The 5 Lowest Rated Read With Jenna Book Club Picks From 2025

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For many readers, the Read With Jenna Book Club has become a go-to source for discovering new releases and worthwhile reads. While the literary group has platformed an impressive variety of bestsellers, including 2025's explosively popular "Remarkably Bright Creatures," not every pick has resonated the same way with readers at large. Over the years, there have been several Read With Jenna Book Club picks that reviewers agreed weren't worth the hype. And that's where things can get tricky and overwhelming for people who turn to the club for inspiration. 

That's why Women decided to take a closer look into the Read With Jenna selections from 2025 to identify the titles that earned the lowest reader ratings or at least sparked a high number of mixed reactions. Underscoring these picks can help people make more informed choices as they build out their TBRs for the new year ahead. From a novel about a woman under a surveillance program to a dysfunctional family weighed down by buried secrets, these are the 2025 Read With Jenna picks that left readers with polarizing reactions.

"This Is a Love Story" by Jessica Soffer is the lowest rated Read With Jenna Book Club pick of 2025 at the time of writing. Introduced as the February selection, Soffer's book tells the story of a decades-long marriage through lingering regrets, precious memories, unresolved tensions, and ultimately love, as a husband reflects on his shared life with his dying wife. While the premise is an undeniably poignant one, many found it difficult to resonate with the story. The story was deemed a beautiful love story, but many reviewers were not fans of how the story was executed. A recurring criticism centered on the author's repetitive use of the word "remember." 

A one-star Amazon reviewer wrote, "Could not get into it at all. I felt very disconnected to the characters. Starting paragraphs over and over with remember when drove me crazy. I didn't get past 75 pages and stopped reading. Not usual for me," another one-star review noted, "I rarely don't finish a book. I gave this one a fair chance but was 50% in when I stopped reading. Not my style of writing at all." 

On Goodreads, the book was given a 4-star or higher rating by just 38% of more than 12,000 readers, reinforcing how polarized overall reception has been in comparison to other Read With Jenna selections. With a Goodreads reviewer stating they did not finish the book and said, "The writing style was a big turn off for me. I simply found it exhausting to read 'You remember...' every single sentence for pages and pages."

Despite being a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Read With Jenna's March 2025 pick, Laila Lalami's "The Dream Hotel" isn't for everyone. This book with a 3.6-star average Goodreads rating by thousands of readers is the second lowest rated book of the book club. The story follows a woman who becomes a prisoner of a surveillance program after an algorithm uses her dreams to predict a future crime. 

While this may sound like the perfect sci-fi action movie in the making, many readers felt the novel leaned more heavily on ideas than momentum. The slow pacing, minimal character development, and abrupt ending were elements that readers felt made it difficult to stay engaged with the story. A reader who gave the book two stars on Goodreads said, "I usually like the Read with Jenna picks but I had to cut my losses at 40%. This was a miss for me sadly..." 

Some readers also raised concerns about the novel's consistently bleak tone and how depressing the overall story was. An Amazon reviewer simply wrote, "I think this was the most depressing book I have ever read." A Goodreads reviewer who ended up not finishing the book stated, "This book is so depressing. DNF'd it 200 pages in. We all have so much negativity going on right now, I couldn't force myself to keep going. I need more; more hope, more positivity, more feeling..." So, if you were hoping to start the year off with some positivity, you may definitely want to avoid this book. 

"The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus" by Emma Knight was Read With Jenna's January pick of 2025. Although the book has a 4.0-star average rating on Amazon by about 2,000 reviewers, its Goodreads rating sits a modest 3.44-star average by more than 20,000 readers. The story follows a young woman during her early adulthood years as she navigates independence, first love, grief, and friendship. Despite its familiar coming-of-age framework, many readers felt the novel failed to rise above expected tropes and lacked a satisfying emotional payoff for the buildup. 

On Goodreads, the book most commonly received three-star ratings, underscoring how many readers ultimately felt lukewarm about Knight's debut novel. One reviewer said, "I was intrigued by the title of the book and the colorful book cover. Unfortunately, for this reader, the storyline fell flat and the characters were more annoying than likable. And, the mystery proved anti-climactic...2.5 stars rounded up for scenic Scotland." 

A major issue readers complained of was that there were way too many introductions of new characters without much development of the ones who actually matter to the story. A one-star reviewer simply stated, "This book had a lot going on and I didn't care about anyone or anything." If you tend to get easily overwhelmed by books with too many characters, this may be a title worth leaving out of your TBR. 

From here on, the remaining titles on this list stand out because, while their average ratings are slightly higher than the books above, reader reactions were far more polarized compared to other Read With Jenna picks. The June 2025 pick, "A Family Matter" by Claire Lynch, centers on a severely broken family forced to confront all of the conflicts and secrets they've been avoiding for years. 

While many readers found the book insightful and a truly realistic portrayal of family dynamics, others felt the author could have given more. One Amazon reviewer wanted to give the book a 3.5-star rating just because they were hoping to get more from the story. They noted, "The characters were very very well developed, I loved reading so many POV's from the various characters but I wish we spent more time on the HUGE storylines that were left unfinished." 

And many reviewers who gave the book three or four stars shared the same sentiment. Another reviewer titled their review: "Engaging and thought provoking but I wanted more!" They added, "I ended the book, which took only a couple of hours to read feeling unsatisfied. I think the story of Maggie, Dawn and Heron were worth double the word count. The novel is worth a four but think could easily have been a five." So, while this book may still be worth a spot on your TBR, you may end up feeling slightly unsatisfied when you've reached the last page.

"The Irish Goodbye" by Heather Aimee O'Neill was Read With Jenna's October 2025 pick for the Read With Jenna Book Club and soon after Women.com named it as a good book about dysfunctional families to read when you need a break from your own during the holiday season. Similar to "A Family Matter," O'Neill also writes of a tense family with a lot of buried secrets and a tragic accident that's kept them emotionally distant from one another for years. 

This book sits last on this list because while it received many positive reviews, it also received a fair amount of average reviews. A Goodreads reviewer who gave the book three stars described the reading experience perfectly as they said, "I feel like this is one of those books I'll remember that I read it, but the plot and characters will be forgotten lol. Just a bit slow for me, but still enjoyed it." 

Our writer couldn't agree more with the review. After reading it, she felt there were a lot of elements people with siblings and a chaotic family dynamic could relate to, but ultimately there was nothing that stuck out to her. It just didn't leave a particularly strong or lasting impression in comparison to other notable literary fiction titles about family dynamics. Another three star reviewer noted, "Overall, it's a fine family story with some nice moments, just not quite nuanced enough for me to rate it higher than 3 out of 5." 

For this list, we had one focus and one focus only. We leaned into identifying Read With Jenna book club picks that consistently ranked lower by average rating on platforms like Goodreads and Amazon. After conducting our own research and reviewing the data, the one thing we can tell you is that the book club is generally very good at delivering unique titles, which meant there weren't many titles that truly landed at the bottom of the ratings spectrum. While "This Is a Love Story" and "The Dream Hotel" both had less than a 4.0-star average rating across Goodreads and Amazon reviews, the remaining three titles earned their place on this list due to polarized reviews or a higher concentration of mid-range, mediocre ratings. 

To ensure a balanced and fair evaluation, we looked at each book's overall rating distribution. Something we asked ourselves as we gathered titles for this list was: "Is there a recurring theme within reader feedback for the book?" We searched for patterns around elements like pacing, character development, and writing style. Identifying these patterns helped us determine which titles generated more divided reactions compared to the book club's other selections of 2025.