Every book club has lived through the same evening: someone picks a book with total confidence, everyone reads it out of loyalty, and then the whole group sits there in awkward silence because there is nothing good to say about it. The wrong pick does not just waste a month of reading — it drains the fun out of the night itself. The right pick does the opposite. It gives everyone something to argue about, laugh about, and remember, and the conversation runs long because nobody wants to leave.
That is why this list is split in two. The first eight are the books that reliably make a great group read: strong stories, big themes, and plenty to talk about. The last six are the ones to think twice about before assigning them to a whole group — not because they are bad books, but because they tend to fall flat in a room full of people. If your group loves a seriously big read, you will also enjoy our 9 epic long books to read this winter.
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The Best: 8 Books Your Book Club Will Actually Love
1. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
Some books feel like they were written for a cosy autumn evening, and this one is at the top of that list. It follows two sisters, Sally and Gillian Owens, who grow up in a small Massachusetts town where their family has been whispered about as witches for generations. A family curse, a bad love spell, and a lifetime of trying to outrun magic they never asked for — the story has warmth, heartbreak, and a thread of humour running through it all. The themes are generous: sisterhood, forgiveness, and learning to stop apologising for who you are. It is the kind of book where half the group will be talking about the romance and the other half about the curse, and both sides will be right.
2. The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki
This gentle Japanese novel is built on a lovely idea: a small cafe that only appears beneath a full moon, run by cats the size of people, serving visitors exactly the drink — and the advice — they did not know they needed. Each chapter follows a different person at a crossroads in life, and the stories quietly connect with each other as the book goes on. It is short, soothing, and full of small kindnesses, which makes it a wonderful pick for a group that wants something uplifting rather than heavy. There is plenty to discuss, from the astrology woven through the stories to the question of whether any of us would take the cats’ advice if we were offered it.
3. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
It takes a brave writer to make an octopus one of the most memorable characters in a novel, and Shelby Van Pelt pulls it off beautifully. The story centres on Tova, a widow who takes a night job cleaning an aquarium and forms an unlikely friendship with Marcellus, a clever giant Pacific octopus who has been watching the humans around him for years. Around them sits a quiet mystery about Tova’s son, who vanished decades earlier. The book is warm, funny in unexpected places, and genuinely moving, and it works brilliantly for mixed groups because there is something for everyone: a mystery, a love story of sorts, and a friendship nobody saw coming. Expect at least one person in the group to admit they cried.
4. The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop
Memoirs can be a gamble for book clubs, because there is not much to debate when the story is someone else’s life. This one is the exception. Kelly Bishop, the actress who played Emily Gilmore, looks back on six decades in show business — from ballet school to a Tony Award for the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line, from dancing in Dirty Dancing to becoming one of television’s most quoted mothers. She writes with wit and total honesty about the work, the rejection, and the strange luck of a long career. For groups with even one Gilmore Girls fan, this book turns the meeting into a party; for everyone else, it is still a sharp, funny story about what it takes to keep going in a brutal business.
5. Dune by Frank Herbert
Yes, it is long. Yes, it is dense. And yes, it is one of the most rewarding books a group can tackle together. Dune follows Paul Atreides, the son of a duke, whose family is given control of the desert planet Arrakis — the only source of the spice that powers the whole universe — and then betrayed. What follows is politics, ecology, religion, and survival on a scale that still feels modern sixty years after it was written. The worldbuilding gives a group endless things to pick apart, from the sandworms to the water rules of the desert people, and the film versions mean even the members who struggled with the book will have something to say. Pick this one when the group is feeling ambitious.
6. Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Some books arrive at exactly the right moment, and for many readers this one did. Written as a series of short, honest essays, Untamed is Glennon Doyle’s account of realising she had spent years trying to be the good wife, good mother, and good woman everyone expected — and deciding to stop. The chapters are short enough to read in small bites, which makes it perfect for busy groups, and the ideas are big: trusting your own instincts, disappointing people on purpose, and letting go of the rules that were never yours. Few books spark as much personal conversation as this one, and that is exactly what a book club is for.
7. Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
This is the most fun pick on the list, and possibly the most argued-about. The novel follows Natalie Heller Mills, a social media star who has built a perfect image as a traditional farm wife — the farmhouse, the husband, the six children, the home-baked everything. Then she wakes up one morning and finds herself actually living in 1855, with all the hardship her posts used to romanticise. It is a sharp satire of influencer culture and a genuinely suspenseful story at the same time, and it gives a group two completely different conversations: one about the plot, and one about how much of what we see online is performance. Bring snacks; this discussion will run long.
