On a blistering afternoon in July, a group of women lugging duffel bags and pillows lined up to meet their counselors at Bad Bitch Book Club summer camp in The Forks, Maine. But first they browsed a smorgasbord of 1,500 novels, thrillers and memoirs piled on knotty pine tables.
The vibe was equal parts Scholastic Book Fair and “The Parent Trap,” with a millennial twist.
“I am obSESSed,” said one woman, tapping a hot pink fingernail on the cover of “Shopgirls” by Jessica Anya Blau.
“I so love that for you,” said another, who wore a “Reading is My Favorite Sport” T-shirt.
A third held a hardcover to her nose, inhaled and declared, “This is giving me life.” Then she snapped a selfie.
The camp’s itinerary included plenty of old-school favorites: S’mores, hiking, crafts, movie night and rafting. But the centerpiece of the three-day getaway was reading — by the pool, on the dock, in an Adirondack chair, at the lodge or under the covers, no flashlight required.
The “book bar,” made possible by donations from publishers, was open every afternoon. And the first night featured Baddie Bingo, in which we had to locate someone who preferred e-books or had a high Netgalley score or was Team Jeremiah, of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” fame.
Mackenzie Newcomb, the founder of the club, welcomed the group with the air of an upper-crust den mom. Her rules for the weekend were simple: No inviting non-book club members back to cabins. No doomscrolling. Tip the bartender.
“If you see someone, say something,” she said. “If someone looks like they’re lonely or bored, just go up to them and ask what kind of books they like to read.”
Newcomb, 32, started the online book group in 2018 while working in influencer marketing at Petrossian in New York City. “As you can imagine, a 100-year-old caviar company from France moves very slowly,” she said. The club was a way for Newcomb to fill her free time; the name was a nod to her college friend group. Members voted on monthly picks, then posted their opinions on Facebook.
By the time the pandemic hit, the club had 1,000 members, mostly “a friend of a friend of a friend,” Newcomb said. Meetings migrated to Zoom, where subgroups sprang up around romance, fantasy and parenting, among others. Authors joined the conversation. Newcomb launched a Patreon, charging $7 a month, recently raised to $14, for access to exclusive content.
By the end of 2020, the club had expanded by 600 percent. It now has 38,000 members worldwide, bringing in around $200,000 a year.
“We say we’re the largest noncelebrity run book club,” Newcomb said. “We have no way of fact-checking, but we’re almost positive.”
In the summer of 2021, Newcomb, who lives in Manhattan, convened the Bad Bitch camp at Northern Outdoors lodge, where she vacationed with her parents and sisters in her “Boxcar Children” and “Baby-Sitters-Club” eras.
Annays Mora, a librarian, came from Miami for the camp’s inaugural session and was back for this one. Her kids were toddlers and she’d never traveled alone before. “I looked at my husband and was like, ‘Is it crazy for me to do this?’” she said. “He was like, ‘You’ve been talking about these people nonstop for a year and a half. Please go.’”
Perched at the intersection of the Kennebec and Dead Rivers, The Forks (population 30) is two hours from the nearest airports and around 60 miles from a bookstore. Perish the traveler craving chocolate Munchkins — there wasn’t a Dunkin’ in sight — and the one who, ahem, ignored instructions to download directions ahead of time. Wi-Fi was spotty. Luckily there was a single road into town, lined with leggy pines and water so blue-green, it looked like it was ripped from the cover of an L.L. Bean catalog, then photoshopped.
In my hangriest moment, I wondered: Why would anyone travel all this way to meet strangers they met on the internet?
At a book swap in Crying Loon cabin, six campers presented titles they’d brought for the occasion, including “Educated,” by Tara Westover, “Villette,” by Charlotte Brontë and “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois,” by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers.
I’ve seen friendships dissolve at Yankee swaps; this was the opposite, with each reader saying, sincerely, “I really hope you like it” before handing over her pick.
The campers, all in their late 20s and 30s, talked about how the pandemic reshaped their lives. Marooned at home, living alone or having boomeranged back to childhood bedrooms, they turned to the Bad Bitches for companionship.
Lacey Brown said, “I was looking for people around my age, who share my interests.”
