Episode 23: August 2026 Celebrity Book Club Picks

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This week on the Read Carpet Report, Jackie and Kirsten run down the august 2026 celebrity book club picks. Plus, they discuss the new Taylor Jenkins Reid news and Emily Henry’s surprise Print Fresh collab. Then they reveal this month’s Beyond the Bookends pick, and it’s already got readers talking.

Chapters

• 00:43 – The Read Carpet Rundown
• 05:48 – Pick Party – August 2026 Celebrity Book Club Picks
• 16:23 – August 2026 Former Celebrity Book Club Authors with New Books
• 20:28 – The Bookmark: The Seekers of Deer Creek by Thao Thai

The Read Carpet Rundown (00:43)

Book news from July, including Harlan Coben’s I Will Find You, Emily Henry’s Print Fresh collaboration, and Jessica Knoll’s Helpless. Plus a first look at Lynn Painter’s Fake Skating and the newly announced Taylor Jenkins Reid title

• Emily Henry’s Print Fresh Collab
• Best Thriller Books of 2026
• Complete Good Morning America Book Club Books
• Taylor Jenkins Reid Books in Order

Pick Party: August 2026 Celebrity Book Club Picks (05:48)

Jackie and Kirsten go club-by-club through every August 2026 Celebrity book club pick – including which ones they’re most excited to read.

• August 2026 Celebrity Book Club Spoilers
• August 2026 Book Releases

Former Celebrity Book Club Authors With New Books (16:23)

A look at the past celebrity book club authors who have releases this month

The Bookmark: The Seekers of Deer Creek by Thao Thai (20:28)

This episode’s staff pick recommendation plus a related reading list for anyone who loves art

• Novels About Art

The Reader Question: What are your favorite novels set in a Tropical Location?

• Books Set in Tropical Locations

August Book Club Pick: Liar’s Dice by Juliet Faithfull

This book club pick will have everyone talking about

• Ableism
• Care for the Disabled
• The importance of Literacy
• Family Secrets

• Beyond the Bookends Book Club

The Books We Discussed

Shop for every book or product we discussed in this episode below.

More Ways to Watch or Listen

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Watch or Listen on Spotify

Catch Up

Transcript

Jackie (00:00)
Welcome to the Red Carpet Report, your backstage pass for celebrity book clubs, book adaptations, and new book releases. I’m Jackie. And we’re your hosts.

Kirsten (00:07)
And I’m Kirsten. Today’s episode is a little bit out of order. You may have followed us on Instagram and known that I accidentally ended up in the emergency room with an infection post-surgical. I’m totally fine, but we could not film last week’s episode like we were supposed to. So we’re swapping them because today is a pick party. We know the August Celebrity Book Club spoiler. So we wanted to do that episode, but the episode from last week, which is supposed to be the plot twist, will be next week instead. And then we will resume our regularly scheduled program. So sorry about that.

Jackie (00:45)
So what are we doing this week for the red carpet report rundown?

Kirsten (00:48)
I was thinking for the rundown this week that because we missed a few episodes in July, that we kind of do like a little recap of the bigger news that we maybe missed and hadn’t had a chance to talk about yet.

Jackie (01:00)
I’m excited about that. The same title. Yes. And we loved it. I watched it with my husband and we loved it. It was fantastic. You both watched it also, right?

Kirsten (01:01)
All right, so first of all, both of us watched on Netflix I Will Find You, which is based on Harlan Coben’s book by the same title. Yes. And my husband is very big into these thriller shows. He’s watching Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed right now, which I saw one episode of and was like, This is not for me and he is full force; he will be done binging it within twenty-four hours. So the fact that we both liked I Will Find You really says something.

Jackie (01:39)
And it was very exciting for me because my husband was like, ” Maybe I should try some Harlan Coben books” and I was like, I’ve only been telling you that for probably seven years, but that’s a great idea.

