7 Great Picks For Your Next Book Club Read

What makes a great summer book club read?

An immersive setting, characters that you can’t help but root for (or love to hate!) and a story that you simply must talk to someone about (as much as you discussed the final series of Games of Thrones) are all top of our list when looking for our next selection. Thought-provoking and page turning in equal measure, these timeless fiction and non-fiction titles by female authors will all make brilliant book club picks. Grab a copy from book stores around Hong Kong, online from Book Depository or check out your local library.

Read more: How To Start Your Own Book Club

Atmospheric, vivid and evocative, The Dry instantly transports you to the book’s dusty, drought-stricken Australian setting. A gripping story about a small town with big secrets, this thrilling mystery novel will make for a compelling book club conversation starter.

A book about race in America, the failings of the justice system and what happens to the lives of those who fall between its fault lines. An American Marriage is as unputdownable as it is heartbreaking. Through the story of newlyweds Celestial and Roy, whose lives are turned upside down when Roy is wrongfully convicted of rape, Tayari Jones offers a gripping portrayal of the black middle-class experience in modern America.

Inspired by the author’s chance discovery of an old Stevie Nicks performance while watching MTV as a child, one Sassy Mama team member described Daisy Jones and the Six as a “read in one sitting” book. Taylor Jenkins Reid’s fictional imagining of the rise and fall of one of the biggest bands of the 1970s reads like a memoir; so much so that you’ll have to keep reminding yourself the book is a work of fiction.

Eleanor Oliphant’s carefully timetabled and exceptionally orderly life is completely and utterly fine. Or is it? Gail Honeyman’s debut novel has been one of the most talked about books of the last few years, and with a film in the works from the team that adapted Gone Girl for the big screen, now is the perfect time to read this heartwarming story of a social misfit who discovers that getting out of your comfort zone can completely turn your life upside down.

Exploring the complexities of parenthood, race and identity in suburban America in the 1990s, Celeste Ng takes the reader to her hometown of Shaker Heights in Ohio in her gripping second novel. Described by Ng as a book about “race and class and privilege”, Little Fires Everywhere turns the lens onto the biases that run through a progressive and prosperous Ohio suburb and the impact that these biases can have on everyone in the town.

The bestselling memoir from one of the most accomplished and scrutinised women of our generation will give you hours of conversation starters. Charting her life story, from her childhood in Chicago and her struggle to balance career and motherhood, to becoming the First Lady of America and joining James Corden for Carpool Karaoke, Michelle Obama’s candid and personal memoir is inspiring, compelling, and also just a really great read.

A copy of Educated quickly made its way around the Sassy Mama office after it was published in Spring 2018 and it feels like we’re still talking about this book a year later! As she tells the extraordinary story of how she left behind her volatile childhood at the hands of her fundamentalist survivalist parents to study first at Harvard and then Cambridge University, Tara Westover’s resilience, unswerving drive and grace shine through in this stranger than fiction memoir.

Read more: Best Books For Summer: Beach Reads We Think You’ll Love