Nnenna Odeluga said, “The people I’ve met through books are now some of my closest friends.”
Newcomb received 500 applications for 240 spots spread over three camp weekends in July. The price, not including airfare, was $900, with a discount for Bitches willing to take a top bunk. Newcomb and her team chose readers who are active participants in the club and come from a variety of backgrounds and places.
“We’re not looking for people who want a once in a lifetime experience,” she said. “We’re looking for people who want to meet other readers, make new friends and find connection.”
Kaylynn Arnett-Sampson, a high school English teacher who moonlights as the club’s retreat director, said, “If people were vulnerable on their application, that was a big draw.”
If you turned a page every time the Bitches uttered the words “connection” and “vulnerability,” you’d have finished your book by the end of friendship speed dating (sponsored by California Naturals), book bedazzling (in which tiny gems are glued to covers) or junk journaling (like scrapbooking, with a sustainable twist).
Conversation meandered from historical fiction to fantasy to romance. Some Bitches liked Emily Henry’s latest novel, “Great Big Beautiful Life.” Others preferred last year’s installment, “Funny Story.” Each one spoke of Henry as if she were a friend. Ditto for Abby Jimenez, Carley Fortune and Jasmine Guillory. They might not have been in the lodge, wetting embroidery floss with saliva before stringing it with beads, but they were there in spirit.
During a tie-dye session on the banks of Martin Pond, campers compared notes on books that made them fall in love with reading, including the Clique series, the Alice books and Gossip Girl.
Courtney Callaway recalled walking to her local public library in Norfolk, Neb., because it had air conditioning. “That’s probably why I became a reader,” she said. “I always had my nose in a book.”
Callaway came to camp in part because her older daughter, who was born when she was 18, is about to leave for college. “We grew up together. We went through fire together,” Callaway said. “This weekend feels like building a bridge to the next chapter.”
Through it all, readers were reading: Hardcovers, paperbacks, Kindles and iPads. A few wore AirPods, sparking debate about whether listening “counts” as reading.
In advance of the weekend, campers were invited to read “These Summer Storms” by Sarah MacLean, which I listened to at a pace slow enough to ensure intelligent conversation when the time came. There was no MacLean-specific event on the schedule, so, like an overeager new girl, I asked my fellow campers when it would happen. I was told that the discussion would take place during Saturday’s pasta dinner, after the cornhole tournament and before the talent show and dance party.
I’d fared respectably at trivia night, rattling off the March sisters along with the actors who played them in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of “Little Women.” But, not being outdoorsy or crafty, and having locked myself out of my cabin twice (once at midnight), I was eager to prove myself to the Bitches.
At our final dinner, the picnic tables closest to the buffet were reserved for people who’d finished “These Summer Storms.” That’s where I sat, shuffling a deck of discussion questions ranging from basic (“If you could give this book an alternate ending, what would it be?”) to slightly annoying (“Describe what this story looks like as a theme park ride”) to I-can’t-wait-to-get-back-to-my-own-book-club-where-we-only-talk-about-menopause (“Write yourself into a deleted page”).
If the Bitches at my table ever discussed “These Summer Storms,” I didn’t hear them. The din was so loud, and there were so many other topics to cover: Pregnancy and climate change. Tinder and tattoos. School loans and tariffs. Air fryers and Airwraps.
I sat back and listened, full of the joy I feel when my children get along.
The talent show turned out to be the crowing glory of the weekend. It opened with a striptease by a reader dressed as Shrek, complete with body paint and ogre ears. There was a hula hoop act and a “Piano Man” harmonica solo, followed by a dance routine and a four-camper homage to the Broadway play “John Proctor Is the Villain.” A rendition of Cher’s “Believe” turned into a floor-stomping, rafter-shaking singalong. The vibe was definitely more “bad bitch” than “book club.”
In keeping with camp spirit, the evening ended with hugs, tears and promises to keep in touch. “I’ll see you on Zoom,” someone called through the dark.
“I’ll see you next summer,” a friend called back.
The die-hards continued on to the dance party. The rest of us went back to our bunks to read.
Elisabeth Egan is a writer and editor at the Times Book Review. She has worked in the world of publishing for 30 years.
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