Kirsten (01:53)
I feel like that means he’s officially reached old-man territory because my father-in-law is so big on David Baldashi which I know Elie already reads. And then Harlan Coben and the what’s his name? Jack Ryan is the character

Jackie (02:11)
No. my husband reads all the Gabriel Allon books by Daniel Silva. He’s obsessed with them, so we’re expanding his horizons a little. He’s gonna be on the Tom Clancy train now. I know.

Kirsten (02:23)
my god, I love it. He’s gonna be onto Tom Clancy next. I know. that’s when you know you’ve hit a certain age, I think.

Jackie(02:30)
I mean, well, we did get our AARP cards in the mail, so it seems like a natural progression.

Kirsten (02:37)
man, that’s rough. A A R P. That’s just

Jackie (02:40)
Yeah, yeah.

Kirsten (02:41)
Out there ruining days of people left and right. It’s okay, because when we were talking to Virginia Hume, she was telling us that her daughter was like, people of my generation love to read historical fiction from the 90s. And we were all like, okay, that firmly puts us all in old age. Just a little.

Jackie (03:00)
That stings just a little.

Kirsten (03:03)
All right. Well, let’s talk about some of the more fun book news. Like my biggest excitement is that those those pajamas that I was wearing in the last episode that we both had

Jackie (03:14)
Yes. Yes.

Kirsten (03:16)
Print Fresh pajamas collaborated with Emily Henry to create pajamas and it says emotional baggage, and they’re so cute. They have a beach bag on

Jackie (03:25)
I’m obsessed. I’m obsessed. I am going to have to order a pair.

Kirsten (03:32)
them and sunglasses and passports, and they’re just such the summery vibes. And it so works with her books, and she’s the model for the campaign.

Jackie (03:36)
Is she? That’s so cute.

Kirsten (03:41)
Is she? Yeah. So I put that I’ll put that in the show notes so you can see it. But also in Emily Henry News, she has special editions of

Jackie (03:51)
Beach Reads and People We Meet on Vacation.

Kirsten (03:55)
And now she has a special edition coming out this month for Book Lovers. And the spine is all painted with Okay. And I’m sure

Jackie (04:02)
I’m so excited. These are actually my three favorite books books of hers. And I’m sure everybody who’s read all of Emily Henry’s probably agrees, which is why they’ve turned these ones into those really pretty special editions.

Kirsten (04:20)
yeah.

Jackie (04:20)
So we just found out that Helpless by Jessica Knoll is going to be adapted for TV.

Kirsten (04:27)
You loved this book.

Jackie (04:28)
Yeah, it was so dark and so messed up. But I loved it anyway.

Kirsten (04:37)
one of these thrillers that we’re gonna end up watching with our husbands? Okay.

Jackie (04:40)
I think our husbands would love it. It’s just dark and twisted, and I didn’t see the ending coming. And I think it actually would be fabulous as a TV show,

Kirsten (04:59)
Well know for sure that next summer we have a major adaptation coming out because Lynn Painter’s Fake Skating has been announced, as it’s I guess it’s already filmed, which I didn’t even realize that it had been optioned, but it’s coming out in July of twenty twenty seven. That would, and it was the YA GMA book club pick.

Jackie (05:18)
That would be so fun. Right, right. So I feel

Kirsten (05:23)
So I feel like we know what the YA girlies are gonna be watching on TV next summer. The final bit of book news is a big one and it’s for a March twenty twenty-seven book release.

Jackie (05:38)
Taylor Jenkins Reed announced her next book. So I’m so excited about this. It is called The Last Days of Vic and Coco. So now it is time for our main segment, which is the pick party. By the time you guys will see this, they will all have been announced. We are filming it a few days ahead of time. And there was a little bit of drama, should we say, this month when we were getting our tips in for spoilers. That’s right. We got a tip.

