Jenna Bush Hager is ready for summer reading.
The Today show co-host has picked J. Courtney Sullivan’s Friends and Strangers for Read With Jenna, her popular book club, a book she praised as “a little bit like a beach read, but at the same time tackles themes of acceptance of others and also of yourself.”
Sullivan’s novel, which was published last week, follows an author in upstate New York who befriends her child’s babysitter, a college student. A reviewer for Kirkus called the book a “perceptive novel about a complex friendship between two women [that] resonates as broadly as it does deeply.”
Sullivan told the Today show that the book was inspired by her own years in college when she worked as a nanny for a woman she befriended.
“I’ve been that young woman wondering what the future holds and how she’s going to pay off her student loans, and I’ve been the middle-aged mom doling out advice to babysitters in their 20s while I still am totally unsure how to handle aspects of my own life,” she said.
Sullivan also said that she “wanted to explore American life in the pre-Trump years.”
“The book very much digs into the gig economy, the shrinking safety net, and the notion that privilege takes many different forms,” she said.
Friends and Strangers is the fifth novel from Sullivan; her previous books include Maine and Saints for All Occasions.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
