The Full Read With Jenna Book List (Rated!)

Good Material, Dolly Alderton

• Recommended: February ’24
• Rated: 4.15

Andy’s life is spinning out of control. He’s a part-time amateur comedian who, at 35, is experiencing a serious failure to launch. He’s obsessed with figuring out the demise of his relationship with his long-term girlfriend, Jen. He had thought everything was perfect.

It wasn’t.

The first section of the book is from Andy’s POV and then it switches to Jen. Alderton’s writing style brings a lot of humor, empathy and insight in their relationship.

The Waters, Bonnie Jo Campbell

• Recommended: January ’24
• Rating: 3.51

The book is a character study of three sisters, one of the women’s daughter, and the domineering legend of a matriarch who looms large not only over her offspring, but over the neighboring town as well. The matriarch “Herself” is the town healer. The town doesn’t like her…but they also can’t do without her.

The book is set in Michigan, but reads like Southern noir with a swamp, some snakes, suspicions, dark doings and grudges.

We Must Not Think of Ourselves, Lauren Grodstein

• Recommended: December ’23
• Rating: 4.19

Adam Paskow, an English teacher, stuck in the Warsaw Ghetto is asked to chronicle the stories of his neighbors, friends and acquaintances. He captures heartbreaking stories of what the Jews in the ghetto have lost and what they need to do to survive.

There are moments of resilience and joy, but the book is also a brutally honest, factual and informative story for those interested interested in Holocaust literature

The Sun Sets in Singapore, Kahinde Fadipe

• Recommended: November ’23
• Ratings: 3.41

Singapore’s multicultural ex-pat scene get a full examination in Fadipe’s story about three women (and one dude), all with Nigerian heritage. Singapore is a pretty lux city, but in this story, Dara, Amika and Lillian are each struggling to make it work there. The story explores their relationships, family struggles, finances, jobs, and insecurities with empathy and a dash of drama.

How to Say Babylon, Safiya Sinclair

• Recommended: October ’23
• Ratings: 4.50

In the Old Testament, Babylon was a symbol of worldliness and corruption, a prison for unclean and immoral spirits. In Sinclair’s strict Rastafarian household, it was the bogeyman around which her tyrannical father built a terrifying patriarchal hell that revered obedience above all else.

In this memoir, Sinclair shares how she came of age under these hardships and how she rose above them to gain education and acclaim as a poet.

Summer Sisters, Judy Blume

• Recommended: August ’23
• Ratings: 3.9

Occasionally, Jenna’s book club will do a throwback to a book published in the before-time, and she’s done it again this month. Following on the heels of the Is That You God, It’s Me Margaret movie, Jenna has resurfaces one of Blume’s fun summer beach reads.

This coming of age story begins in the 1970s in Martha’s Vineyard. The story follows two friends, Victoria and Caitlin, over the course of several years. It’s full of flings, fraught friendship dynamics, humor and some bittersweet heartache.

Banyan Moon, Thao Thai

• Recommended: July ’23
• Ratings: 3.95

This sweeping family drama follows a fraught mother/daughter dynamic playing out against the backdrop of a crumbling gothic pile of a house, the death of the family matriarch and some dark family secrets.

As Ann and her mother Huong grieve the passing of Minh, they also have to examine their estrangement, find a way to move on from their (difficult) past relationship, to move forward in their individual lives

All three characters narrate their own backstory, which includes Minh’s migration from Vietnam and Huang’s upbringing.

The book is emotional, poignant and is great for fans of Pachinko.

The Celebrants, Steven Rowley

• Recommended: June ’23
• Ratings: 3.7

This book is billed as a modern retelling of “The Bill Chill”. It’s been 28 years since these friends have graduated college and they’re are due for their semi-regular retreat to Big Sur, where they re-commit to one another, help each other through life’s pains and also remember their friend who died too young.

This year, one of the friends is bringing a sobering diagnosis, which forces the group to face their own mortality and the fragility of their connections. This sharp-witted book is suffused with joy, compassion and sadness.

Chain Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

• Recommended: May ’23
• Ratings: 4.15

Adjei-Brenyah’s world imagines a future American prison system with a strong profit motive. The prisons have the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment (or CAPE) system which puts on gladiatorial fights to the death…for entertainment. Prisoners participating in (and surviving ) these gruesome contests can earn an commuted sentences.

Reviews are likening the book to the Hunger Games meets Russell Crowe’s Gladiator meets any movie by Jason Statham meets Squid Games. The book has strong world-building and razer sharp social commentary. But it’s also leavened with love, remorse, atonement, and hope from the various characters.

