June’s Celebrity Book Club Picks

It’s the beginning of the month which means that Jenna Bush Hager and Reese Witherspoon have picked new books for their book clubs! Reminder that if you join our Best Sellers Club, these titles will automatically be put on hold for you.

Jenna Bush Hager has selected Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Curious what Malibu Rising is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over–especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud–because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own–including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind.

This book is also available in the following format:

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Reese Witherspoon has selected Seven Days in June by Tia Williams.

Curious what Seven Days in June is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

Seven days to fall in love, fifteen years to forget and seven days to get it all back again… From the author of The Perfect Find, this is a witty, romantic, and sexy-as-hell new novel of two writers and their second chance at love.

Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer, who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone’s surprise, shows up in New York.

When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York’s Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can’t deny their chemistry-or the fact that they’ve been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since.

Over the next seven days in the middle of a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect, but Eva’s not sure how she can trust the man who broke her heart, and she needs to get him out of New York so that her life can return to normal. But before Shane disappears again, there are a few questions she needs answered. . .

With its keen observations of Black life and the condition of modern motherhood, as well as the consequences of motherless-ness, Seven Days in June is by turns humorous, warm and deeply sensual.

Want to make sure Reese’s picks are automatically put on hold for you? Be sure to join our Best Sellers Club.

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid is about the four Riva siblings, each famous in their own right, the children of a famous singer who abandoned them and their mother when they were children. This early trauma has created an unbreakable bond between them, a bond that is about to be tested.

Growing up near the beach in Malibu before it became a celebrity hotspot, the brothers and sisters spent as much time in the ocean as on land. They help their Mother run the family restaurant, an unassuming seafood shack that is popular with the locals. When their mother dies, Nina, the oldest, takes on the job of raising the other three, giving up her own dreams until one day she is “discovered” and is thrust into the spotlight when she becomes a model. Her older brother Jay becomes a champion surfer, Hud is a very successful sports photographer and the youngest, Kit, is just about to break through as a champion surfer herself. All of them carry secrets that will affect their lives and could break their family bond and it is all about to come together at Nina’s annual summer party.

The party quickly gets out of hand, with hoards of people (most uninvited), booze and drugs. In the midst of the chaos, the four Riva siblings struggle with their own demons, fight with each other and make up and, finally, come together to do what’s best for each of them.

Taylor Jenkins Reid has an amazing ability to seamlessly sweep the reader into another time and place and immerse them completely. Her most recent books, which include Daisy Jones and the Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, focus on subjects and time periods I’m not usually drawn to but each time I quickly get caught up in the story. The same was true for this one. Beautifully atmospheric of the beach and the ocean and surfing, this is ultimately the story of family and how family can trap you but also set you free.