Staff Picks: Neda Dallal’s Favorites
Hey,fellow book nerds! I’m Neda Dallal, a Senior Marketing Associate for the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau. I use tools like social media and email to promote our authors as speakers for events nationwide. My go-to genres are romance, bestselling fiction, and YA. I’m a first-generation Iranian American who’s really passionate about representation in books and media as a whole. I also am a bit of a pop culture nerd and you’ll often catch me dropping references to some obscure show/movie/meme. You can find me on Instagram @thebookishpersian, or @nedadallal on Twitter—come say hi!
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Add to BookshelfEverything I Never Told You
by Celeste Ng
I’m a sucker for a great, sweeping family story, and this one delivers like no other. The story of this Chinese American family who lose a daughter goes back and forth in time and reveals so much about each character’s passions, fears, and motivations. Celeste Ng is a master at examining the granular human things that make us tick, and this book will make you feel every emotion imaginable.
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$17.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Wedding Date
by Jasmine Guillory
This is the book that got me hooked on romance novels, and I suggest it to anyone and everyone looking to check out the genre. It’s sweet, charming, lusty, and just FUN, and I think we all need more of that in our lives. The author has written several other romances as well starring tertiary characters from The Wedding Date, and they’re all great, so I hope you enjoy the Jasmine Guillory extended universe!
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$19.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Homegoing
by Yaa Gyasi
An absolute force of a novel. I read Homegoing almost two years ago but still think about it constantly. It follows several characters over many generations, starting with two sisters in Ghana who are separated during the height of the African slave trade. One remains in Ghana, one is forcibly enslaved in America—and the rest of book follows the sisters’ descendants in their respective lands and the hardships and discrimination they experience. This book fundamentally gets at the heart of America’s racialized consciousness, and it’s an absolute must-read.
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$18.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Bromance Book Club
by Lyssa Kay Adams
Another romance favorite, though I would classify this squarely as a romcom. It’s a sweet and pure story about a group of men who start a secret romance book club and band together to help one of their own save his rocky marriage. I imagine that when Lyssa Kay Adams wrote this book, she channeled that Sue Sylvester meme and said, “I am going to create a story that is so delightful…” I compare this book to the movie Magic Mike XXL—just a bunch of attractive men supporting each other in the pursuit of unproblematic feminism.
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$18.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Truth About Forever
by Sarah Dessen
One of the all-time YA classics. Sarah Dessen is legendary, and this was the first book of hers I picked up when I was a teen. It’s special to me for nostalgia reasons, but it also was fundamental in that it introduced me to concepts I hadn’t previously grappled with, like grief and trauma. When done right, YA novels are a warm cozy hug on a rainy day, and The Truth About Forever is the epitome of that feeling.
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$12.99Buy from Other Retailers:
