Am I the only one who wasted $60 on a 'premium' book club discussion guide?

I bought this fancy guide for a historical fiction novel we picked last month. It promised deep questions and author insights. But it was basically just a list of chapter summaries I could have found online for free. The group ended up ignoring it and just chatting about the characters instead. Has anyone else bought a resource that flopped completely?

2 comments

2 Comments

hill.sarah1mo ago

Last week I spent $35 on a "bestseller toolkit" for a thriller and it came with a fold-out character map that literally just had the main character's name in the middle and some arrows pointing to "her boss" and "her ex-husband." I could have drawn that myself on a napkin in thirty seconds. The discussion questions were all like "what was your favorite part?" which is basically what my cat asks me when I read out loud to her. I ended up using the map to line the bottom of my trash can and the group just talked about the plot holes for two hours instead.

taylor_stone1mo ago

Ugh @hill.sarah that is such a scam. I've been burned by those "toolkits" before too. Honestly, I just start my book club meetings by asking everyone what they thought of the ending first, it usually gets the good arguments going without needing a fancy map. If you want real discussion questions, just hit up your library's free resources or grab a list off a book blog, way cheaper than a trash can liner.