4 Reese's Book Club Books That Will Make You Ugly Cry

Jojo Moyes is well-known for writing tearjerkers like Me Before You, and The Giver of Stars is no different. In it, Alice marries the handsome Bennett, hoping to escape her life in England. But small-town Kentucky is equally claustrophobic, so when she gets the chance to join a team of women delivering books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, she signs on enthusiastically. What happens to her group of five women becomes an unforgettable drama of loyalty, justice, humanity and passion. Though these heroic women face all kinds of dangers, they’re committed to their job: bringing books to people who have never had any. Based on a true story, The Giver of Stars is a funny, heartbreaking and fascinating story about women’s friendship and love.

This moving memoir begins with a charming courtship between hopelessly attracted opposites: Heather, a travel-loving California girl, and Brian, a homebody writer loath to leave his Upper West Side studio. Their magical interlude ends, however, when Heather finds out she’s pregnant, and Brian is sure he doesn't want kids. Heather returns to California to deliver their daughter alone, and is devastated when, a few hours after she’s born, a nurse wakes her and tells her the baby is in trouble. This is not how Heather had imagined new motherhood. When Brian reappears as their daughter’s condition grows dire, Heather and Brian have to decide what they are willing to risk to ensure she sees adulthood. Happiness is about love, the passion a parent has for a child and the many unlikely ways to build a family.

It’s 1943, and for four years, 16-year-old Stefania has been happily working for the Diamant family in their grocery store in Poland. Everything changes when the German army invades the town, the Diamants are forced into the ghetto and Stefania is alone in an occupied city taking care of her 6-year-old sister. Then comes a knock at the door: One of the Diamant sons has jumped from the train headed to a death camp, and Stefania makes the decision to hide him and eventually twelve more people. Based on a remarkable true story, The Light in Hidden Places centers on courage, humanity and somehow hope.

Set in a dystopian near future, Celeste Ng’s (Little Fires Everywhere) October 2022 novel centers on 12-year-old Bird, who lives with his father. His mother, a Chinese American poet, vanished without a trace three years earlier. Out of the blue, Bird receives a mysterious letter that he knows is from his mother, and sets off to find her. It’s a dangerous mission, but Bird’s resolve is unflappable. Traveling to New York City, he connects with an underground network of librarians dedicated to rescuing disappeared books that went against the xenophobic act. Bird is wise beyond his years, holding little to no resentment toward his mother for leaving and maintaining a modicum of hope that they’ll be a regular family again someday. Cue the waterworks.