The Reese's Book Club June 2025 Pick Is A Special Selection For One Simple Reason

While being chosen for Reese's Book Club can change everything for an author and their work, the celebrity reading group's June 2025 selection marks a particularly special case. Reese Witherspoon took to Instagram to announce "The Phoenix Pencil Company" as the month's read, with the fantastical historical fiction serving as author Allison King's debut novel. Most notably, the pick is the first ever time that the book club has officially selected a publication penned by a LitUp fellow as the official read.

Witherspoon launched the fellowship in 2021 to support diverse and emerging authors, with the program providing fully-paid access to a writing retreat, a mentorship with an established writer, and marketing support to a select few aspirants each year. "We are so thrilled that LitUp will serve as a launchpad for a new generation of authors and provide them with the necessary tools and resources to forge formidable careers as storytellers," Witherspoon said in a statement accessed by Variety at the program's launch.

In this way, "The Phoenix Pencil Company" is a pretty significant pick for the Reese's Book Club, highlighting the voice of a rising, hand-selected author while demonstrating the power of the celebrity-backed literary group and its community. Recommended for fans of "The Midnight Library" and "A Tale for the Time Being," this title definitely ranks as a celebrity June 2025 book club pick that you'll want to add to your reading list.

Allison King's "The Phoenix Pencil Company" combines magical realism with Chinese history to tell the story of Monica Tsai and her 90-year-old grandmother Yun, with the title being a contender for the list of the best historical fiction picks from Reese's Book Club. While Monica is searching for the matriarch's long-lost cousin, the solitary computer science major discovers her family's secret history with the Phoenix Pencil Company and the fantastical power of reforging. Monica's modern tale is interwoven with memories from her grandmother's experience growing up in Shanghai during mid-20th century, where she and her cousin Meng survived two wars while working in the mysterious pencil factory.

"I just got very curious about the time period, especially because it was the time period that my grandparents lived through," King told People, explaining that the LitUp application deadline served as incentive to complete her family-inspired manuscript. "I thought I could try writing to explore that world a bit." Largely inspired by the author's own family history, including her grandmother's experience with Alzheimer's and her family's own pencil factory, "The Phoenix Pencil Company" is a generational novel filled with magic and emotions. As King wrote for Reese's Book Club, "At its heart, the book is primarily about hope and family and, most importantly, the magic of the stories we pass on."