We’re in for the heist of the year with Reese’s June Book Club Pick, which has been revealed to be Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen. This work of contemporary fiction is about two women who band together to create a designer handbag scheme and transform it into a global enterprise.
You might recognise Kirstin Chen from her other bestselling novels, Bury What We Cannot Take and Soy Sauce For Beginners. All three books share a common trait: they each feature female Asian leads caught in unhappy lives. While her past works have centred on heavy themes including immigration and finding one’s true home, Counterfeit explores the model minority myth and the American Dream.
What is Reese’s Book Club and how does it work?
Each month, Reese and her team of literary lovers choose a female-led read to share with the world. Her book club promises that there’s no formula as to how they choose what the book-of-the-month is and every one is just as spontaneous and different as the last. Their goal? To shed a spotlight on some new voices, authors and perspectives, as well as share the joy of reading with others. Now isn’t that just the most wholesome thing you’ve ever heard?
Reese has been touting her book club for years now, and her delectable tastes have earned the firm stamp of approval from many book lovers around the world.
As you can probably imagine, any book Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club spotlights gets a lot of attention. Her recommendations have put novels such as The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave, Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean and The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse on bestseller lists or a special pedestal inside physical book stores.
We’ll be updating this list every time Reese Witherspoon adds another title to it, so come back next month to find out what that book club pick will be. But without further ado, let’s start piling up some new books on your TBR pile.
Reese Witherspoon’s 2022 Book Club picks
June 2022 Pick – Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen
About the book:
Meet Ava: a rule-abiding lawyer who has ticked all of life’s boxes. She’s married to a successful surgeon and has just taken an indefinite career break to raise her adorable toddler. A picture-perfect life.
Enter Winnie, Ava’s old college roommate. Once awkward, quiet and apparently academically challenged, she left Stanford in a shroud of scandal. But now, she’s charismatic, wealthy and has returned to town dripping in designer accessories. An actual perfect life.
When the two women bump into one another at a local coffee shop, it seems like fate has intervened. Winnie’s newfound success is courtesy of a shady business and she needs a favour, just as Ava realises she’s not built for the stay-at-home life. But when what starts as one favour turns into two, then three. Soon, Ava is in far deeper than she ever imagined and now she has a decision to make: does she stay or cut her losses and run?
Where to buy:
Amazon ($24.41) | Booktopia ($24.95) | QBD ($32.99)
May 2022 Pick — The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
About the book:
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the ‘Scriptorium’, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary.
One day, a slip of paper containing the word “bondmaid” flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, who is a young servant in the house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world.
Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. While she dedicates her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, she secretly begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.
Where to buy:
Amazon ($12) | Booktopia ($17.50) | Big W ($12) | QBD ($14.99)
April 2022 Pick — True Biz by Sara Novic
About the book:
Meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who’s never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school’s golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the headmistress who’s fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both.
As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another — and changed forever.
Where to buy:
Amazon ($24.74) | Booktopia ($26.25) | QBD ($32.99)
March 2022 Pick — The Club by Ellery Lloyd
About the book:
The Home Group is a collection of ultra-exclusive private members’ clubs and a global phenomenon, therefore the opening of its most ambitious project yet — Island Home, a forgotten island transformed into the height of luxury — is billed as the celebrity event of the decade.
But as the first guests arrive, the weekend soon proves deadly — because it turns out that even the most beautiful people can keep the ugliest secrets and, in a world where reputation is everything, they’ll do anything to keep it. So if your name’s on the list, you’re not getting out…
Where to buy:
Amazon ($21.99) | Booktopia ($27.75) | QBD ($34.99)
February 2022 Pick — The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont
About the book:
Agatha Christie’s world is one of glamorous society parties, country house weekends, and growing literary fame.
Nan O’Dea’s world is something very different. Her attempts to escape a tough London upbringing during the Great War led to a life in Ireland marred by a hidden tragedy. After fighting her way back to England, she’s set her sights on Agatha. Because Agatha Christie has something Nan wants. And it’s not just her husband.
Despite their differences, the two women will become the most unlikely of allies. And during the mysterious eleven days that Agatha goes missing, they will unravel a dark secret that only Nan holds the key to.
