DAfter holding a star-studded wedding in Palermo earlier this month, Usa Lipa and Callum Turner are honeymooning in Italy. But their relationship started with a book: While meeting each other in an LA restaurant, the couple realized that not only were they reading the same novel – Trust by Hernán Diaz – but both had just completed the first chapter. “So, we’re on the same page,” Turner told Lipa. Here, four other couples share the literary brilliance of their love stories.
Andy, 52, and Lisa, 51, from Otley, Leeds: ‘An attractive man who loves books – what’s not to like?’
The University of Sheffield English Literature class of 1995 contained about 60 women and seven men, including Andy Poplar. He and Lisa Oakley did not get together until one night in the student union in sophomore year. “An intellectual, attractive man who loved books – what was there that he didn’t like?” Lisa says. “Considering the ratio I think I did pretty well.”
Friday morning shared lectures included modern British literature. Andy remembers stopping by Lisa’s, then arriving together, which initially caused a few eyebrows to be raised. Lisa laughs remembering how, early in their relationship, she felt increased pressure to say something profound in seminars whenever Andy was in the room.
“Very early on we started collecting books together,” says Andy. “They were the little Bloomsbury classics they used to have, and we’d buy them for each other for Valentine’s Day or birthdays and write an inscription in them, with the idea that one day we’d have a house and put them on a shelf together.” This library now resides in his hallway.
She got engaged to Tiffany as Truman Capote agreed, they have a cat named Orwell and their 17-year-old son also plans to study English at university. “We are surrounded by books,” says Lisa. “Even now, having always been together, we talk about the literature we are enjoying over a glass of wine.” They don’t particularly like reading the same things these days, but both love Gabriel Zevin’s Yesterday, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.
There’s no doubt they’ve put their English degrees to good use: Lisa is now head of English at a school, and is involved in Andy’s work engraving words and phrases on glass. For Lisa’s 50th he gave her a 1920s mirror, and added a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald: “That’s part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you are not alone and separate from anyone else. You belong.”
Millie, 24, from Norwich and Lois, 27, from Oxfordshire: ‘I remember her leaning over the table and saying, “I love her”‘
“It’s called the Silent Book Club, but we meet at a café, and it’s become a running joke to the barista there that we’re not very quiet,” says Millie Smith-Clare.
Millie, who works in PR, met textile conservator Lois Glitheroe in February 2025 at the Norwich branch of the Silent Book Club, a global initiative that encourages attendees to bring a book to read with others. “Sometimes you get about two minutes of reading and, if you’re lucky, there will be a conversation,” says Millie.
Milly says the club can have anywhere from six to 30 people in attendance depending on the time of year and is a diverse and gay-friendly venue. “I brought a book that was very strange, called Mary, or The Birth of Frankenstein, written by Anne Eeckhout. I remember Lois leaning over the table and saying, ‘Oh, I like that.’ Immediately I said, ‘Oh, she’s very attractive’.” A few weeks later, some book club members went to a poetry reading night, an evening that marked the beginning of their relationship.
Books have been the center of their romance. “We read a lot of books at the same time, like Frankenstein and The Great Gatsby,” Lois says. Millie says, “We’re currently reading all the Moomin stories in order by season. Because we have a long-distance relationship, we record them as audiobooks for each other.” Last year, they gave each other books on Christmas Eve, inspired by an Icelandic tradition joblabor flood – Gifting books to read together.
They still go back to book club in Norwich at the weekend, and although there may be a few more potential pairings on the horizon, they are the only official pairing so far. “We are complacent people,” says Millie.
Andy, 56, and Sapna, 55, west London: ‘He sent the message with the subject line: “Please say yes”‘
In late December 2009, Andy Peyroux, who runs an IT consultancy company, was browsing match.com when he noticed someone whose looks and voice he liked. Scrolling to the end of her profile, she found that her favorite book was Danny Wallace’s Yes Man, about the author’s experiment in saying “yes” at every opportunity. “I thought, ‘This is an easy win’,” says Andy.