Kirsten (06:10)
spoilers. That’s right. We got a tip. This all went down in like a 90-minute period of time. The last one we didn’t have was the Read with Jenna. We got a tip for what it was. And I don’t want to spoil what that one, the original tip was, because we’re gonna talk about it later in the episode. And I posted it, right? Jackie updated the

Jackie (06:27)
Just updated

Kirsten (06:28)
post, she put it in. I posted it online within five minutes. Multiple keep people came forward and were like, actually, I think it’s this other one. Which funny enough, is the one that you had said you hoped it would be. Yes.

Jackie (06:40)
Yes, and I said I thought it was going to be between these two. And when you told me you read it, which one is it? I had picked the second one.

Kirsten (06:51)
Right. And so then we re-upped the the post essentially to be like, so now we’re hearing both of these, but all of the people that had given us the tip had not seen a sticker. So we were kind of like, it could really honestly be either one. Then we get a tip

Jackie (07:05)
Exactly. Right.

Kirsten (07:12)
That their local Barnes and Noble had book one out early available for purchase, and it did not have a sticker. So we took it off, and then the following day we got the sticker proof for the second one. But it was literally like for an hour and a half. One of us would update, then we switch then we’d hear like it, we just it was very hectic. It was very hectic. That does not usually happen. No,

Jackie (07:26)
One That has never happened to us before.

Kirsten (07:35)
no. And it just was like quick, quick, quick, quick disputed, handled.

Jackie (07:40)
Handle.

Kirsten (07:41)
Correct one is done within like ninety minutes was it was it was a lot.

Jackie (07:45)
was Right. And which is so funny that we got the I would call it like the fake tip. I mean, it wasn’t fake, but the one that they mentioned was the other one that I thought that it could be. Which is so crazy because I was like, it’s really between these two. And we got a tip for both of them and I was like, I don’t know what to do with this.

Kirsten (07:57)
Right. Which is wild. So basically we’ve decided that book number one is gonna be Jackie’s bookmark this week so she can talk to you about

Jackie (08:13)
week so she’s

Kirsten (08:13)
it also. But for now, let’s talk about what the real Read with Jenna pick is.

Jackie (08:19)
The real pick for Read with Jenna is Sunlight Finds You by Laura Moriarty.

Kirsten (08:27)
best known for her book, The Chaperone.

Jackie (08:29)
yes. And I read that too, and I loved it. So this book was so good. It was five stars from the minute I picked it up and started this book. I could not put it down. It is the story of two people. They’re teenagers when they meet; they’re in high school, and they fall in love. Leo’s dad wants him to have nothing to do with her because he wants his son to be going to an Ivy League school, and he just doesn’t want any women or anything getting in his way. And he rebels against his father and decides he’s not doing that. And he enlists. Then it becomes a story of their love. There’s the Korean War. So it’s set in the 50s. It’s beautifully written. It deals with teenage pregnancy and what happened to women and women’s rights in those days, which we really forget: that all women basically stayed at home. And the idea of being pregnant without being married was like.

Kirsten (09:45)
blowing. Right.

Jackie (09:45)
mind blowing. It’s five stars, it’s fantastic.

Kirsten (09:49)
Are you surprised that it was the Jenna pick? Like, did you think it was gonna be a GMA or a Reese or no? It screams Jenna.

Jackie (09:55)
no? No. No, it it Screams Jenna. A plus. A plus choice.

Kirsten (10:01)
I guessed a book correctly back in our looking beyond with our members where we

Jackie (10:06)
Yes.

Kirsten (10:06)
chat about what is upcoming. I correctly guessed one of these picks that I had read, but I thought it was screamed Jenna. Yes.

Jackie (10:15)
Yes.

Kirsten (10:16)
So I personally was a little disappointed that it was chosen by GMA because I just felt like it was it was made for Jenna. So but now I know that if she chose this one that this was also made for Jenna. Yes.

Jackie (10:25)
that if she chose Yes. I think seriously this month there could have been multiple books that Jenna could have chosen that like scream Jenna. Yeah.