Read it for book club and use our Chain Gang All-Stars reading guide.

Camp Zero, Michelle Min Sterling

• Recommended: April ’23
• Ratings: 3.22

The world in this dystopic novel looks much like our own. Our own that is if we don’t take climate change more seriously. In far northern Canada, Americans have created a small camp to try and stake out a space for their citizens as the world warms. In the first of three narrative threads, Rose is seeking a place for her grandmother (and she’s also agreed to spy upon what the architect is up to in Camp Zero). Grant, a professor, is fleeing some dark family doings. And the women of White Alice are working a climate station.

The book marries the three threads together with book’s themes of societal disarray, desperation and the ever widen gap between the haves and have nots.

And if you like climate fiction, check out our whole list of Cli-Fi books.

Black Candle Women, Diane Marie

• Recommended: March ’23
• Ratings: 3.39

Four generations of Montrose women are living together under one roof, with their tinctures and their magic. And the youngest, Nickie, has just brought a boy home for the first time. But here’s the hitch– there’s been a lot of lying, sneaking and secrets in this house and one of those secrets is a curse looming over these women guaranteeing that whoever they fall in love with will die.

Author Diane Marie plucks at those secrets threads by toggling between modern day California and a voodoo shop in 1950’s New Orleans.

Maame, Jessica George

• Recommended: February ’23
• Ratings: 4.10

London-based Maddie’s overbearing mother spends huge chunks of time in her native Ghana, leaving Maddie to care for her very ill father. Her brother is MIA and her father’s Parkinson’s care requires a lot of emotional and financial resources, which Maddie handles from the insecure position of a cruddy admin job.

And yet despite these responsibilities, Maddie is naïve and inexperienced when is comes to being a young professional woman in the city. When her mom returns from Ghana, Maddie takes the opportunity to move-out, get a better job and start experiencing new friendships, romances and adulting.

Then a tragic event shakes her up and once again she needs to rethink things. This book offers a touching look at grief, dysfunctional family relationships, being the only Black face at work, and the hard work of finding happiness.

Here’s our Maame book club discussion guide.

Sam, Alegra Goodman

• Recommended: January ’23
• Ratings: 3.78

This bildungsroman asks the question “What happens to a child’s sense of joy and belonging–her belief in herself–as she grows up?”

The book follows the titular Sam as she grows up from the ages of 7-19. Her dad is more absent than present and her mom is struggling to to keep the household together. Sam develops a passion for climbing, but she’s also torn between what she wants and meeting the expectations that others have for her. This is a character-driven coming of age story which explores themes of acceptance and discovering your path.

The Secret History, Donna Tartt

• Recommended: December ’22
• Ratings: 4.17

Jenna tossed us a throwback to the early ’90’s with this classic book by Tartt. It’s a dark academia story that follows six students at Hampden College in Vermont. They come under the thrall of Professor Morrow, who teaches the Greek Classics. As they get further steeped into the classics, they attempt to commune with Dionysus by performing a Bacchanal. Things go terribly wrong and a death occurs.

The book is stuffed with secrets, race/class/culture dynamics, lies, blackmail, longing and jealousy.

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”

Shivers!

If you’ve already read and loved this one, we’ve also got a list of books similar to The Secret History.

The Cloisters, Katy Hayes

• Recommended: November ’22
• Ratings: 3.53

Dusty old museum (check). Renaissance occult obsessions (check). Darkly gothic academia (check, check, check).

When Ann is offered the opportunity to work the summer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she’s thrilled. But then she gets assigned to the dark corners of The Cloisters, which is a museum deep in the Bronx housing a medieval art collection and some arcane research on divination. Ann begins working with one of the researchers to put together an exhibit on divination and they uncover a mysterious deck of Tarot cards. Mystery and mayhem ensue.

A slow burn thriller ensues features a dangerous game of power, seduction, lies and ambition.

The Whalebone Theatre, Joanna Quinn

• Recommended: October ’22
• Ratings: 4.09

When a whale washes up on the shores of Dorset, England, Cristabel makes the most of it by turning the skeleton into a magical theatre. Her landowning family is partial to collecting bohemian hangers-on. And this motley crew of eccentrics help to shape Cristabel into a headstrong, independent young woman. When WWII breaks out, Cristabel and her siblings get drawn in in different ways and she finds herself doing clandestine work.

The book strikes a chord with vivid characters, a caring sibling story and coming of age at a difficult time.