[00:00:00] ANNE BOGEL: Hey readers, I’m Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that’s dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don’t get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read.

This week we’re taking you behind the scenes of our 2025 Summer Reading Guide and sharing an excerpt from our live unboxing party where I shared my commentary of three of books in this year’s guide, all from the first category, Family Sagas.

In last week’s episode, my husband and team member, Will Bogel, and I took you behind the scenes of the guide, discussing this year’s road trip theme, my selection process, how this year’s categories sorted themselves out, and more.

[00:01:00] Now the guide is here. Maybe you’ve already seen it. 35 books across six categories, some among the most anticipated books of summer that I get to offer my own thoughts on, and some books that are likely to be hidden gems, that is, books you may not hear about other places.

As always, I’m not trying to persuade you to read any of these. That is not my job. Instead, I want to give you an idea of what your own reading experience might be like with each book so you can then decide if that’s a reading experience that you want to have.

This year’s guide is 40 packed pages, and we’ve built in fun features like more of summer’s most anticipated new releases, tons of backlist titles that play into our road trip theme, our ever-loved Awesome On Audio selections for both new releases and backlist books, and more. I can’t tell you every last thing. I really want to preserve some element of surprise for you when you open your guide.

[00:01:55] Last week, we hosted our live unboxing party, which has been a tradition around here since 2019, when our Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club community manager, Ginger, first suggested I hop on Zoom to walk everyone step-by-step through the selections in the guide and we’d call it unboxing. I said, “What are you talking about? That does not sound like a good time.” Well, Ginger was right, and I was wrong, and we’ve been doing it ever since.

Look, the guide absolutely stands alone. It did for many years before we started hosting unboxing. But if you’d like to hear more nuanced descriptions in my actual voice, more details I didn’t include in the guide for space reasons, and also hear me answer lots of questions about the guide and the included books, unboxing is for you. And when you opt in for the Summer Reading Guide experience by joining one of our communities or purchasing a la carte, our unboxing video is available for you to access anytime on your schedule.

Today, we’re sharing a snippet from unboxing so you can get a sense of what it’s like. At unboxing, we began with the family sockets, the first category in the guide, and you’re about to hear me describe three books from that category.

[00:03:00] If you are burning with curiosity, the other 2025 categories are Tales of Love and Friendship, Mysteries and Thrillers, Historical Fiction, Literary and Contemporary Fiction, and Memoir and Nonfiction.

But something you will hear me say at unboxing, or maybe you’ve heard me say already, is that there are so many genre-benders and blenders this year, quite a few books could have gone in like three different categories.

I hope this little preview gives you a taste of what our Summer Reading Guide and unboxing is like. To get the whole thing, go to modernmrsdarcy.com/srg. Everything you need to know is right there.

This year, for the first time, we’re also offering a professionally printed guide delivered straight to your mailbox. These are shipping out right now. Visit our shop at modernmrsdarcy.com/shop to order yours.

We also have some great new merch that we rolled out to go with our road trip theme. Check out our new hat, t-shirt, sticker options, and more at modernmrsdarcy.com/shop.

[00:04:02] Right now, because of the unpredictable landscape out there, we are only shipping to US addresses. That’s for the time being.

All right, without further ado, let’s get to the books.

Let’s do this. We’re going to start with Family Dramas with a debut, The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff, out from Simon & Schuster on April 22nd. This is a multi-generational family saga that follows three generations of a Texas family. I was hooked from the opening of… I almost said line. I don’t remember the opening line.

But Lillian is in a Fort Worth library. She’s reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn on her day off. That’s when she meets Ryan, who recognizes her from her job at the bank, and he’s to become the love of her life. They fall in love. They get married. They’re keeping secrets from each other. He doesn’t know that they got married. He wants to have a family. “Let’s have a baby”.

She already has a baby, and she never told him. She knows about his father’s addiction and how it destroyed his family of origin, but she doesn’t know that alcohol is threatening her own marriage.

[00:05:07] Y’all, this is a heartbreaker. It could have gone in the heartbreaker category that does not exist. I used so much… I almost said Kleenex. I almost said tissue. At the end, there’s pain, grief, addiction, more grief.

Adoption is a theme we see a lot in 2025 titles. There’s a great epigraph from Louise Erdrich to start this book. It’s Sorrow eats time. Be patient. Time eats sorrow. This is a book that spans lots of time, decades in a family’s life. There are strong threads of redemption, but it is also brutal. I got to tell you, if I know audio notes, I’ll include them throughout. I tried the audio, it was fine. It was fine. That’s the bright years.

Next, we have Flashlight by Susan Choi out from FSG on June 3rd. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to read this. Trust exercise wasn’t right for me, as lauded as it was, so I was hesitant to start this but it turned out to be everything I hoped for based on the description.

[00:06:08] A meaty, complex, multi-generational family saga with a compelling, if not front and center, mystery that explores family secrets, estrangement, geopolitics, including how they’re shaping these characters’ everyday lives, even when they don’t consciously realize that’s happening.

Choi says this is also an inquiry into the tricks and failures of our memories and our bodies. It’s also a reckoning with the ways in which we don’t see the people we love clearly. It took me a little while to catch on how she was employing that metaphor of a flashlight, a narrow beam of not super bright light throughout. And then there’s more.

This is such a good book club book as well because there are endless discussion topics. It begins in 1970s Japan when young Louisa and her father go for a walk by the shore at dusk. He’s got his flashlight. The two don’t return as expected and hours later searchers find Louisa unconscious in the water. She survives but her father is missing and is never seen again on the shore. I like this a lot on audio as well. This is going to be a big summer book. It’s got a big print run.

[00:07:18] Okay, next I don’t have a copy of this gorgeous road trip book, Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson. It’s our June Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club selection. Ginger and I’ve been wanting to talk to him for forever. I cannot wait.

I read this a long time ago at this point but I just started listening to the audiobook when I got my hands on a copy to vet it for Awesome on Audio. It’s read by Marin Ireland. It is in fact awesome. And I just did not want to stop listening because I love the story and I’m like, “Oh I remember this part. This is getting good. Let’s see what happens next.”

There are many similarities to Tender Hearts. They’re both road trip stories. They combine the heavy and the light. Run for the Hills takes us truly cross-country from Boston to California but they’re very much their own stories.

[00:08:05] In this story it’s found family of four scattered half-siblings, only one of whom knows the others exist at the beginning of the story. They pile into an old PT cruiser after meeting for the first time. There are PT cruiser jokes galore. It is the butt of so many jokes. They are going to go find the father who abandoned them long ago.

I love this. I read it in a day. Wilson always has a touch of the absurd to his stories but the dynamics feel so real and relatable even when like the kids’ heads are catching on fire. But nobody catches on fire in this book. There’s no magical realism in Run for the Hills.

I like how this is a story with a lot of movement. Like the characters are always moving forward like literally on the road trip. It’s quirky, it’s warm, it’s big-hearted. Again, I cannot wait to talk to him.

[00:09:00] Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed that peek at our 2025 Summer Reading Guide and unboxing party. Get your copy of the guide and access the full recording of our unboxing event and find the list of titles we talked about today at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

For that printed magazine version of the guide and all our new merch, visit modernmrsdarcy.com. Follow us on Instagram @whatshouldireadnext and be sure to tag us in your summer reading posts and stories.

If you love the guide and want to share it with a friend, that would be such a gift to us. Thank you in advance.

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[00:10:04] Thank you to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by Will Bogel, Holly Wielkoszewski, and Studio D Podcast Production. Readers, that is it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, “Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.” Happy reading, everyone.