Kirsten (10:37)
Yeah. So the one I’m talking about that’s the GMA pick is Take What You by Naima Coster. Now she was a Read with Jenna Pick before. Jenna doesn’t normally pick the same author twice, so that was not in my favor. But it was back in 2021 for What’s Yours and Mine. And so I thought maybe there’s a chance. You know, it’s been five years. She could pick her. I thought it was gonna be perfect for her because it’s about two female friends who are essentially found family, found sisters. And she tends to like sister books.

It’s also about motherhood. There’s a bunch of secrets. It’s a dual timeline. It’s about Val and Millie, who met in France when they were just out of college. They became really good friends over the course of this exchange program trip. And they sort of are bonded for life. Val has decided to move to New York because she’s pregnant, and Millie is also pregnant, and they want to raise their kids together.

They both have marital issues, they both have motherhood issues, they both have sort of secrets they’re keeping from one another. And you’re kind of like, is this friendship gonna survive this next stage of their life? And it just feels like there’s so much to talk about that I knew it was gonna bea book club pick. And I do see why it could be a GMA one too, but it just felt like something Jenna would really wanna sink her teeth into. So I’m a little sad about that that I didn’t choose the correct one, but I’m down with this choice.

Jackie (12:00)
But you’re being a little hard on yourself.

Kirsten (12:07)
With that said, we don’t currently know the GMA YA pick. but hopefully we’ll know that soon. I’m gonna guess it’s another fantasy. But if I if I could choose for them, I would choose the book Killing Sadie, which comes out on August 4th, because it was such a good.

Jackie (12:20)
Yeah.

Kirsten (12:25)
YA thriller and we haven’t had like a good YA thriller from them in a while. And so I’d really love for them to choose this

Jackie 12:28)
Yeah.

Kirsten (12:31)
book, but I don’t have any other guesses as of right now.

Jackie (12:34)
Is it a Sunny Reads book month? is Okay.

Kirsten (12:39)
It is not. So they chose in July, so that’s for their July and August. but you read the Reese.

Jackie (12:46)
I did read the Reese. It is The Wild Beneath by Kelly Anderson. And this is such a unique book. It gave me the feels of Wild Dark Shore. Okay. Okay. So I loved it. I didn’t love it as much as Wild Dark Shore, but I

Kirsten (13:01)
Okay. Okay. I

Jackie (13:09)
I feel like that’s not a fair comparison because Wild Dark Shore was just one of the best books.

Kirsten (13:19)
knock your socks off. Yeah, that was ever. If you haven’t read that one, get in on that.

Jackie (13:24)
So this was such an interesting and unique book. It starts off after a massive earthquake off the coast of British Columbia and Canada has unleashed a tsunami and it’s taken out a huge part of the coast of Canada, all the way up British Columbia up to Vancouver. It goes back, and we learn about this woman. She has grown up on a boat with her parents. Her mother was always viewed as very kind of strange. And throughout, we learn the story of her mother. Her mother never felt comfortable being on land. The father was a doctor and quit his job. They bought a boat and they lived off the boat. So this woman has spent her entire life, she’s 20 now. On the boat. It is after the tsunami. Her parents are gone. And she finds a boy washed up on shore. And at first he has terrible amnesia.

Kirsten (14:48)
so like a little love triangle-y?

Jackie (14:39)
And it becomes her relationship with him from the boy that she’d already loved her whole life and their story. And it’s so a little love a little love triangly, but such a love story to the environment and the way that we live off the land and and expectations and schooling, and it’s just so well written and such a beautiful story.

Kirsten (15:08)
This sounds a lot like Habits of the Sea.

Jackie (15:11)
I from what you said, it sounds like it’s very similar also.

Kirsten (15:14)
Which I was deeply disappointed that that one was not picked by anyone, but this sounds very, very similar.

Jackie (15:22)
I feel like in the last little while we’ve had these books that we’re where nature more than the tsunami nature’s kind of a character in this. Because I read the other book, Under Story, that was also about a tsunami. Right. So i all these underwater. Thank you. Under Story is

Kirsten (15:34)
a character in this Right, it all Under Water.

