Jenna Bush Hager’s latest Today show book club pick is Jenny Jackson’s The Shampoo Effect.
Jackson’s novel, scheduled for publication next Tuesday by Pamela Dorman/Viking, follows Caroline Lash, a writer who wins a long residency in a coastal Massachusetts town. She meets and falls for a man named Van Whittaker, who learns that his ex-girlfriend is pregnant with his child. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “This easy read combines a literary rom-com with an acute portrait of midlife among millennials.”
Hager announced the book’s selection on Today, saying, “You will love this book. It is a delicious summer read, centered around a tightknit circle of friends thrown into disarray when an outsider arrives and falls for one of them. It made me think of my oldest friendships. It’s a book about growing up and the loyalty we have to people who have known you forever. It is so fun. I read it on the beach, but you can read it anywhere you want.”
Jackson told Today.com that her novel was inspired by her own hometown of Ipswich, Massachusetts.
“Part of writing The Shampoo Effect for me was subconsciously a corrective to write about my hometown and where I’m from, and what that world growing up in Massachusetts was like,” she said.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
