up their evening to listen to me chatter on. After all, if I want to heap negativity upon myself, I can always go and have a scroll through my Goodreads reviews.