December 2023 Book Club Picks!
This has been quite an impressive year in books! The most well-known book clubs have been making stellar selections and they did not disappoint with the final month of 2023. Which one of these enticing stories would you choose? They would also make great holiday gifts for the readers in your life!
Read with Jenna Book Club
We Must Not Think of Ourselves by Lauren Grodstein
Inspired by a little-known piece of history—the underground group that kept an archive to ensure that the lives of Jewish occupants of the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II were not lost to history—this is a heart-wrenching novel of love and defiance that People calls "gripping, emotional, and against all odds, hopeful."
“This book is a masterpiece: profound, gripping, urgent, and beautiful.” —Madeline Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Circe and The Song of Achilles
On a November day in 1940, Adam Paskow becomes a prisoner in the Warsaw Ghetto, where the Jews of the city are cut off from their former lives and held captive by Nazi guards to await an uncertain fate. Weeks later, he is approached by a mysterious figure with a surprising request: Would he join a secret group of archivists working to preserve the truth of what is happening inside these walls?
Adam agrees and begins taking testimonies from his students, friends, and neighbors. He learns about their childhoods and their daydreams, their passions and their fears, their desperate strategies for safety and survival. The stories form a portrait of endurance in a world where no choices are good ones.
One of the people Adam interviews is his flatmate Sala Wiskoff, who is stoic, determined, and funny—and married with two children. Over the months of their confinement, in the presence of her family, Adam and Sala fall in love. As they desperately carve out intimacy, their relationship feels both impossible and vital, their connection keeping them alive.
But when Adam discovers a possible escape from the Ghetto, he is faced with an unbearable choice: whom can he save, and at what cost ?
Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club
Before We Were Innocent by Ella Berman
A summer in Greece for three best friends ends in the unthinkable when only two return home. . . .
Ten years ago, after a sun-soaked summer spent in Greece, best friends Bess and Joni were cleared of having any involvement in their friend Evangeline’s death. But that didn’t stop the media from ripping apart their teenage lives like vultures.
While the girls were never convicted, Joni, ever the opportunist, capitalized on her newfound infamy to become a motivational speaker. Bess, on the other hand, resolved to make her life as small and controlled as possible so she wouldn’t risk losing everything all over again. And it almost worked. . . .
Except now Joni needs a favor, and when she turns up at her old friend's doorstep asking for an alibi, Bess has no choice but to say yes. She still owes her. But as the two friends try desperately to shake off their past, they have to face reality.
Can you ever be an innocent woman when everyone wants you to be guilty?
Inside Scoop:
OPTIONED FOR TV by a major media company
READ WITH JENNA: Ella's first novel, The Comeback, was a Read with Jenna book club pick (Berkley's first!) and garnered wall-to-wall praise from media and readers alike
A STARTLING VOICE: While there is a mystery at the center of this story, it's Ella's voice, insights, and characters that emotioanlly propel the novel and pull the reader in
PUBLICITY/MARKETING POWERHOUSE: After a stint running social media for Sony, Ella now owns and operates mega t-shirt line London Loves LA (worn by the likes of Harry Styles, Hailey Bieber, Ellie Goulding, and Haim) and will be a major asset for media campaigns and outreach
Good Housekeeping’s Book Club
Welcome Home, Stranger by Kate Christensen
From the PEN-Faulkner Award-winning author of The Great Man comes a novel about grief, love, growing older, and the complications of family that is the story of a fifty-something woman who goes home—reluctantly—to Maine after the death of her mother.
“Christensen is a forceful writer whose . . . prose is visceral and poetic. . . . She is a portrait artist, drawing in miniature, capturing the light within.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Can you ever truly go home again?
An environmental journalist in Washington, DC, Rachel has shunned her New England working-class family for years. Divorced and childless in her middle age, she’s a true independent spirit with the pain and experience to prove it. Coping with challenges large and small, she thinks her life is in free fall–until she’s summoned home to deal with the aftermath of her mother’s death.
Then things really fall apart.
Surrounded by a cast of sometimes comic, sometimes heartbreakingly serious characters—an arriviste sister, an alcoholic brother-in-law and, most importantly, the love of her life recently married to the sister’s best friend–Rachel must come to terms with her past, the sorrow she has long buried, and the ghost of the mother who, for better and worse, made her the woman she is.
Lively, witty, and painfully familiar, this sophisticated and emotionally resonant novel from the author of The Great Man holds a mirror up to modern life as it considers the way some of us must carry on now.
Good Morning America Book Club
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
GMA BOOK CLUB PICK • AN NPR BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia and Code Name Hélène comes a gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.
"Fans of Outlander’s Claire Fraser will enjoy Lawhon’s Martha, who is brave and outspoken when it comes to protecting the innocent. . . impressive."—The Washington Post
"Once again, Lawhon works storytelling magic with a real-life heroine." —People Magazine
Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.
Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.
Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.
Inside Scoop:
DIANA GABALDON MEETS LOUISE PENNY: Two of Ariel’s favorite series are INSPECTOR GAMACHE and OUTLANDER, and with this novel she set out to combine them. An immersive, intensively researched early American setting, with a too-bold-for-her-time woman healer at the center, and a murder mystery confined to a small town, full of suspicious characters and smart twists and turns.
FAMILY STORY: This book is Ariel’s ode to motherhood and marriage. She wanted to write about the intensity and enormity of childbirth and raising a family, as well as to portray a loving marriage over time, which she feels we don’t see often enough in fiction.
