Sunny’s Book Club is a monthly book club highlighting both new releases and backlist titles we love. A virtual discussion is hosted over Zoom on the last Saturday of the month.

A new physical book will be shipped to you (or available for in store pickup) the month prior to when this month’s book club will take place. The February pick will ship the last week of January to ensure you have the entire month to read the book.

The link for sign up is not a subscription service, you opt in on a monthly basis dependent on your interest in that months chosen title. We do however have a recurring book club subscription if you are interested here.

The story of a runaway mother’s ten days of freedom—and the pain, desire, longing, and wonder we find on the messy road to enlightenment—from Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes.

April is a young mother raising her daughter in an intergenerational house of unspoken secrets and loud arguments. Her only refuge is to hide away in a locked bathroom, her ears plugged into an ambient soundscape, and a mantra on her lips: dead inside. That is, until one day, as she finds herself spiraling toward the volcanic rage she calls the white hot, a voice inside her tells her to just . . . walk away. She wanders to a bus station and asks for a ticket to the furthest destination; she tells the clerk to make it one-way. That ticket takes her from her Philly home to the threshold of a wilderness and the beginning of a nameless quest—an accidental journey that shakes her awake, almost kills her, and brings her to the brink of an impossible choice.

The White Hot takes the form of a letter from mother to daughter about a moment of abandonment that would stretch from ten days to ten years—an explanation, but not an apology. Hudes narrates April’s story—spiritual and sexy, fierce and funny—with delicate lyricism and tough love. Just as April finds in her painful and absurd sojourn the key to freeing herself and her family from a cage of generational trauma, so Hudes turns April’s stumbling pursuit of herself into an unforgettable short epic of self-discovery.

“The White Hot articulates our beautiful, unspeakable wildernesses. . . . Dignified, sexy, and true, with lines (‘A mother is a life sentence’; ‘How could love look like leaving?’) burned indelibly into my heart.”—Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Beautyland

For $30 each month the online book club includes:

• A physical copy of the months pick

• A live book club discussion video hosted by CJ on Zoom

• Shipping is free and included in the price for US customers

• Moderated Discord channel to talk about that months book in real time