Mariemont's favorite local bookshop, Your next great read starts here.

Here’s a little about us and your favorite indie bookstore’s origin story…

(Sophia Petrillo voice) Picture it: Ohio. 1983.

Okay, okay — let’s not go allll the way back “to the 1900s” (as our kids so politely put it, each and every opportunity they find to mention our birthdays).

Fair enough.

Picture it: Ohio…2006?

The year we were married! A little better, buuut… let’s fast-forward just a wee bit more?

(Annoyed sigh) Picture it: Ohio. 2023. Take it or leave it.

We’ll take it! But, um, with all due respect, Mrs. Petrillo, we don’t exactly remember inviting you…

Hey, I may be senile, but I don’t exactly remember asking to be dragged into this mess. I’d rather be at Shady Pines, to be honest, and that’s saying somethin’.

Alright, alright! Sheesh. This is starting to feel less like an About Us page and more like a Hunter S. Thompson bender anyway.

I’d kill for a good bender right now.

Umm.

Back to the bookstore origin story.

By 2023, it had been a rough couple of years, to say the least, and not only due to the global pandemic. Joe had lost both his amazing parents to back-to-back, sudden illnesses, when health issues forced Andrea to take a sabbatical from her 15-year career in financial publishing, with Joe serving as her caretaker.

By the grace of God, she emerged from the other side of a long, painful battle intact, and we found ourselves at an important crossroads: Do we return to the status quo of being comfortably miserable at work? Or was it time for something new?

It was the emotionally rawest point in our lives, and our own mortality had never been more clear. Whatever time we have left on this Earth, we decided, we don’t wanna spend grinding ourselves into hollowed-out nubs.

“For what good is the whole world if you lose your soul

Against that YOLO backdrop — and considering that, as long-time Mariemont residents, we’d been wishing for another bookstore since the closure of The Villager — we decided to shoot our shot, as the kids say.

We crunched some numbers, sketched some sketches, submitted a formal business proposal to the property manager, and prayed God’s will be done (and that if His will didn’t align with our dream, for the grace and gratitude to accept it).

The rest is history.

The ‘Worm, as we lovingly call it, opened its doors to the public on April 13, 2025, and we’ve been blown away at the community support ever since. Thank you!

While we still have MUCH to learn about running a small business, we appreciate your collective patience and patronage as we navigate this new course, and we hope The Village Bookworm serves our Cincy neighbors with pride and integrity for generations to come.