The hardest part of picking a book club book isn't finding a good book. It's finding a good book that will work foryour specific group of people, with your specific mix of reading habits, attention spans, genre preferences, and willingness to engage in an argument on a Wednesday night.
This list is organized by group type, not by quality. All of these books are worth reading. But some of them are worth reading withthese particular people.
If your friends loved Fourth Wing
The romantasy train is not slowing down, and if your group devouredFourth Wingand has been in a dragon-shaped hole ever since, here's where to go next.
The third book in the Empyrean series, and the one your group was already going to read anyway — so you may as well make it official.Onyx Stormsold 2.7 million copies in its first week, which is either extremely impressive or a sign of the apocalypse depending on who you ask. It's big, it's propulsive, it ends on a cliffhanger, and the group will have a lot to say. Especially the member who went in skeptical and now can't stop talking about it.
If even one person in your group hasn't read this yet, this is the year. ACOTAR is the book that launched a thousand romantasy obsessions, and it reads differently as a group — the Beauty and the Beast bones are easy to see, the pacing choices are easier to discuss, and the moment the series reveals what it actually is (around book two) gives everyone something to argue about. Start here, though. Do not start in the middle.
The bridge pick — for the member of your group who loves the romance and enemies-to-lovers tension but could do without the dragon wars. Two rival journalists in a world where the gods are waking up write letters to each other anonymously. It's quieter thanFourth Wing, it's more literary than most of what's in this section, and it's the rare romantasy with something genuinely interesting to say about writing and ambition. The whole duology is already published, so no waiting.
One of the best books of 2025
These two landed at the top of nearly every serious year-end list. Both are worth doing the reading.
The Nobel Prize winner's latest novel arrived in English translation in early 2025, and it deserved every word of praise it got. A woman travels through a snowstorm to a friend's empty house to save a bird — and finds herself descending into the history of a massacre that shaped her friend's family across generations. Han Kang writes about historical trauma with a delicacy that is almost unbearable. This is an NYT Top 10 book of the year, and it's under 250 pages. If your group wants something that will stay with them, this is the one.
Adichie's first novel in over a decade, and the one people couldn't stop talking about all year. Four Nigerian women — a travel writer in America, her lawyer best friend, a cousin in Lagos, her housekeeper — whose stories braid together around questions of love, choice, and what we owe each other. It's the kind of book that generates real conversation because everyone will read these four women differently, disagree about who made the right decisions, and be a little bit right. A perfect book club book in the truest sense.
If your friends can only handle short books
Everyone has at least one member in the group with an impossible reading schedule. These are for them — and they're good enough that no one will feel like they compromised.
The shortest and most devastating book on this entire list. An atheist woman, burnt out and at a loss, takes refuge in a small Australian religious community — not joining, exactly, just inhabiting it for a while. Then three things happen: a mouse plague, the return of a murdered nun's remains, and a visitor from the narrator's past. The Washington Post called it extraordinary. The NYT put it in its top ten. It's barely 200 pages and it will wreck your group in the most productive way — because it asks what it means to be good, and nobody agrees on the answer.
Two brothers who don't get along are both, separately, in complicated love. Their father just died. Rooney is doing something more ambitious here than she's done before — the chapters alternate between tight, controlled literary prose and something closer to free indirect thought — and the book is genuinely about grief in a way her earlier work isn't. It runs about 450 pages, which sounds like a lot, but it reads very fast. If you have members who've resisted Rooney before, this one is worth another try.
If your group wants something to actually argue about
Not every book club meeting needs to end in harmony. These two generated more disagreement per page than almost anything published in the last two years.
A semifamous artist in her mid-forties leaves LA to drive cross-country, gets twenty minutes out of town, exits the freeway, and checks into a motel. What follows is one of the most genuinely strange and divisive novels of 2024 — a book about desire, perimenopause, identity, and what it means to want a different life when you're not sure you're allowed to want it. The New York Times put it in its top ten. A lot of readers found it self-indulgent. Both reactions are defensible, and the argument between them is exactly why you should assign it. Come prepared to discuss whether the narrator is sympathetic, brave, or both.
The 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner: a retelling ofThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finnfrom Jim's point of view, written with Everett's characteristic wit and fury. The questions it raises — about the original novel's legacy, about who gets to rewrite the canon, about what "harrowing and ferociously funny" means when the subject is slavery — generate real, necessary disagreement. Some readers find it brilliant. Some find it too satisfied with itself. The group that's readHuckleberry Finnwill have a different experience than the one that hasn't, and that's worth knowing going in.
If your group burned out on literary fiction and needs a palate cleanser
Not every book needs to be a Booker finalist. Sometimes you just need a book everyone will finish and want to talk about.
A woman arrives alone at a Newport hotel — the same hotel where a large wedding is about to happen — and her life is interrupted in ways she didn't expect. Funny, warm, and sharper than it looks, this was one of the most loved books of 2024-2025, the kind of novel that passes between friends with a note that says "just read it." Not challenging in the literary sense, but genuinely good — and the group will enjoy it.
A note on format
A few practical things your book club might consider this year:Intermezzohas a read-aloud passage near the end that works beautifully in a group setting.Stone Yard Devotionalpairs well with a short supplementary read about the real monastic community Wood drew on.Dream Counthas an author's note at the back that's worth discussing alongside the novel itself — Adichie explains her intentions clearly, which is either generous or a little too much depending on your group's preferences.
And if you're just getting started with romantasy and want to understand what all theFourth Wingnoise has been about:A Court of Thorns and Rosesfirst, thenDivine Rivals, then decide whether you want to go full Empyrean.
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