You'll love this one...!! A book club & more discussion

For this month's challenge, we are reexploring some of Goodreads' features that most of us probably haven't looked at before, or haven't since we last played around with them 10 years ago for the last challenge (yup, that long ago).

I want you to think about a book that you loved. A 5 star read that you think about frequently, and still adore for whatever reason. Go to it's book page and scroll down.



You want to stop at the "Readers also enjoyed" section. Why is "also" in italics? Another Goodreads mystery. But I want you to click on the "All similar books" link below those 4 featured books.



This will take you to another page which will list up to 20 books that people who have read your favourite have also enjoyed. Your challenge this month is to read one of these books.



You can play around with your five star books, you are not limited to your first choice of a favourite (edited for clarity). Some suggestions are better than others, and some just give you books that haven't been translated for example.

Please let us know what book you chose to start with (your favourite/5 star read), and what book you ended up choosing from the list in this thread so we can follow along and chat about it.

Reporting

- Book title you read
- Your favourite/5 star read
- What did you think of it? Give us a couple of sentences so we can see if we want to snaffle this on to our own lists. "I liked it" will not count.
- Do you think it was a good recommendation? Was it similar? Was it as good? Was it completely unrelated and the amazon AI needs to be rebooted?

General Rules:

1. The book may be in any format - paperback, ebook, audiobook.
2. The book may be combined with the Year Long Challenge and the Group Themed Read.
3. The book must be started and read between July 1 - 31, 2025 (based on your local time zone).
4. The challenge is for one book. You may read more books if you chose but you need only report one.
5. The book must be 175 pages or more determined by the issue you read.
In the case of ebooks & audiobooks, the ebook edition must be at least 200 pages and the audiobook must be a minimum of 6 hours long.

WoF Katrisa

My 5 star read was One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
The book I chose from the recommended page is Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism

I am a teacher so I like to read books that open my eyes to blind spots I may have. This was a a good read - some of it I knew some new information (some super depressing information). I am glad that I read it. I gave it 4 stars. It was related to my original book in that it dealt with race and social justice and I could see why people who liked my book would also like this one. But my original 5 star read really was a cut above the normal and really hit me in the soul.

WoF Jayme

My 5 star read was The Frozen River and the book I chose was Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy.

I really enjoyed this atmospheric book that delves into a family that is navigating grief and anger on an isolated island off of Australia, but who are also trying to save seeds in a seed vault that is being flooded by rising sea levels when a woman washes ashore and changes everything - I know seems like a lot, but it works.
At first I couldn't figure out the relationship between these two books. Frozen River is a historical Fiction book that takes place in the 1700s and Wild Dark Shore takes place in the near future in a world ravaged by climate change. But the setting of both books is one of isolation and dealing with weather. Frozen River takes place in rural Maine in the dead of winter and Wild Dark Shore on an island being destroyed by sea water and storms. Strong 4 star read.

WoF: Kristie

I looked up four 5 star books: The God of the Woods, Great Big Beautiful Life, The Frozen River, and The Women.

My book choice was Say You'll Remember Me because it was on all four lists.

I really enjoyed this book and ended up rounding up to another 5 star read. There was a part in the middle where I was getting a little frustrated but some of the female MC's repetitive gloomy thoughts, but it did make sense within the context of the story. Overall, it was a quick and easy read and I loved it. My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

WoF Nix

My 5 star book was Project Hail Mary

My book choice was The Will of the Many which was also in my TBR

I loved this book so much. The book takes its own sweet time in building a fantastic world. You start caring about the characters. There is so much I still don't understand about the world but still the crux of the story is very good. To me, it was a really good fantasy. I am very excited for the part 2 coming out later this year!

WoF Aya

My 5 star book was The Troop and I chosed Seed.

I've read 2 books from the suggestion list so I was hoping this one would have similar atmosphere in it. Turns out, it wasn't engaging and creeping me out enough. It's a short book, so I wondering if the story was extended a bit, would it makes more sense and I get a better understanding.

WoFSharonBiskit

My 5 star read was Still Life by Louise Penny. This book started off my love affair with Armand Gamache, the setting of Three Pines and the lovely, fallible characters. One of the books in the “Similar Books” list was Sandwich by Catherine Newman.

I read Sandwich. It was a quick read and engrossing. I might not give it five stars. I will give it 4 stars because there were places in the story that made me laugh out loud and that is rare. In this book, a family makes their annual trek to a rented house in Cape Cod. It is poignant in places but I confess that although I could sometimes identify with the “mom” character, I really didn’t care for her a lot. She was 54 years old “sandwiched” between her grown children and her parents.

WoF Karin

My 5 star book was Fallen Angels by Patricia Hickman

My book choice was A Christmas Memory by Richard Paul Evans which also helped me with my current list for the yearly challenge plus with a Christmas in July read elsewhere. I'd actually read four of the books on the page, but not all of them are a good match.

Rick's brother is killed in Viet Nam, his father loses his job, and then they sell their house and move to his late grandmother's house in Utah. Rick's dad moves out (not uncommon enough after a loss such as this) so he's lonely. He ends up befriending an elderly man and his dog next door. They form a believable and endearing friendship that starts in September and heads to Christmas. Rick learns a number of important lessons, some painful, over the months.

At first I wasn't sure if I'd like this, but it ended up being very good; four stars from me.

WoF - Lilisa

My five-star read was The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng.

