With the last month of summer starting up, Jenna Bush Hager has shared one more book to put on your summer reading list. Read With Jenna’s August 2025 book club pick is My Other Heart by Emma Nanami Strenner. And it was so good that she “couldn’t put it down,” she shared on “TODAY With Jenna & Friends.”
This novel begins when Mimi Truang’s young daughter disappears in the Philadelphia airport during their travels to Vietnam. The story picks up years later in Pennsylvania, following two young women during a summer that will change everything. One heads to Japan to explore more of her Japanese heritage, having been adopted and raised by white parents. The other stays put in small-town Pennsylvania, but her days are brightened by her new mentor, who helps her look deeper into herself and what might be hiding beneath the surface. Meanwhile, Mimi never gave up on the search for her daughter, and heads back to the state from which she went missing years before. Inevitably, the three women will meet, and the story will twist in turn in ways you’d never expect.
This book is British Japanese author Emma Nanami Strenner’s debut novel. With this novel as promising as it sounds, you’ll want to keep an eye on her for future releases.
Reese’s Book Club Summer 2025 Picks
While nothing compares to flying through a beach read on summer vacation, these books can be read any time of the year, so you should still get your hands on them when you can.
- June 2025: A Family Matter by Claire Lynch
- July 2025: Happy Wife by Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores
The Read With Jenna book club launched in 2019 as an experiment testing whether or not people still read. Now six years old and only growing in popularity, that question has been answered with a resounding yes. In fact, Hager held her very own book festival earlier this year in Nashville. The festival spanned two days, with around 200 book club members present each day, and was filled with meals, panel discussions with popular authors and plenty of time to mingle, shop and read.
Related: 10 Best Audiobooks of the Summer, According to the Biggest Audiobook Narrator