8. The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali
If your group loves a sweeping story about friendship, this is the one. It follows Ellie and Homa, two girls from very different backgrounds who meet at school in 1950s Tehran and stay connected across decades of political upheaval, even as their lives pull them in opposite directions. The history is woven through the friendship rather than lectured at the reader, so the book works just as well for people who know nothing about Iran as for those who do. It is emotional without being heavy-handed, and the ending gives a group plenty to talk about — loyalty, class, and what friendship can survive.
The Ones to Skip: 6 Books to Think Twice About
9. The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
There is no doubt this is a great novel — it won the Booker Prize, sold millions of copies, and became an Oscar-winning film. The story of Pi Patel, a sixteen-year-old who survives 227 days in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger after a shipwreck, is extraordinary. The problem for a book club is the long middle stretch, where the story slows down into detailed descriptions of survival at sea, and the famous ambiguous ending, which splits readers into camps that rarely agree. Some groups love arguing about what really happened; others find the meeting stalls because half the room loved the ending and half felt tricked by it. Read it yourself, by all means — just know what you are signing the group up for.
10. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
This is one of the biggest fantasy romances of the last decade, and millions of readers adore it. Feyre, a young woman hunting to feed her family, kills a wolf and is taken to a magical land to pay the debt, where she discovers her captor is a faerie lord under a curse. The world is rich, the romance is intense, and the series has a devoted following. But that intensity is exactly why it is a risky group pick: the steamier scenes make for awkward conversation in a mixed group, and the book is really the opening chapter of a five-book commitment rather than a standalone story. If the whole group is already into fantasy romance, go for it — otherwise, save it for your own reading list.
11. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic is one of the most important novels of the last fifty years, and it is also one of the heaviest. In the Republic of Gilead, women have lost the right to read, work, or own anything, and Offred, a Handmaid, quietly records her life in the hope of remembering who she was. The writing is brilliant and the warning is as urgent now as it was in 1985. But for a group that meets to relax and enjoy each other’s company, this book can make the evening feel like homework — the subject matter is dark, the mood is bleak, and the discussion tends to turn into a debate about the state of the world rather than the book. An essential read, but maybe not a fun club night.
12. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
This is a beloved comedy classic, and almost everyone has a soft spot for it. Arthur Dent’s house is demolished on a Thursday morning, the Earth is demolished shortly after to make way for a hyperspace bypass, and he ends up hitchhiking through space with his friend Ford Prefect, who turns out to be an alien researcher. The jokes are wonderful — the answer to everything is 42, and the towel advice is still quoted today. The catch for a book club is that the humour does most of the work and the plot deliberately refuses to make sense, so the discussion tends to run out after ten minutes: everyone agrees it is funny, and then there is not much left to say. A great read, but a short meeting.
13. Julie & Julia by Julie Powell
The idea is charming: a young woman in a tiny Queens apartment decides to cook all 524 recipes from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a single year, and writes about it along the way. The film version, with Amy Adams and Meryl Streep, is a delight. The book itself is a harder group read, because the narrator is, by her own design, not always easy to root for — she is impatient, self-absorbed, and often unkind to the patient husband supporting the whole project. Some readers find that honesty refreshing; others find it exhausting for 300 pages. If the group loves food writing, the cooking scenes are wonderful — but be ready for a lively debate about whether the heroine is someone you would want at your dinner table.
14. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
It feels almost unfair to put this classic on the “think twice” list, because it is a wonderful book. Bilbo Baggins, a comfort-loving hobbit, is swept out of his quiet life by Gandalf and thirteen dwarves on a quest to reclaim a mountain from the dragon Smaug, picking up a certain golden ring — and meeting Gollum — along the way. The problem is not the story but the reading experience in a group: the songs, the geography, the family trees, and the sheer number of names and places mean that casual readers spend half the meeting asking who everyone is and where they are. The group that finishes it together will love it — but the group that stalls in the middle of Mirkwood may never pick another fantasy again. Save it for a group that already trusts each other.
That is all 14 — eight books that will make your next meeting the one everyone talks about, and six that are better enjoyed on your own terms. Start with the list your group will love, and save the tricky ones for a quiet weekend. If the group wants more fantasy romance after this, our top 5 romantasy books for spooky season lovers who don’t want scary reads is the perfect follow-up, and if anyone in the group wants to actually finish a book every week, our 6 habits super readers use to finish at least 1 book a week will help. Still choosing? Our 9 books to read next if you loved East Of Eden is another great place to start.
