What We’ve Been Reading In Our Book Clubs

I’ve been writing about book clubs for BR for years and only just thought to mine the treasure trove that is our collection of writers for tea on what different book clubs are reading. It is, as you might have guessed, an interesting thing to see. Many books are released every year, so it’s no surprise that book clubs are going to choose different titles from each other, though I did notice something looking at these book clubs compared to the more advertised ones I usually cover.

The main difference is the publication dates. The book club picks shared below by some of our writers are all backlist titles, which is very different from the mostly new picks that most online/celebrity book clubs decide on. Reaching back can be a nice change of pace from what can seem like a frontlist obsession.

If you’re curious to see what we’ve been reading in our book clubs, the titles below have everything from romance to dystopian realities and epic fantasy.

Read by Book Riot Editor Danika Ellis

Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah This was one of thee books of 2023…and 2024 if we’re being honest. And it’s actually still that girl in 2025. It’s also still pretty popular among book clubs. This National Book Award finalist comes from the author of Friday Black, and tells the bloody story of Loretta Thurwar and “Hurricane Staxxx,” two women who are friends, lovers, and popular Chain-Gang All-Stars. As All-Stars, they’ve fought against other prisoners in lethal battles to win shortened sentences through a highly contested program that’s run through the controversial Criminal Action Penal Entertainment organization in a (not so) alternative United States. Loretta nears the day she’ll finally be free, but the burden of all she’s done — and still has to do — weighs heavily on her in this damning look at America’s prison industrial complex and culture of violence.

Read by Book Riot Writer CJ Connor

The Fellowship Of The Ring For the book club Andy Minshew (CJ Connor) runs, their latest read is Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, which, for the uninitiated, is the first in the classic fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings.

Read by Me

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton This multi award-winning nonfiction account Black American history details the rich history of Black transpeople, especially how they have been cut out of the narrative of trans and queer history. By using the narratives of enslaved people seeking freedom, Afro-modernist literature, journalism, and other sources, Snorton shows just how much race has determined how topics like queerness and gender have been represented.

Suggestion Section

Book Club Tings:

A printable list of book club-friendly questions

More To Read

• Erin and Dani’s Indigenous Reading Circle: Sisters of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina
• Service95 (Dua Lipa): Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter

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**Below is a list of 10 book club-friendly books for All Access members**

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The following comes to you from the Editorial Desk.

This week, we’re highlighting a post that had our Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz feeling a type of way. Now, even five years after it was published, Vanessa is still salty about American Dirt. Read on for an excerpt and become an All Access member to unlock the full post.

Picture it: The United States, January 2020. A book with a pretty blue and white cover is making the rounds on the bookish internet. The blue ink forms a beautiful hummingbird motif against a creamy background, a bird associated with the sun god Huitzilopochtli in Aztec mythology. Black barbed wire, at once delicate and menacing, cuts the pattern into a grid resembling an arrangement of Talavera tiles. The package is eye-catching, ostensibly Mexican in feel, and evocative of borders and the migrant experience. 

The book tells the story of a bookstore owner in Acapulco, Mexico, who is forced to flee her home when a drug cartel murders everyone in her family except for her young son at a quinceañera. She and the boy are forced to become migrants and embark on a treacherous journey north to the U.S. border, evading the cartel and befriending fellow migrants along the way. The book is being lauded not just as the “it” book of the season but as the immigration story. It gets the Oprah treatment and is praised by everyone from Salma Hayek to the great Sandra Cisneros, who called it “the great novel of Las Américas.” 

It’s been over five years, and this book is still the bane of my existence.

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