The Best Memoir Picks From The Read With Jenna Book Club, Ranked By Reviews

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The Read With Jenna Book Club is filled with nail-biting mysteries, heartrending novels about love, and feel-good picks. But fans shouldn't discount the handful of memoirs Jenna Bush Hager has on the list. While they might not be as gripping as thrillers, the ones that the "Today" anchor selected tell important stories of the authors' journeys through hardship, and their subsequent growth.

Read With Jenna Book Club has recommended over 80 books at the time of writing, and five of them include true-story narratives that are highly important reads. Just like the best literary fiction books, dipping your toes into another person's life through a memoir is a captivating experience, and just knowing that the events actually happened is, in itself, inspiring. The ones Bush Hager endorses received rave reviews from readers for good reason, and whether you're scouting for your next book club pick or just want a solo reading session, these memoirs will have you riveted.

June is all about celebrating inclusivity, and "Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America" by R. Eric Thomas is one of the best nonfiction books to read during Pride Month. The series of essays covers Thomas's life growing up as a gay Black boy in Baltimore, to a young man navigating college while coming to terms with his sexuality and religious upbringing. While the topics are serious, Thomas brings humor into his writing, which has many readers chuckling along. "There were laugh-out-loud moments and sad moments, and I cannot say enough about Thomas's ability to find the most perfect words to describe a person or a situation," one reviewer wrote on Amazon. Another fan noted, "Thomas is a genuinely funny writer whose prose is both endearingly personal and wickedly funny."

Thomas described his writing process to NPR, "I think the idea of the other — of otherness in general — is such a fascinating concept because it presupposes that there is not only a mainstream, but there is something that you should be. And so I wanted to take — with humor, take exception to the idea of being an other." He continued, "They're parts of my identity. I'm a queer person. I'm Black. I'm also Christian and a man and American. And so some of those identities are other. And some of those are, quote, unquote, 'the main identity.'" With such thought-provoking concepts and a touch of comedic relief, "Here For It" will have readers becoming fans of Thomas as soon as they turn the first page.

If you need a good read for your book club, "The Unwinding of the Miracle" by Julie Yip-Williams will spark thoughtful discussion. Born in Vietnam with congenital blindness, Yip-Williams's life started with hardship the moment she entered the world. Her grandmother insisted she be euthanized, but the young baby was saved by her great-grandmother. After a harrowing emigration to the United States, Yip-Williams underwent surgery that gave her partial eyesight. Over the years, she traveled the world and worked tirelessly as a lawyer, eventually finding love with her husband Josh Williams. After welcoming two daughters, it seemed that Yip-Williams had the perfect life, until she received a heartbreaking diagnosis of stage four colon cancer. Her memoir, which is based on the blog she started in 2013, chronicles her life and the emotional upheaval she went through knowing that her time would soon end.

Those who followed Yip-Williams's journey know she died in 2018. While the memoir doesn't have a happy ending, readers loved her unfiltered thoughts and the way she overcame such hardships during her earlier years. "Julie speaks with the truth of how she feels, how she views hope and her impending death. There are no filters with Julie — she lets it loose in this book. She's sad but she still feels joy. She feels anger [and] rage for weeks, then finds peace," a fan wrote on Goodreads. "As she faced each challenge, I found myself examining my own life, my strengths and weaknesses, and my own beliefs about life and death," another shared.

Read With Jenna Book Club's December 2019 pick, "Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss," isn't your typical memoir. Written by The New York Times writer Margaret Renkl, the book is comprised of essays that reflect on her childhood in Alabama, observations about her parents, and monumental losses throughout her years. Drawing on images of the word around her, Renkl tells short stories that captivate the reader with her lyrical words, and one wrote on Amazon, "In her brief, poetic essays Ms. Renkl weaves nature and family together in a pattern that defies science, but is perfectly comprehensible when readers look at life as a beautiful, interconnected tapestry."

It turns out that heartbreak was what spurred Renkl to put together "Late Migrations," per The Adroit Journal. "'No Exit' was the very first essay I wrote for what turned out to be this book. I began it during the final month of my mother-in-law's life, when two of my children were still at home, so I was still deeply immersed in both caregiving and grief," the author recalled. Renkl also had to go through the death of her own mom and dad, sharing, "Do I feel more freedom to write honestly about my childhood now that my parents are gone? I don't know. My parents were always very, very proud of me. They supported me no matter what I was writing, no matter how honestly I wrote, even when they themselves figured in the poem or the essay."

Trigger Warning: The following section mentions domestic abuse.

"How To Say Babylon" by Safiya Sinclair tells the true story of a young Jamaican girl who desperately wants to leave the suffocating grasp of her overbearing father, Howard. She gains a glimmer of hope when she receives a scholarship to a private school, only to be cast out by her classmates for her Rastafari culture. Meanwhile, Howard grows increasingly angrier while forbidding anything related to the Western world, which he calls "Babylon," and Safiya and her siblings suffer his physical punishments. After finishing high school, Sinclair is recognized for her poetry and eventually makes her way to the United States, where she finally gets the college education she dreamed of.

Many readers were taken in by Sinclair's storytelling and way with words, with one stating, "In every setback on the road, I could feel the fire, poetry, lyricism, the heartbeat in her words. Writing was, indeed, her oxygen, and you can feel her breath, her soul, in every passage." Another wrote, "I appreciated the boldness and honesty in which Sinclair described her father's cruelty and how it affected her feelings and perspective on the world. I liked the vividness of her prose as well as her journey to escape her father's influence and find her own voice through writing and education." While "How to Say Babylon" has a lot of difficult themes circling violence and oppression, the author ends her memoir with a message of hope and forgiveness.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at the National Domestic Violence Hotline website.

Jenna Bush Hager's September 2022 pick for her book club was "Solito" by Javier Zamora. Upon announcing the book, the former teacher shared on Instagram, "This poetic memoir chronicles Javier's experience immigrating 3,000 miles from El Salvador to America by himself at just nine years old." She continued, "He says in writing this book, he's not only telling his own story, but the story of millions of others who have no choice but to leave their homes. While Javier's journey is harrowing and even treacherous at times, his story is also about hope and finding kindness and love in the most unexpected places."

Zamora told the "Today" show of his journey, "I didn't know how to tie my shoes yet. I was afraid of the dark. I couldn't swim, and the first thing I have to do is go on this boat and face the ocean with these strangers ... I think the fear as a kid was that I was never going to make it." Thankfully, after over two months trekking through dangerous terrain, Zamora reunited with his parents, who fled El Salvador to the United States years ago during their country's civil war.

"Solito" made it onto The New York Times bestseller list, and with a 4.48-star rating on Goodreads, along with 4.6 on Amazon, it holds the top spot among Read With Jenna Book Club's memoirs. A reviewer shared, "There are certain experiences that are just meant to be shared. Solito, Javier Zamora's harrowing childhood journey from his childhood home in El Salvador to the United States was one of them."

Since Read With Jenna Book Club only had five memoirs at the time of writing, it wasn't hard to sort them for our list. We ranked them according to rating, with number five being the lowest rating to number one being the highest — a tight race, as they all received over four stars. With Amazon and Goodreads having the most reviews, we tallied up the average of each book to determine which scored the best. The top two were so close with just fractions of points making the difference, but all of Jenna Bush Hager's picks got rave reviews from readers, so we think you'll be drawn in by any of these titles.