Jackie (15:48)
is Chloe Benjamin’s new book that I’m reading. That’s also about the environment, but it’s said in Antarctica.

Kirsten (15:54)
see.

Jackie (15:55)
see. So I I feel like this is a new trend in in books and I love them. They feel very

Kirsten (16:02)
Timely?

Jackie (16:03)
yeah, they feel very timely, but they also have a very surreal component to them. So this one has a little bit of magical realism, but you kind of don’t know where that ends and where it begins. So it’s such a good book. I’m interested for everyone when you read it. Let me know what you guys all think of it.

Kirsten (16:23)
Okay, so now we’re gonna get into the part of the episode where we talk about former celebrity book club picks who have

Jackie (16:27)
Mm.

Kirsten (16:29)
books coming out this month. And pretty much all of them, aside from your bookmark, are thrillers.

Jackie (16:35)
Yeah, that’s so interesting. I feel like right about now is the time where I’m seeing a ton of thrillers starting to come out, which you’d think not necessarily, but the end of August or the beginning of August is really kind of the start of the fall season. Right?

Kirsten (16:53)
Right. Right. At least for publishing.

Jackie (16:55)
for for publishing, not for necessarily what we’re reading, like we’re still into the summer reading, but they want the books to be on the shelves for a little bit by the time September comes around, so that when it’s fall, people can be like, here’s my fall creepy bath.

Kirsten (17:11)
I’m ready for my fall creepy vibes. we have My Sister Is Gonna Kill Me by Nina Simon. She was the Reese pick for Mother Daughter Murder Night. which I thought could have been a sequel. I was wondering if we were gonna see this like trio, because actually the grandmother was involved too. And so I was wondering if we were gonna get back with them, but this one is not. This is about two sisters trying

Jackie (17:21)
okay. too. I love it.

Kirsten (17:35)
to bond on a trip, someone find winds up dead and they need to try to solve the mystery. So it’s a little more mystery than thriller.

Jackie (17:42)
But there were Okay.

Kirsten (17:42)
But there are at least for her last one, there were some suspenseful moments that kind of make it one of those like mystery thriller types.

Jackie (17:50)
So the next one is Promise Me Never. It’s Liv Constantine. And this one is about a woman who moves to the woods with her husband and becomes obsessed with the husband’s ex wife who who is deceased. So I don’t know, maybe she thinks that.

Kirsten (18:15)
I don’t know.

Jackie (18:13)
He did it, now she’s stuck in the woods with him.

Kirsten (18:17)
I don’t know, but she was the Reese pick for The Last Mrs. Parrish. Yes. Which, you know,

Jackie (18:21)
Yes.

Kirsten (18:23)
everyone, that’s like one of the OG, I feel like psychological thrillers. And we know she can write like a twisty domestic. Right. So let’s see.

Jackie (18:29)
Right. So there’s gonna be something going on with this one.

Kirsten (18:35)
yeah. The last one is Time to Burn by Ellery Lloyd. And she wrote the club, which I thought was such a fun Reese pick. This one is a little bit of a departure. It is a sci-fi time-travel situation where a woman is gonna be a documentary filmmaker about this tech billionaire who can travel through time and she’s there to like record their time in the past. It’s supposed to be like going so well.

Jackie (18:39)
Okay.

Kirsten (19:03)
or their return, I should say, from the past, except they show up bloodied and traumatized, and with someone missing. So, she recognizes some of the people. So there’s like a whole mystery element to that. And I don’t

Jackie (19:09)
someone missing. okay.

Kirsten (19:19)
normally love a sci-fi, but I do make an exception for time travel. Yes. And her last one was just like so campy and fun club that I could totally see myself getting into this book.

Jackie (19:23)
Yes. It sounds like there are sci-fi elements, but it’s still mostly mystery thriller.

Kirsten (19:37)
Totally. Totally. Right. Right? Right. Right. It doesn’t

Jackie (19:38)
Which which the Jillian McAllister, right? That also had time travel, right? In case you did you you guys didn’t know, she keeps going back and time and back and time and back in time. But it doesn’t feel like a sci-fi.

