Invitation Bookshop

Invitation Bookshop is an independent bookstore at 3119 Judson Street in downtown Gig Harbor, owned by Jason and Allyson Howard, who opened it in September 2020. Allyson taught AP literature for nineteen years and worked for a literary agent before the shop existed, and the name comes from Invitation, the first poem in Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends.

The shelves carry new fiction and nonfiction for every age alongside puzzles, greeting cards, stationery and audiobooks through Libro.fm, and the shop keeps a standing signed copies program with authors including Kendare Blake, Marie Bostwick and Matt Dinniman. Six book clubs meet here, from literary fiction to one devoted entirely to books under two hundred pages, each with a bookseller moderating and no reservation needed.

The shop moved to the waterfront in April 2025, taking the old West Marine space and gaining a dedicated event room and a much larger children's section. Allyson Howard's reason was the location: the waterfront, she said, is the historic and community heart of Gig Harbor. Open Tuesday through Saturday and Sunday afternoons, with Monday hours added in summer.