Brand consultant Sapna Pieroux – spoiler, she got married – loved the yes man so much that after the breakup she took the idea on her own and said yes to all kinds of opportunities for a year. “I went to five festivals that summer, traveled, learned to pole dance and ski — badly.” He had some amazing adventures, so when the year ended, he decided to continue.
After trying out various free dating sites, “and saying yes to a few less-than-ideal dates,” Sapna laughs, she turned to match.com and mentioned the book in her profile. Andy also read it: “I’m an avid reader and it was a very popular book of its time,” he says. “I also liked the philosophy of it, although I didn’t go to the extremes like Sapna.”
Andy sent the message with the subject line “Please say yes”, which impressed Sapna because she knew he actually bothered to read her profile. She also mentioned that she was afraid to watch the film adaptation of the book starring Jim Carrey because “he overacts and it’s a very British story told by a British comedian – it should have been Simon Pegg.” Andy said he was also afraid to see the movie – should they go and see it together?
“I said, ‘I guess I have to say yes, but can we go on a first date where I can really get to know you, instead of us sitting in a dark room for two hours not talking to each other?'”
Andy suggested an ice sculpture at the Natural History Museum instead. But before that was about to happen, they realized Wallace was talking about his latest book, Friends Like These, so they met there for the first time before going for Chinese food and a kiss.
They rearranged the ice sculpture and created a penguin, then turned to the movies for their third date – “We were right about it – I didn’t like it,” Sapna says – after which they went for drinks, and Andy asked Sapna if she’d be his girlfriend. The answer was clearly yes.
Sam, 29, and Cliodhna, 35, from Edinburgh: ‘I went up to her and said, ‘Can I sit next to you?’ And he looked at me in complete horror’
It was a Thursday evening in January when Cliodhna Conboy, manager of a board game shop, sat a seat away from Sam Fearn, an aspiring author, at a sparsely attended book discussion at London’s Waterstones Covent Garden. “There were about 30 chairs, and when I got there, there were only five other people. I thought I’d sit next to someone so we could get together a bit, and he seemed the friendliest,” says Cleodhana.
Cleodhana takes out her book while she waits for the conversation to start, and Sam asks her what it is (from the essay collection Can’t We All Be Feminists? by June Eric-Udori). Cleodhana bobbed her head as she put her coat under the seat, allowing Sam to laugh at her. In between listening to the authors, Sam says, they “had a nice back-and-forth conversation,” and talked about future book events they were planning to attend. Finally, Sam’s brother comes to visit him, and when he turns to say goodbye to Cleodhana, she is talking to someone else.
Sam spent the next month deciding whether or not to attend any of the talks Cleodhana said she would do, or whether it would be awkward. He decided to go, arriving early and making himself completely visible, then waiting to see if Cleodhana would say hello. At that time, Sam had big, curly hair, so he was easy to recognize.
“I went up to him and said, ‘Can I sit next to you?’ And she looked at me in complete horror,” says Cleodhana.
Sam says, “I freaked out because I thought I saw her somewhere else in the crowd, and then she came to my left. It was like she teleported there.”
The pair couldn’t stop talking the whole night. They discovered they had a mutual love for Chris Riddell and Paul Stewart’s The Edge Chronicles series, and arranged to meet at a launch the following week. “I was reading that series when I was about 10, I didn’t know anyone else who was into them,” says Cleodhana. “So it was cool that they liked these books which was a big deal to me. It didn’t hurt that the main character in the first book is this very cute boy with big, curly hair.”
Over the next month he went to three book shows a week and soon became an item. He has since moved to Edinburgh, where he runs a book club. Sam has Two children’s books publishedBoth of which are dedicated to Cleodhana: “I read her first book actually before we got together, when we were still friends,” she says. “It was good, which was a relief.”
