Must-Read Celebrity Book Club Selections for May 2025

If you have ever judged a speculative suitor by their TBR, Natalie Portman’s May 2025 pick might feel uncomfortably familiar. In “Consider Yourself Kissed,” two strangers swap homes for a night. Coralie, a Australian newly arrived to London, and Adam, a single father with a penchant for political biography, spend a night in each other’s homes and read one another like novels. Her shelves lean heavily on battered Viragos; his, on mid-century statesman. Attraction arrives via the usual route — a mutual recognition of taste.

But this isn’t a romance in the commercial sense. The novel spans a decade, most of it after the getting-together, as Coralie and Adam’s once-bookish connection is tested by childcare and career drifts, as well the compromises that accumulate in long domestic arrangements. All of this unfolds against a backdrop of British disarray (a decade of rotating prime ministers, austerity, public health crises, and exacerbated societal polarization) which hums in the background but shapes the foreground more than anyone cares to admit.

Jessica Stanely’s project is a smart read about the slow politics of everyday life. It’s neither polemic nor melodrama, but chronicles how relationships evolve under pressure, and how people lose parts of themselves whilst trying to do the right thing. In its modesty and precision, it’s a fitting choice for Portman’s consistently highbrow book club.

Emily Henry has written some iconic rom-com books throughout her publishing career, but “Great Big Beautiful Life” might surprise you – and that’s exactly why Reese’s Book Club snapped it up for May. Yes, it’s got the signature ingredients (slow-burn tension, whip-smart dialogue) But this time, the romance is set against something stranger: a literary mystery involving a long-vanished socialite, an island retreat, and two writers with a contractually enforced reason not to fall in love. No wonder it made the list of romance books we can’t wait to get our hands on in 2025.

People-pleasing Alice has a stalled writing career and something to prove. Hayden is the kind of journalist who wins prizes for scaring his editors. They’ve both been invited to interview the same elusive subject: reclusive heiress Margaret Ives. The wily Margaret has no intention of making things easy. Instead, she offers them each a fragment of her past — split narratives, strict NDAs, and a month of close proximity. Will it be a game of cat-and-mouse between Alice or Hayden, or a slow dance?

This is Emily Henry writing with more bite and risk, but enough tenderness to keep you up late finishing it. It’s the perfect pick for Reese, whose club always knows exactly how to spot a readable story.

“There’s a long line of hands carrying your name,” Beyoncé sings in “Protector,” a lullaby addressed to her daughter, Rumi. The track is also, whether intentionally or not, an echo of her mother’s new memoir. “Matriarch,” Tina Knowles’ memoir attempts to trace that line, not just through her daughter’s ascent, but through her own uneven path from Galveston, Texas, to the backstage edges of cultural iconography.

Oprah, who selected the book for her May 2025 pick, described it as “an intimate and revealing look into an extraordinary American life and family” about legacy, love, and the wisdom passed between generations — “especially from mother to daughter.” It is also an assertion of narrative authority – something many women, especially those whose lives are subject to public interpretation, will understand instinctively.

“There have been so many narratives about me and my family,” Knowles told Oprah during her Starbucks interview (2.50). “So many misconceptions, so many lies, that I decided one day, ‘You know, do I want people to tell my story after I’m gone, and create their own narrative, or should I tell it?'” The decision, once made, seems obvious. The voice that emerges is guarded but measured.

That the book reached number one on the Amazon and New York Times bestseller list is perhaps just as remarkable as the moment Beyoncé brought her mother onstage during a “Cowboy Carter” tour to stop to acknowledge it. The gesture felt familial, of course, but also formal. One extraordinary woman was presenting another: subject, author, matriarch.

The thread of motherhood continues Jenna Bush Hager’s pick this month: “The Names” by Florence Kapp. The novel opens in 1987 with a woman walking through the wreckage of a storm to register her newborn son. Her husband expects the name to follow his family tradition. She pauses, and the novel unspools from that hesitation.

The child is, depending on the page, Gordon, Julian, or Bear — three names, three imagined lives. Each version traces a different future, shaped by the weight a name can carry over time. What defines family life? Who do we become when someone else decides who we are? In watching the answers unravel, “The Names” captures something structurally ambitious and emotionally spare.As one Goodreads reviewer notes, “‘The Names’ absolutely lives up to the hype as one of the most anticipated fiction releases of the year. With its thought-provoking and highly creative speculative premise, this novel explores how a single name can define a person’s fate, shaping their relationships and leading them down vastly different life paths.” After its first 500 review, the novel held a 4.33-star rating — a promising reception for a debut.

It’s a considered choice; one that’s already positioning itself to dethrone Read With Jenna’s highest rated pick of all time. As Bush Hager herself told TODAY, “I think you will love it, it is so beautifully written. I read somewhere that this may be a classic, and I kind of agree.”