Jenna Bush Hager’s latest Read With Jenna book club pick is Emma Knight’s The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus.
Knight’s debut novel, scheduled for publication next Tuesday by Pamela Dorman Books, follows Pen, a Canadian woman who moves to Scotland to go to college. There she learns a secret about her parents—and falls in love for the first time—after spending a weekend at the estate of a friend of her father’s.
Hager announced her selection on the Today show, saying, “This is a book about friendship, motherhood, and finding ourselves, with mystery and romance at its core. This debut novel will sweep you off your feet.…Come on, y’all, it’s our New Year’s resolution to read more.”
Knight told Today.com that she started writing her novel in 2019.
“I sort of did it in secret and at night, then in the margins of my life, until after my second daughter was born,” she said. “I just had this realization that you only get one shot at life, and that if I wanted to show these two little girls that they could do anything they wanted, I’d better set an example.”
She said that when she received the email telling her that her book would be the book club pick, she thought it was a mistake at first but eventually realized it was authentic.
“It was real,” she said. “This was not a hoax. This was not a prank or a mistake in email. And then I jumped out of my chair. It took quite a while for me to actually believe it, but it was very thrilling.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