Kirsten (19:50)
Right. I guess that’s the it’s kinda like the time traveler’s wife. Like, yeah, it’s sci

Jackie (19:53)
Right, right.

Kirsten (19:54)
but isn’t really I don’t know. Time travel is like an except that’s my one and only exception.

Jackie (19:58)
feel like it is an exception, except for when they turn time travel into a real science fiction. I’m like, now you’ve just taken the joy of time travel away from me.

Kirsten (20:12)
from I want to have time travel without the science of time travel. Yeah. Like just power me back to Outlander times, you know? travel. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Jackie (20:15)
Right. a hundred percent. The joy of time travel without having to hear the theoretical possibilities of time travel. Okay.

Kirsten (20:28)
Well, that concludes the thriller mystery genre situation, which leaves only one book, which is like a literary fiction, and it’s gonna be your bookmark. Yes, She was

Jackie (20:39)
Yes, it is The Seekers of Deer Creek by Tao Tai.

Kirsten (20:45)
formerly the Jenna pick for Banyan Moon, which was excellent.

Jackie (20:49)
This was the other one that I thought could be a pick, but again, she has already been a pick. And so that was working against her, right? So, like you said, Jenna doesn’t usually pick the same people twice. We’d already known the other people, so it wasn’t That’s a big of a surprise that it wasn’t chosen, but it’s excellent. So the story is about two sisters. One is an artist, and the other is an art restorer. Their father dies and leaves them an envelope. And inside are letters and drawings that look like they’re from a famous artist who kind of lived a very reclusive lifestyle. People don’t know a ton about this artist. And they’re wondering how the father got this work. It goes on for the two sisters moving from place to place, tracking down the mystery of who this artist was and how the father got this information. It goes into their past. We go back in time and we actually see the artist and and we learn about the artist. It was fantastic. It’s a sister story. It’s a mystery. It’s about art and artists and art restoration. And It was so well written.

Kirsten (22:16)
I’m loving all these stories about art. I just feel like art books are making a comeback and I really like them. Yeah, that’s a great one.

Jackie (22:24)
I love stories about art. I think it started years ago when I read The Art Forger. yeah. Yeah. And I became obsessed with this idea of how people forge art and make it look like it was old. So there’s a beginning part in this book that kind of reminded me like of that because she is a restorer, and she thinks that there might be another painting hidden underneath the painting. I just find the whole idea of art restoration so interesting. It’s a mystery in and of itself.

Kirsten (23:02)
I think we might have to do art books in the future because we make a really good plot twist episode. Cause I can think of four off the top of my head that are absolutely knock your socks off phenomenal. And I feel like that needs to be its own episode to really like give them their spotlight.

Jackie (23:20)
I think that’s a great idea. I actually think maybe we should choose that for a reading challenge. What do you guys think? 2027 reading challenge? Books about art?

Kirsten (23:29)
But for next week’s plot twist, we do have a plot twist episode because we’re going out of order. And we’re gonna be talking about books set in tropical locations, which feels a little more appropriate for the summertime. Right.

Jackie (23:42)
Yes, it is our reading challenge prompt for August, which is why it’s out of order.

Kirsten (23:49)
Right, because we really wanted to talk about it, especially because our book club author recorded. A segment with us. So we want to make sure that you can see that and hear about the book that we’re choosing. I’m gonna

Jackie (24:00)
Yes.

Kirsten (24:01)
tell you what it is now. It’s a little early, but it’s actually late. So it’s Liar’s Dice by Juliet Faithful. It’s absolutely phenomenal. You’ll hear more about it next week. But if you are interested in the book club, I’m telling you now so you have time to read it since you only have a couple weeks to read it by the time we talk about it next week.

Jackie (24:19)
So follow, subscribe, and we will see you next week.

Kirsten (24:26)
Happy reading.