Bookworm in the City

What it is: a story with a lot soul
Did I like it: oh yeah

This is the last book I started last year, as part of the 2025 reading challenge due to the blue letters of the title. It doesn’t count anymore, so it’s just a review now.
I had bought this book specifically for the reading challenge and I recognized Scarborough on the cover. Then I realized I had read another book by this author, The Offing, which I remember as a very quiet story about self-discovery and growth. This book is different, yet there are comparisons that can be made: there are two main characters with a big age difference, it’s about self-discovery and growth as well, and both stories are set on the Yorkshire coast.

Rare Singles is set in Scarborough where Dinah is living her not-so-best life. She works as a checkout lady, is deeply unhappy about her personal life, and only cares about the weekends when she gets to enjoy soul music at a local club, as part of the Northern soul scene. She’s a massive fan of Bucky Bronco and asks him to travel to England and perform at the club for the last soul weekend of the season.
Bucky Bronco lives in Chicago where he is surviving, just about, and not exactly living. His wife has passed away and all he is left with, is a crippling addiction. When he receives an invite to do the show at a club in Scarborough, he’s stunned to discover people not only remember him, but still love the one song that he had released five decades before. He decides he has nothing to loose, and gets himself on a plane to England.
Bucky has never travelled outside the US and his musings about northern England are fun to read. Just like Dinah and Bucky, Scarborough’s glory days are a thing of the past and the setting felt like a proper third main character to me, especially the way it is seen through Bucky’s eyes.
The story is set in just a few days, but covers a lifetime. I really enjoyed Bucky as a main character, he is the star attraction in more than one way, and Dinah is his loyal second-in-command. There are discoveries made, mostly about personal growth and development, and I think this story can easily be made into a movie. (Actually, it totally should! The soundtrack would be awesome.)
At just over 200 pages this is not a big read at all so even if you don’t like big books, or want to travel light, book-wise, this comes highly recommended!