Best friends buy a secondhand bookstore in California — and become TikTok famous

“That feminine urge to buy a bookshop with your bestie.”

With a 10 word-caption and a jauntily produced montage of smiling faces and dusty shelves filled with books, best friends Carla Cary and Clio Bruns catapulted into minor TikTok fame this spring as the duo behind @bookshopbesties.

The pair, both North County natives, purchased Spare Time Books on 12th Street in Paso Robles in April, and quickly began turning the used bookstore into the shop of their dreams.

“It’s just so magical, you know?” Bruns told The Tribune during an interview in early June. “I’ve always loved the idea of that and then it became our reality.”

How did friends buy secondhand bookstore in Paso Robles?

The friends, both 26, originally met as sophomores attending Atascadero High School.

Cary, who was born in Romania but moved to Paso Robles as a young child, then went to Cal Poly while Bruns, who was born in Templeton and grew up in Atascadero, attended California State University Chico.

A mutual love of reading bound the two together throughout the years, they said, so when the opportunity to purchase Spare Time Books came up, they were ready to start that new chapter.

Cary said her mother, who owns Orange Dot Quilts in Paso Robles, originally wanted to purchase the business herself and turn it into a quilt and bookstore, but the building owner wanted it to stay as a bookstore only.

So she and Bruns talked it over and decided “we can do that,” Cary said.

“We came in one day and (the former owner) said, ‘OK, I’m ready,’” Cary said. “So the next day we came by, and we got the keys to the place.”

“I definitely thought it was going to take six months plus,” Bruns added with a laugh.

SLO County pair build following on TikTok

With keys in hand, Bruns and Cary began documenting their journey fixing up the store — which had a few issues due to its age, they said — on TikTok, where they quickly amassed a dedicated fan base.

As of June 14, they had more than 94,000 followers and 1.1 million likes. Their first video has more than 3 million views.

Their videos show the pair clearing out stacks of books, moving shelves and even showing off the “ancient” point-of-sale software, all while cheerily sharing how this is a dream come true.

And despite the hard work, it really is.

“Obviously it’s a lot of work,” Cary said. “I mean, we’ve moved thousands of books, to and fro. ... It’s tiring. It’s long days. Your hands get dry, you’re inhaling dust, or scraping aluminum off the windows from the old security system. And, you know, it’s kind of all over the place, but it’s worth it. It’s just so rewarding when people come in and they’re excited about reading or they’re excited about a book that they found. It’s like a treasure hunt.”

To capitalize on their online audience, Bruns and Cary also began selling “mystery book boxes” on their website, including the popular “Blind Date with a Cowboy” option, featuring four curated romance novels. An in-store version is also available.

Owners want bookstore to be community spot

Cary and Bruns aren’t the only ones to think of buying a bookshop as a dream.

Both noted that a number of people have come into the shop and said they had hoped to buy it themselves one day.

“We had a lady yesterday come in and then immediately leave with her kids,” Cary said. ”She said, ‘Oh, I wanted to buy this place.’’

That is more of an extreme reaction, they laughed. In general, the responses have been much more supportive.

“It’s funny because a lot of people say that bookshops are a dying breed,” Bruns said. “And, yes, they are, but also it doesn’t really feel like it. You know, we get so much support from the community and from our online community as well as our local community. And yes, it really doesn’t feel like it was this crazy thing for us to do it. It just made sense.”

While the pair chatted with a reporter during a recent visit, a group of customers entered the shop, with one woman exclaiming about its transformation.

“This is so beautiful,” the woman told Bruns and Cary. “It looks a lot different. Everything’s lovely.’

“We’ll be back,” she added as she and her family left a few minutes later.

The work is still far from done.

On that day in June, Cary and Bruns were busy transforming the front window of the store to include a bar where folks could read or work. They decorated it with string lights and hanging plants.

They plan to add book-themed gifts for sale, as well as “cozy armchairs” for folks to sit down and read for a while, as well as continuing to reorganize the massive shelves and stock of secondhand books. The place needs a new coat of paint too, and other changes to make it more ADA-accessible, they said.

Paso Robles friends eye partnership with fantasy series author

Coming up, they also hope to pay homage to a book series that inspired them on this journey.

After something of a book slump, Bruns said she and Cary had recently re-kindled their love of reading while both devouring the TikTok fave fantasy series, “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” by Sarah J. Maas.

“We were both in kind of a reading rut for a little bit, and then ... we heard all about it all over TikTok and Instagram, so we decided that we would just buddy read it,” she said. “Wow. It changed our lives truly.”

Cary said the two ultimately plan to decorate the inside of the shop like something you would see from one of the cities in the popular series, often abbreviated as ACOTAR, including hand-lettering a quote from the series over the front window.

They also are going to reach out to Maas’ publisher and see if the author would like to partner with the pair to make the bookshop an official ACOTAR business.

“(ACOTAR) is really what propelled us to buy the shop,” Cary said. “It was the tipping point.”

Ultimately, Bruns and Cary said they want Spare Time Books to be a “magical” place for the community — somewhere folks could come and forget their troubles.

“I think right now we’re in this digital age where people are so inundated with technology, AI, fast, fast, fast consumerism that you’re seeing. There’s an increase of people buying buying books, and I think we’re gonna reach a point where people would see a bigger shift back to the traditional materials,” Cary said. “You know, tangible things that you can hold. I think people are gonna start coming back to it more, and we want to make sure we keep this a place where people can come back and hold a book and just experience the world through paper.”

Spare Time Books is located at 945 12th St. in Paso Robles. It’s open Tuesday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. For more information, visit sparetimebooks.com or call 805-237-1140.