‘I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.” It’s been more than 25 years since Julia Roberts delivered that famous line to Hugh Grant in a travel bookshop at the end of Notting Hill. But romantic moments in bookshops are not just a big-screen fantasy: for these couples, bookshops have played a key role in their real-life love stories.

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Chioma, 32, and Folajimi, 30: ‘I saw a book with my face on it and realised what was happening’

Folajimi, a data analyst, and Chioma, a product manager, first met in 2002 at school in Ikenne, Nigeria (“she was the smartest girl in my class, in my whole set”), before reconnecting in December 2021, 13 years since they had last seen each other.

“You can’t really take out books from Chioma’s life,” says Folajimi. So, in 2024, when he was considering where to propose to her, a bookshop felt like a natural choice. “Books got here before me. So in a race to come before the books, I had to come in with the books.”

So he made arrangements with Manchester’s House of Books & Friends, a shop the couple had previously visited together. Booksellers working that day were “really excited” and “almost as nervous as the man proposing”, says bookshop manager Naomi Self.

Folajimi told Chioma he would be working over the weekend, and arranged with Chioma’s family that her cousin would invite her to dress up and go for afternoon tea. “None of this was strange, because I love afternoon tea,” says Chioma, “and I make my friends dress up for afternoon tea.”

Pulling up outside the bookshop, Chioma’s cousin told her the tea would be inside. Again, this didn’t raise questions: “It’s England. Having afternoon tea in a bookstore is actually not that crazy, right?” As she walked in, Chioma realised that she had visited the shop with Folajimi before. A “specific Nigerian song which I love” was playing – Look What You Made Me Do by Adekunle Gold and Simi – but “again, I’m not really thinking anything, because hearing Nigerian music, or Afrobeats as they call it now, playing in random places is actually very normal these days”.

Chioma spotted a display of “all the books that have made such a profound impact” on her, including bell hooks’ all about love and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Then, “I saw this book that had my face on it,” she says – which turned out to be a book Folajimi had made telling the “story of us”. At this point, just before Folajimi appeared, she finally realised what was happening. And the afternoon tea story wasn’t a lie: there really was one arranged, with friends and family waiting to surprise Chioma.

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Tommy, 27, and Olive, 27: ‘Books bring us together – they reflect who we are’

Olive, a caseworker with Victim Support, had no interest in romance when she moved to Earls Colne, a village near Colchester, in late 2023. Living alone in a caravan and not knowing anyone in the area, she decided to go along to an 18-25 book club run by the shop Red Lion Books to meet new people. Tommy, an actor and playwright, remembers first seeing Olive outside the board game cafe that hosted the club. “I honestly went into a little bit of shock because she was wearing this hat with a striking fox design and foxy gloves to match,” he says. The bright orange colours, along with her dyed reddish hair, “took me aback”.

For her part, Olive was feeling anxious about socialising (“I’m an introvert”), so she was “so relieved” when Tommy introduced himself. “He was just so easy to talk to … Tommy has always reminded me of all my favourite people, their qualities and traits all mixed.” That session, the club talked about Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.

Afterwards, Olive and Tommy went with a few others to a Christmas market. At a gemstone stall, Olive identified her birthstone, a diamond, on a chart, and “bemoaned that it wasn’t a more colourful or glamorous stone”, but Tommy insisted that it was his favourite, recalls Louise Prior, who hosts the club. “It was clear there was an attraction.” They had their first date the following weekend.

A year later, they now go on reading dates at cafes. “I wouldn’t call this antisocial, as we’re frequently stopping to ask each other questions about each other’s books, or complaining about our own book,” says Tommy. Both enjoy writing, and early on they started a story together, each penning a page before handing it over to the other.

“Books definitely bring us together,” says Olive. They “reflect back who we are and what’s important to us and why. Which is much more juicy than who’s doing the washing up.”

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Jess, 35, and Patrick, 34: ‘People thought I was acting out some repressed Notting Hill fantasy’

Jess and Patrick grew up about 20 minutes from each other, but didn’t meet until their late 20s, when they were both working in media sales. Both had studied literature, but when they started dating, Patrick was in a reading rut. It was lockdown, meaning they couldn’t see each other, so Jess decided to send Patrick a parcel of 20 books, complete with annotations. “My form of saying ‘I love you’ was ‘These are my favourite books’.”

A few years down the line, when Patrick was considering where to propose, Village Books in Dulwich, south London, made the most sense – “Jess goes there so regularly, and it’s a real source of happiness for us.” He arranged for Jess to meet her brother for lunch around the corner, and for him to ask her whether she knew a bookshop nearby where he could get some books for his son. Patrick knew she would recommend Village Books.

At the shop, there was a codeword system in place for Jess’s arrival, and she was directed upstairs. Patrick, of course, was there. “I mumbled something along the lines of, ‘It feels fitting in a place where you’ve read so many chapters to start one of our own.’” Hazel Broadfoot, who has owned Village Books for nearly 30 years, says the engagement was “one of the most joyful things” the shop has been involved with.

That evening, they went to see Ronan Keating play live. “People were thinking I was acting out some kind of repressed Notting Hill fantasy,” says Patrick. (Keating’s When You Say Nothing At All appears on the film’s soundtrack.)

That was August 2023; a year later, they got married. At the wedding, the tables were named after their favourite reads: the top table was Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow, while others were Pride and Prejudice, Louis de Bernières’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. “I had to be swerved away from Demon Copperhead or anything bleak,” said Jess. Patrick wasn’t allowed John le Carré. Naturally, one table was named after Notting Hill.