Where to buy:
Amazon ($35.47) | Booktopia ($26.25) | Big W ($16) | QBD ($22.99)
January 2022 Pick — Honor by Thrity Umrigar
About the book:
Indian-American journalist Smita has returned to India to cover a story, but reluctantly. Long ago, her family left the country with no intention of ever coming back.
As she follows the case of Meena — a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man — Smita comes face-to-face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one’s own heart and a story that threatens to unearth the painful secrets of Smita’s own past.
While Meena’s fate hangs in the balance, Smita tries in every way she can to right the scales. She also finds herself increasingly drawn to Mohan, an Indian man she meets while on assignment. But the dual love stories of Honor are as different as the cultures of Meena and Smita themselves, Smita realises she has the freedom to enter into a casual affair, knowing she can decide later how much it means to her.
Where to buy:
Amazon ($26.25) | Booktopia ($45.95) | QBD ($32.99)
Reese Witherspoon’s 2021 Book Club picks
December 2021 Pick — Lucky by Marissa Stapley
About the book:
Lucky Armstrong is tough, talented and in real trouble. Having just pulled off a million-dollar heist with her boyfriend, she prepares to start a brand new life, complete with new identity, until everything goes sideways.
Then, when Lucky discovers that a lottery ticket she bought on a whim is worth millions, her elation is tempered by one big problem: cashing in the winning ticket means she’ll be arrested for her crimes.
As she tries to avoid capture and make a future for herself, she must find a way to confront her own past and learn what it means to be independent and honest before her luck runs out.
Where to buy:
Amazon ($25.40) | Booktopia ($26.25) | QBD ($32.99)
November 2021 Pick — The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
About the book:
Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. The taverna is the only place that Kostas and Defne can meet in secret, where in its centre grows a fig tree.
The fig tree witnesses their hushed, happy meetings as well as their silent, surreptitious departures. The fig tree is there, too, when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns — a botanist, looking for native species — looking for Defne. The two lovers return to the taverna to take a clipping from the fig tree and smuggle it into their suitcase, bound for London.
Years later, the fig tree in the garden is their daughter Ada’s only knowledge of a home she has never visited, as she seeks to untangle years of secrets and silence, and find her place in the world.
Where to buy:
Amazon ($20.99) | Booktopia ($19.80) | QBD ($22.99)
October 2021 Pick — Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo
About the book:
Anna is at a stage of her life when she’s beginning to wonder who she really is. She has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up, and her mother — the only parent who raised her — is dead.
Searching through her mother’s belongings, she finds clues about the West African father she never knew. Through reading his student diary, chronicling his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London, she discovers that he eventually became the president (some would say the dictator) of a small nation in West Africa and he is still alive.
She decides to track him down and so begins a funny, painful, fascinating journey, and an exploration of race, identity and what we pass on to our children.
Where to buy:
Amazon ($22.95) | Booktopia ($22.95) | QBD ($22.99)
September 2021 Pick — L.A. Weather by Maria Amparo Escandon
About the book:
L.A. is dry as a bone and all Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants is a little rain.
He’s harbouring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage.
Their three daughters ― Claudia, a television chef with a hard-hearted attitude; Olivia, a successful architect who suffers from gentrification guilt; and Patricia, a social media wizard who has an uncanny knack for connecting with audiences but not with her lovers ― are blindsided by the decision and left questioning everything they know.
Where to buy:
Amazon ($37.10)
August 2021 Pick — We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz
About the book:
On holiday in Chile with her best friend Kristen, Emily is having the time of her life. Until, one night, she finds their hotel suite covered in blood.
Kristen claims a backpacker attacked her. She shouted, but no one heard. She struggled, but he was too strong. She had no option but to kill him. And with no evidence of the assault, Emily must help her hide the body.
Emily tries to move on. But before long, the walls start to close in on their cover-up and Emily asks herself — can she really trust her closest friend?
Where to buy:
Amazon ($20.15) | Booktopia ($26.25) | QBD ($32.99)
If you want to stay up-to-date with Reese’s Book Club, you can check out her Instagram or through her app to receive a club card, access to a calendar of events and more. You can download the app from the Apple Store or Play Store here and it’s completely free.
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