November’s Monthly Book Pick: The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins

by: Gloss Founder Erin Woodward

Welcome to Eris—a storm-bitten speck off the Scottish coast with one house, one inhabitant, and twelve hours each day when the tide turns the island into a locked room. Once it belonged to Vanessa, a celebrated artist whose husband vanished twenty years ago amid rumors, affairs, and unfinished canvases. Now it’s home to Grace, a woman who has chosen solitude and tides over people and clocks. She keeps her routines, minds the weather, and lets the past stay buried—until a shocking discovery in a London gallery sends an unexpected visitor across the water and kicks loose everything Eris has tried to keep.

Hawkins builds dread with the elegance of Shirley Jackson and the moral slipperiness of Patricia Highsmith. The island setting isn’t just backdrop; it’s a pressure cooker—secrets condense, stories warp, and every incoming tide redraws the rules. Expect unreliable memories, art as both confession and disguise, and a mystery that unspools through skillful shifts in perspective and time. The questions The Blue Hour asks are deliciously thorny: What do we owe to the truth if the truth will destroy us? Who gets to tell the story of a life—its subject, its observer, or its survivor?

Why we chose it for the club: it’s a masterclass in atmosphere and character, rich with discussion sparks—grief and reinvention, the ethics of inspiration, the line between solitude and self-erasure, and the way place shapes the stories we allow ourselves to believe. Bring your theories (and a sweater). We’ll be dissecting every tide turn, every brushstroke, and every alibi.