8 of My Favorite Novels That Have Reese's Book Club Energy

Witherspoon and her team selected Kiley Reid’s best-selling debut novel, Such a Fun Age, as the Reese’s Book Club pick for January 2020, and Reid fans will equally appreciate this provocative story about an R.A., her messy entanglement with a professor and three unruly students. The story begins in 2017 at the University of Arkansas with Millie, a senior R.A., who simply wants to graduate, get a job and buy a house. So when Agatha, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. The only problem? Millie's hustle becomes jeopardized by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks and illicit intrigue. An intimate portrait of desire, consumption and reckless abandon, Come and Get It is about money, indiscretion and bad behavior.

Sweet rom-coms like You Have a Match and The Proposal are another hallmark of Reese’s Book Club, and this one from Lizzy Dent would fit right into the lineup. This one follows Olive, who’s been estranged from her Italian, pseudo-celebrity chef father became estranged for 14 years since another chef, Leo, stepped in as his surrogate son and sous-chef. Olive is shocked to find out that not only has her father left her his beloved, and now failing, restaurant—he’s also made it clear that his dying wish was for Olive and Leo to complete his cookbook together. Olive is determined to sell the restaurant, and Leo wants the opposite. During a month-long trip to Italy to work on the book, the two bicker, test recipes and begin to find their undeniable. Olive wonders whether selling the restaurant is the right thing to do, and if she’s ready to explore the person she’s becoming.

Billed as Parasite meets Such a Fun Age (which we already know Elle Woods Reese Witherspoon loves) this highly anticipated debut novel examines the intersection of race, class and female friendship. After her best friend's mysterious death, Elizabeth’s picture-perfect life is spiraling out of control, to the point where she decides to hire a personal assistant, Brianna. Soon enough, the two begin working together to uncover the truth behind Elizabeth’s friend’s death…because Brianna has questions too. She wants to know why the police killed her young Black son after someone in Elizabeth’s neighborhood called the cops on him. As the two women try to uncover the truth, it becomes clear that neither is what they first appear.

I’ve written about my distaste for Reese’s Book Club pick Where the Crawdads Sing, but I did really enjoy The Wildlands, which shares some common themes with Delia Owens’s controversial novel. When a Category 5 tornado hits Mercy, Oklahoma, the McCloud siblings—Darlene, Tucker, Jane and Cora—lose their house and their father (having already lost their mother). Darlene, the eldest, gives up on her plans for college to look after her siblings, while Tucker abandons his sisters and disappears for three years, returning only after he’s rebranded himself as an eco-terrorist in the wake of a cosmetics factory bombing. Injured from the explosion, Tucker enlists 9-year-old Cora as his caretaker and unwitting accomplice. The two go on the lam, traveling west to carry out Tucker’s plan to wreak havoc on anyone who contributes to the mistreatment of animals. Fast-paced and gripping to the last page, The Wildlands is a fascinating look at the tension between activism and fanaticism and between the human and animal worlds.

Complicated female protagonists are a trademark of a Reese’s Book Club selection, and This Might Hurt truly fits the bill. The thrilling story follows two sisters, Natalie and Kit, who haven’t spoken in months, since Kit discovered Wisewood, a self-help group where guests commit to spending six months off the grid on a private island off the coast of Maine to become their “Maximized Selves.” But when Natalie receives a menacing email from a Wisewood account threatening to reveal the secret she’s been keeping from Kit, she panics and heads to the retreat to come clean and bring Kit home. The issue is, Wisewood won’t let either of them go without a fight.

Here’s another Crawdads-esque novel set in ‘80s Appalachia. In this one, sisters Sheila and Angie couldn’t be more different. Sheila keeps to herself despite relentless bullying from classmates, while her fearless younger sister, Angie, is a fierce daydreamer who uses handmade tarot-like cards for divination and protection. When the brutal murder of two female hikers on the nearby Appalachian Trail stuns their small community, the sisters find themselves tangled in a dangerous game of cat and mouse, and as the threat of violence looms larger, their willingness to trust each other might be the only thing that can save them. Spooky and otherworldly, this debut novel will have you feeling unsettled in the best way possible.

In the sweaty music clubs and late-night house parties of Nashville, an aspiring songwriter tries to make friends, find love and write songs—without losing herself. Alison spends most her time at The Venue, the music bar where she stamps hands at the door. When she can sneak off, she watches the bands, wondering if she’ll ever finish a song of her own after a disastrous attempt to play in public. Then, when a huge storm hits and her lead singer ex-boyfriend shows up at the door, Al finds herself stuck in a perpetual cycle of new flings and old flames. Sexy and compelling, Lo Fi is an ode to the desire to be heard and the messiness of living as a creative, and while a far cry from Witherspoon’s Oscar-winning turn as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line, still a compelling, Southern-set music story.

Ruth Ware (The Woman in Cabin 10) is a master of suspense whose novel The Lying Game was Reese’s Book Club’s August 2017 pick. Her latest is just the type of ultra-tense thriller we’ve come to know and love her for. It begins with Lyla, who is in a rut, between her post-doctoral research fizzling out and things with her boyfriend, aspiring actor Nico, not going great. When Nico gets the opportunity to join the cast of a new reality TV show, One Perfect Couple, she decides to try out with him, and before long they’re whisked off to a tropical paradise, where they’ll compete against four other couples to win a cash prize. On the deserted island, it’s not long before things start to go wrong, and the group must band together for survival. As tensions run high and resources run low, Lyla finds that this game show is all too real—and the stakes are life or death.