My book choice from the Recommended Books list was Orbital by Samantha Harvey

I was initially intrigued – six astronauts orbiting the earth 16 times in a 24-hour period witnessing our world in all its natural glory…from a distance – what a unique perspective. I was interested in the first 20 pages or so, but then I wanted more than the book offered. Some of the descriptions of earth were lovely. The characters though felt a bit flat and the book wasn't plot driven. I gave it three stars. It couldn't have been more different from The Gift of Rain. It felt like a strange recommendation.

WoF Marnie

My five star read was Some Danger Involved- A Sherlock Holmes inspired Victorian mystery.

The algorithm recommended Marble Hall Murders which was another five star read for me. I love this series about a book editor that gets into mysterious situations with her author clients. The unique thing about these books are they have a second mystery in the books she is editing. So the reader gets a twofer. The audio is excellent.

While I enjoyed both books tremendously I’m not why the first book lead to the second. The only commonality is they are both set in England (different time periods) and are mysteries written by male authors.

WoF name - Amanda(Lily)

My 5-star read was Rock Paper Scissors, and the recommended book I chose was The Only One Left.

I really enjoyed the book. It is a solid thriller with some nice atmospheric elements. The house is almost its own character, which lends an eerie feeling to the book. The main character is really sympathetic and easy to relate to. I really, really enjoyed the ending, which was very sweet and finished the book perfectly.

WoF - Janice

I read Never Flinch. My 5 star read that had this under Readers Also Enjoyed was Swan Song.
I enjoyed this fast paced story about two different threats which connected in the end. As usual Stephen King skillfully dissected the evil in the ordinary and laid bare the monsters in ordinary people.

I rated it 4 stars. Stephen King and Robert McCammon are probably two of my favourite authors in this genre. Personally, I don't think books on any of the lists under "readers also enjoyed" are connected other than the fact that a large number of readers of a specific book, also had the other books on their shelves.

WoF: Beth

- The Safekeep--this one fit nicely with the annual challenge Fruit on cover task, so I grabbed it
- Book it was suggested from: Fugitive Pieces
- I really enjoyed this one. The moral dilemma that emerged in it was complex, the situation very true to multiple pressures of identity in mid-20th century Europe. I knew early what was happening on one level, but then it got more complex. I don't want to say too much so that people can enjoy it unfolding.
- It was a very good recommendation and I definitely see the reason why they linked the 2 books. I thought Fugitive Pieces was amazing, so it maybe wasn't quite as good, but it was definitely one I would recommend as well. Both captured the ways events can go on haunting people directly and indirectly for decades.

WoF: Lynn

5 Star book - The Thursday Murder Club

Book suggested and read - The Midnight Feast

Eh, it was ok. Bit of a slog and overly dramatic at times, but the ending did give me a few surprises. I think this will probably be the last time I give Lucy Foley a chance.

WoF Alexandra

My five star books were What You Can See from Here, The Granddaughter, One Grand Summer.

They all had Für Polina as a suggestion in common so I chose that one as I wanted to read it anyway. I liked it a lot, especially at the beginning, but in the end the love story was just a bit too much. I loved the writing, though, and will definitely read other books by this author.

WoF Shirley
My five-star read was The Poisonwood Bible and I read Tom Lake as a recommended “similar” book. I gave it 4 stars.

The books are not really similar, except for the theme of family. However, the Goodread’s list contains books that are written by well-known and accomplished authors. Maybe this is the similarity.

I think this feature could be useful for finding books to read and I like following a trail of “similar” booklists. Could be never-ending!

WoF Pragya

My 5 star read - Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time and I read A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

Similar read with a war narrative. It is hard to rate these books but if I have to, it will be, perhaps a 4. It was hard to read but always an eye opener about how it is easy to judge from the outside unless you are in the middle of it. There's so much behind a 13 year old picking up a gun!

WoF Sandra from PA

The 5 stars book I picked was The Martian Chronicles, and the suggested book I read was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I really enjoyed it, although the humor was way too much at point, but that is probably on me. In a different moment I would have laugh more, who knows. I gave it 3.5 stars, and rounded it to 3 (but I'm still thinking about it, so I might change and round it to 4).
I think the suggestion make sense since both books are science fiction and classics. I can see lots of people enjoying both.

WoF Grainne

The 5 stars book I picked was If Beale Street Could Talk which was probably my most recent 5 star read. The suggested book was The Message which was interesting because If Beale Street Could Talk is fiction while The Message is non-fiction. I actually like non-fiction and read quite a lot of that genre so I took a chance on that book. As with all non-fiction books, there's facts and info on the background and context. In this book, he details American history and his experience as a writer with a shared past with many Americans. He discovers his roots and travels to Senegal where he finds differences yet many similarities. He also travels to the Middle East and writes about his observations on the broader areas of othering among other things.

Badges have been posted. Let me know if I missed anyone.

WOF Rusalka

- Book read - Exit West

- Your favourite/5 star read - Home Fire

- What did you think of it? - Beautiful writing with so many questions about what these young people should do. What do you do if your country descends into war but doorways to other parts of the world appear? Do you stay with your family or do you leave? What happens if the whole world does this? How does this work? And what happens to you?

- Do you think it was a good recommendation? - Home Fire was an exploration about first/second generation migrants and their pull back to their countries of origin, particularly in a fraught, radicalised world. Exit West talks about people in an similar but unnamed part of the world trying to get out and be migrants and a diaspora. The pull / push factors are similar but opposite. But both are incredibly written books, that suck you in to caring about the characters rather than the geo-politics.