BRAND LIKE BOHJALIAN: Ariel has officially found her niche. She breathes new life into badass women who got short shrift in history, amplifying an element of mystery or suspense that already exists in their stories. And while paperback is where she always shines, her HC numbers have gone up with every book. We should be able to turn her into our next Chris Bohjalian.
REAL-LIFE CASES: Both the murder and the rape this story is based on are real. The ensuing rape trial was one of only ten rape trials to take place in Maine in the entirety of the 18th century and provides book club discussion–worthy insight into the social standing of women in this time period, as well as the realities of vigilante justice.
Marie Claire’s Book Club
Alice Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakely-Cartwright
“Obsessed!” —Chloë Sevigny
“I am literally obsessed.” —Busy Philipps
A hypnotic, sexy, and incisive debut adult novel following one woman’s affair with her daughter’s best friend that tests the limits of love and ambition from #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Riding Hood.
It’s opening night, but Alice’s performance in the local Bay Area production of The Winter’s Tale is far from glamorous. She doesn’t have dreams of stardom, but the basement theater in a wildfire-choked town isn’t exactly what she envisioned for her career back home in Los Angeles. To make matters worse, her best friend Sadie is not even coming.
Pragmatic, serious Sadie and flighty, creative Alice have been best friends since high school—really one another’s only friends—but now that they are through with college (which they attended together) and living on opposite ends of California, Alice would at least expect her friend’s support. Sadie, determined not to cancel her plans with her boyfriend, ends up enlisting the help of her mother, Celine.
A professor of women’s and gender studies at UC Berkeley, Celine’s landmark treatise on sex and identity made her notorious, but she’s struggling to write her new book in a post-second-wave feminist world. So, when Sadie begs her to attend Alice’s play, she relents, if only to escape writer’s block. But in a turn of perplexing events, Celine becomes entranced by Alice’s performance and realizes that her daughter’s once lanky, slightly annoying best friend is now an irresistible young woman.
Set over the course of decades—from Alice and Sadie’s early friendship days and Celine’s decision to leave her husband to the radical movements of 1990s Berkeley and navigating contemporary Hollywood—Alice and Celine’s affair will test the limits of their love for Sadie and their own beliefs of power, agency, and feminism. Witty and relatable, sexy and surprising, Sarah Blakley-Cartwright’s debut adult novel is a mesmerizing portrait of the inner lives of three very different women.
Target Book Club
The Last Love Note by Emma Grey
A December Indie Next Pick
A Book of the Month Selection
A Washington Post Noteworthy Book
You may never stop loving the one you lost. But you can still find love again.
Kate is a bit of a mess. Two years after losing her young husband Cameron, she’s grieving, solo parenting, working like mad at her university fundraising job, always dropping the ball—and yet clinging to her sense of humor.
Lurching from one comedic crisis to the next, she also navigates an overbearing mom and a Tinder-obsessed best friend who's determined to matchmake Kate with her hot new neighbor.
When an in-flight problem leaves Kate and her boss, Hugh, stranded for a weekend on the east coast of Australia, she finally has a chance, away from her son, to really process her grief and see what’s right in front of her. Can she let go of the love of her life and risk her heart a second time? When it becomes clear that Hugh is hiding a secret, Kate turns to the trail of scribbled notes she once used to hold her life together.
The first note captured her heart. Will the last note set it free?
The Last Love Note will make readers laugh, cry, and renew their faith in the resilience of the human heart—and in love itself.
Inside Scoop:
ALREADY AN INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING EVENT: Just published in Australia to overwhelming reader praise, media attention, and extraordinary reviews from booksellers and publications alike: "Funny, heart-breaking and life-affirming" (Woman's Day). "The novel is passionate and soulful, heartbreaking and heartwarming. The Last Love Note serves as a reminder that it really is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all," says Bodhi Byles of Books + Publishing. The Last Love Note is already generating significant film interest.
AUTHOR CAPTURES "REAL LIFE, MESSY, NUMBING GRIEF": The author, a widowed mother at age 42, articulates the devastating rawness of grief while offering a life-affirming commitment to hope and romance. This is a voice-driven novel about reinvention, getting through the worst, leaning on new people, and being a mom through it all. From Goodreads: "Oh my! Wow, wow! What a brilliant book... the most funny, enjoyable, earth-shattering, heartbreaking, heartwarming rom-com based in truth imaginable."
MESSAGE AND STORY THAT RESONATES WITH BOOK CLUBS: Readers will root for the main character from page one, through her ups and downs (and often hilarious debacles). They're rallying around the book's core message of living life to the fullest amid the curveballs that are thrown your way. It will appeal to lovers of rom-com fiction, but it's so much deeper. This is smart, funny women's fiction at its finest.
EXPERIENCED LIFE COACH: Grey has worked with women for nearly two decades, helping them to reinvent themselves and make the most of their lives, even when they face big challenges. These conversations and transformations have helped her craft a story that speaks to the heart of reconnecting with life after loss.
AN ANTICIPATED DEBUT: This is Grey's American debut and first adult novel after YA books Tilly Maguire and the Royal Wedding Mess, Wits' End Before Breakfast!: Confessions of a Working Mum, and Unrequited: Boy Band Meets Girl.
PERFECT FOR READERS of Helen Fieldings's Bridget Jones's Diary, Jojo Moyes's Me Before You, Cecelia Ahern's P.S. I Love You, Katherine Center's The Lost Husband, and fans of Maria Semple, Marian Keyes, and Jennifer Weiner.
I think the December selections from our favorite book clubs all sound fantastic!