The 4 Lowest Rated Oprah's Book Club Picks From 2025

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Since launching her eponymous book club in 1996, Oprah Winfrey has been hand-selecting monthly reads for her fans, and she often gets it right. The former television host doesn't take her selection lightly, either, telling Daily Mail, "I usually go through like 10-12 books before I get to the real thing. I read like 50 pages ... sometimes I don't get to 50 pages. I used to do 100." One book in particular caught Winfrey's attention just after a few pages: "The Covenant of Water" by Abraham Verghese, which was her book club's May 2023 pick. "It's epic. It's transportive. Many moments during the read, I had to stop and remember to breathe. I couldn't put the book down until the very last page," she shared.

While "The Covenant of Water" was indeed one of Winfrey's most popular selections to date, her book club's 2025 picks, ranked by reviews highlight the ones that didn't fare so well that year, according to readers. That's not to say that the books were complete flops — a couple did inch close to four stars. However, with many of Winfrey's picks garnering well over that rating, it's safe to say that the ones that received disappointing marks didn't land so well with fans.

The premise of "Some Bright Nowhere" by Ann Packer sounds promising enough — a 40-year marriage is put to the test when Claire learns that she is dying from cancer and asks her husband, Eliot, to move out so that she can live with her girlfriends. However, while the themes of love and loss resonated with a lot of readers, Oprah's November 2025 Book Club pick wasn't a huge hit, receiving a mere 3.7 stars on Goodreads and 4.0 on Amazon. Many couldn't connect to the characters, with many finding Eliot frustratingly dull and Claire utterly self-absorbed. One reviewer wrote, "Claire is the most selfish and cruel main character I've ever read, and 250 pages of her being awful to her husband of 40 years for no reason whatsoever was a tough read."

Some also found the plot of "Some Bright Nowhere" unconvincing, as they couldn't believe one would ask their longtime spouse to leave the house as they're dying. "Can two people who have purportedly loved each other for decades be so dense and such bad communicators, especially in life-ending scenarios? It doesn't fit what I know, on any level," one reader pondered. Another shared, "I could not understand the way they treated each other, their friendships, or their supposedly decent marriage based on this snapshot. Maybe that was the point? The characters are unlikeable, and I was infuriated by them throughout. Just heartbroken imagining real people behaving this way."

"Dream State" by Eric Puchner was Oprah Winfrey's February 2025 choice, with the media mogul declaring, "I promise you: It's the kind of book you won't want to put down." Unfortunately, even Winfrey gets it wrong sometimes, and many readers didn't agree with her. The story begins with Cece getting ready to marry Charlie, except she ends up falling for his friend, Garrett. Over time, readers are taken through the characters' respective marriages, health issues, and struggles with parenthood, with Montana serving as the backdrop.

Although "Dream State" received many favorable reviews, one reader gave the book two stars on Goodreads, writing, "I'm actually confused as to why Oprah picked this ... Characters were not likable, it jumped all over the place, the climate change woven through was a bit much for me." Another reviewer on Amazon thought the story started out promising enough, but fell apart midway. "As if in a dream, the end became a mucky mess. I felt as if the author wanted to find his way out but got lost in the avalanche of the story he had created," the poster shared. With an average of 3.75 stars between the two sites, "Dream State" is sadly one of the least popular Oprah Book Club picks, according to reviews.

Fans of Ocean Vuong had high hopes for "The Emperor of Gladness" when Oprah Winfrey announced it as a celebrity book club pick for May 2025. After all, the author is an award-winning poet and professor at New York University. Unfortunately, while many praised Vuong's prose, one reviewer on Amazon felt that the unlikely friendship between the main character, Hai, and the elderly Grazina was not quite believable. The reader added, "The book fizzled in the last 3 chapters like he didn't know how to end it — I know that it is a highly acclaimed book, but for me, I was a bit disappointed."

One disappointed reader thought "The Emperor of Gladness" was a snoozefest, sharing, "Maybe it was me since I am the minority, but there was zero point to this story. Almost felt like memories of the author's life scattered [among] the pages with a very disappointing ending." Still, Vuong's novel received a 3.9-star rating on Goodreads and 4.0 stars on Amazon, so it's clear the majority of reviewers loved the contemporary fiction.

With an average of 3.9 stars across Goodreads and Amazon, "A Guardian and a Thief" was pretty well-received, which proves that even Oprah Winfrey's lowest-rated books are still a hit with readers. Megha Majumdar's novel follows two stories — that of Ma, who is preparing to bring her family to America and escape Kolkata's poverty, and a thief named Boomba with questionable morals. Throughout the story, Ma and Boomba's lives intersect as their need for survival prompts them to cheat and steal in order to save themselves.

While "A Guardian and a Thief" mostly received at least four stars, one reader felt like Majumdar's writing broke the "show, don't tell" rule. "I read this hoping I could teach it to high school students. There's nothing to teach; everything we might talk about that has any depth to it has already been filled in by the author through her omniscient narrator," the Goodreads poster stated. Others found the story to be too depressing, with one writing, "In the end, even though the story is well written, its view of the world is disappointing. Majumdar's beautiful writing cannot make up for a hollow and cynical premise that caters to the hopelessness-as-intellectualism that has become a familiar trope within literary fiction." In other words, don't expect "A Guardian and a Thief" to leave you feeling warm and fuzzy.

Since we based the lowest-rated picks from Oprah's Book Club in 2025 on ratings alone, we turned to Amazon and Goodreads to see which of the reads from that year received the lowest out of five stars. All of the books on our list have an average of less than four to date, indicating that there were plenty of reviewers who were dissatisfied with either the plot, characters, or prose. With some of the most popular celebrity book club picks getting at least 4.5 stars on the aforementioned sites, under four is comparably low. Many readers did find themselves immersed in the novels, however, and praised the authors for their captivating storytelling, so you may be pleasantly surprised if you decide to take a stab at one or all of them.