Jenna Bush Hager's January 2025 pick for her Read With Jenna book club is a novel about a first-year college student in Scotland searching for the answers to her family secrets.
"This is a book about friendship, motherhood and finding ourselves with mystery and romance at its core. This debut novel will sweep you up your feet," Jenna said.
"The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus" by Emma Knight follows 18-year-old Penelope Winters as she arrives at Pollock Halls, the first year dorm, from across the pond in Toronto.
"The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus" by Emma Knight
Knight, a Canadian author and the founder of a Greenhouse, an organic beverage company, tells TODAY.com about her debut novel, publishing on Jan. 7.
“The novel takes place over the first academic year of university ... as (Penelope and her friends) test the boundaries of their newfound freedom, make some questionable decisions and help each other weather the loneliness of being human,” Knight says.
She may be a student, but her first task is uncovering her dad's secrets. After moving into the dorms, she writes to Lord Lennox, an old friend of her father who has become a well known novelist and lives in an old estate on the East Coast of Scotland.
"She tracks him down because she believes he holds some of the answers that she's after, and much to her astonishment, he writes back to her letter and invites her to spend the weekend at his family's centuries-old estate and of course, she goes," Knight says.
"She hops on the train, and she meets his seemingly perfect family who, over the course of several visits, will charm her and baffle her and do almost anything to make her feel welcome, except for answering her direct questions," she continues. "As she continues pulling at the thread of her family's secret ... much of what she thought she knew falls apart."
Knight has published two cookbooks, but she says "The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus," her debut novel, has been five years in the making after she started writing what would become the book in the summer of 2019.
"I sort of did it in secret and at night, then in the margins of my life, until after my second daughter was born," Knight says. "I just had this realization that you only get one shot at life, and that if I wanted to show these two little girls that they could do anything they wanted, I'd better set an example."
Knight explains that the first character that she came up with was Fergus Scarlett Moore, a friend of Penelope's.
"Fergus was the first one to walk into my brain, and he just waltzed in fully formed," she says. "It was the summer of 2019 — I had one small child, I was pregnant with another. I was in the woods in Canada. I hadn't set foot in Edinburgh in nine years at this point. So it was weird to find this kind of like, melancholy, pink-trousered Englishman loping around inside my brain and like, firing off flirty disses at another character."
"But that was what was happening, and he just occupied my mind, and I had to write down some of what he was up to."
Knight adds that she thinks the city of Edinburgh is another important character in the novel.
"It's known for being one of the most haunted cities in Europe, and I think a haunted city is a very good backdrop for a child's attempt to find all the skeletons in her parents' closets," she says.
As for finding out her book would be the first Read With Jenna pick of 2025? Knight says that at first, she didn't quite believe the news.
"I received an email from somebody I had not previously been in correspondence with," Knight says. "She was telling me the news, but because the name Emma is extremely common, I've actually received a lot of emails for other Emma's over the years, and my heart, like, leapt out of my body, but then I like, put it back in, and was like, 'Clearly this isn't for me,' and went back to editing."
She continued: "I was like, 'Just evacuate that from your brain, because that's for some other very fortunate Emma, and congratulations to her, but not for you."
After going back to editing, Knight says she decided to take another look at the email, and saw that it was, in fact, for her, and that her regular editor was on a flight — explaining why she had never gotten an email from this person before.
"It was real. This was not a hoax. This was not a prank or a mistake in email. And then I jumped out of my chair," she recalls through laughter. "It took quite a while for me to actually believe it, but it was very thrilling."
Knight says she's excited for her book to be the January Read With Jenna selection — and that it ties into a part of the book.
"January is such a great time, I think, to have a novel come out," she says. "There’s a jokey headline in the book — 'Hot Fiction for Cold Nights' — it’s a headline that I made up for the arts section of The Globe and Mail when Pen is reading about Lennox’s latest detective novel."
"And, you know, I really believe that," she continues. "Like, what better time to cuddle under your comforter and get into a story? So I hope that people enjoy it and I’m excited for it to come out."
