Our story

We are Ollie and Sadie, and our story starts at a Book Stall

I first met Sadie when I was selling second-hand books to raise funds for my theatre society at Bath Spa University.

We instantly connected over literature (specifically The Gothic) and became firm friends as we exchanged ideas and what we loved most about books. Cut to a few years later, and we were tackling the same Master's in Crime and Gothic Fictions, and avidly debating over the which books on the course were the best, and which ones would change readers for the better.

After university and in the midst of lockdown, we finally moved in together, and Sadie fulfilled a lifelong dream of mine: having a library in my house.

Some of our happiest moments have been sitting reading and telling each other about the books we are consuming, and we felt that as time went on, regardless of what jobs we have to pay the bills, our hearts are normally more set on what's between some pages.

That's where Oak and Sycamore came from.

We sat down one fateful night and decided that with a bit of hard work and enough passion for sharing the amazing world of books and the written word, we could make what we do line up with what makes us happiest.

Our big dream is to one day open our own quirky bookstore, which can show people how easy it is to fall in love with reading.

To start with, we thought of how the best reads we have had in recent years came from recommendations of people we trusted.

When someone takes the time to give you a quick rationale but "not give anything away," We both agreed that the excitement of just going for it with an open mind usually yielded the most enjoyable results.

That's what we want to do for you. We take the time to figure out what makes a book so loveable and do our best to help you by explicitly not judging the book by its cover.

We have a lot of gratitude for books. They made us who we are and shaped our lives now. Hopefully, you might want to try one of our Shy Book range, or give the gift of a story to a friend.

Maybe it can open up a whole new chapter in your life like that little book stall at Uni did for us.

Happy Reading, Ollie (Oak).