We're fresh into August, and bookworms know that a new month means a new Reese's Book Club pick. On the heels of July's appropriately-selected A Founding Mother in honor of America's 250th anniversary, Reese Witherspoon plunges us into the dog days of summer with a mystery romance novel set in the Pacific Northwest.
Reese's Book Club Reveals Mysterious and Haunting New Novel as Its August Pick
Think: 'Wild Dark Shore' meets 'The Time Traveler's Wife'
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Published Aug 5, 2026
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"Prepare to get lost in a haunting love story about one woman caught between the man she thought was her future and a mysterious stranger who upends everything," the book club wrote in the caption.
The Wild Beneath is Dr. Kelly Anderson's debut novel billed as a cross between Wild Dark Shore and The Time Traveler's Wife. The story follows Annie MacLeod, a woman raised on a sailboat in the remote Pacific Northwest. After a tsunami destroys her home, she finds herself on the mainland, struggling to adapt to a new life with her best friend and love interest, Evan. However, when Annie was rescued by the Coast Guard following the natural disaster, she found a mysterious man, Walker, in the wreckage. Their connection is electric; when they touch, Annie has visions of worlds buried beneath the sea. Soon, she must make a choice between Evan's stability and Walker's secrets that could reveal keys to her past.
"It's a myth and a love story, but what it's really about are the ways that the world can become so noisy and busy; it's hard for us to listen to ourselves," Anderson said in a video posted to her publisher's social media account. The novelist is also a practicing medical doctor who spent six years working on The Wild Beneath as part of a cohort at the BookEnds Fellowship at Stony Brook University.
"Once upon a time I started writing a story about a tidal wave that disintegrated everything, leaving one woman to rebuild her life and find herself again amidst the noise around her," Anderson wrote in her newsletter announcing the book's publication, while on her way to Reese's Book Club STORYfest to introduce the novel. "It’s unbelievable (is there a word that actually captures it?) that The Wild Beneath is the August pick for Reese. To me, it’s proof that we have the power to make anything we want if we keep showing up."
