Long before Emily Henry and Taylor Jenkins Reid were captivating us with their bold, intelligent heroines, Jennifer Weiner had women doing a slow clap for Cannie Shapiro, the protagonist of 2001’s Good in Bed. The author has since published several short stories, a memoir, and 15 other novels to sink our teeth into, including the 2003 book-turned-blockbuster In Her Shoes. (You know, the one that inspired the hit 2005 Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette film?) And depending on who you ask, those aren’t even the best Jennifer Weiner books.
Throughout her quarter-decade-long career, Weiner has gifted readers everything from lighthearted beach reads (The Summer Place) to darker tales of addiction (All Fall Down). And she’s not done yet: April 8, 2025 will see the release of her latest work, the highly anticipated new novel The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits. Having signed a deal with Verve for film and television representation in April 2024, we’ll also likely see more of her words hit the big screen.
We poured the pages of the author’s catalog to see what's worth adding to your TBR stack. Below, we give you the best Jennifer Weiner books, definitively ranked.
They say to write what you know, which Weiner did with The Next Big Thing. Its plot about a TV writer struggling to make her way in the industry rang true in some aspects for Weiner, who found out that State of Georgia, the Raven Symoné-led TV show she co-created, had been canceled by reading about it online. That time a goat was cast on the show? Yeah, that was pulled from Weiner’s real-life experiences. Unfortunately, the truth bomb formula wasn't one of the author's most successful (and has marked her lowest-rated Goodreads book to date).
Do you know those friends who feel like frenemies? That’s Big Summer characters Drue Cavanaugh for Daphne Berg. But that was then, and now, Daphne has had enough distance to consider letting down her guard for a desperate, maid-of-honor-less Drue. Or at least, that’s how the book starts. At about 50 percent of the way through, it takes a sharp left turn, veering off into another genre entirely. While we can’t say much more (no spoilers here), it was a move that left a bit much to be desired.
Val & Addie were best friends…until they weren’t. Now, 15 years later, Val’s a quasi-famous weather girl, and Addie’s living at home with her parents. But their relationship will change once more when Val shows up at Addie's home with blood on her coat sleeve and shares a heartfelt plea for her former friend to help her out of an impossible situation. If you happen to be an O.G. JW fan, you might not go gaga for this Lifetime-lite storyline, but it’s emotionally stirring, to say the least.
Weiner tackles a serious topic—pill addiction—through the lens of self-deprecating humor in this 2015 read. It’s a familiar formula for the author, who infuses laughter into much of her work, but this one read as glib to some, with others citing a lack of real character development. Still, the main character Allison’s substance abuse as she desperately tries to mask the cracks in her life can be seen as striking just the right chord. Depending on which side of the fence you’re on, you’ll either love or hate this book.
The Breakway goes there with certain topics (namely, abortion, weight struggles, and infidelity), making it a potentially triggering read. But it also simultaneously exists as a romance, making it multi-dimensional. It follows bicycle enthusiast Abby Stern, who’s being forced by fate to choose between the longtime love she’s known since her summer camp days and the one-night stand she can’t forget about. All in all, it lands squarely in the “maybe” pile.
Weiner dabbled in mystery with this one to mixed results. However, chief among this book’s complaints wasn’t the writing or the plot—centered on a dissatisfied suburban housewife who becomes an amateur sleuth in the wake of a local murder—but its protagonist, Kate. Cannie Shapiro, she is not: With her selfishness driving the plot, she falls flat in many ways, leaving this one middling on our list.
A lot is going on in the character front of this book. The good news is that Weiner shows off her ability to create realistic, detailed personalities that won’t fade into the background. The bad news? It might be too ambitious for the average beach reader to keep track as they work their way through this tale about a family wedding at a Cape Cod summer house.
As Fly Away Home sees Senator Richard Woodruff's extramarital activities thrust his wife Sylvie and their two daughters into the harsh glare of the national spotlight, the novel is a masterclass in dysfunctional families. It's one of the first novels Weiner wrote while still working as a journalist, which means it's not entirely without its flaws: It could’ve been a little bit shorter and it could've been a tad more uplifting, but all in all, this one’s okay.
A sequel to Good in Bed, Certain Girls will undoubtedly be gratifying to Cannie Shapiro fans. It's based on her life set 12 years into the future. Alternating between Cannie’s point of view and her teenage daughter Joy's, it’s clear that our heroine is a bit older and a bit more tame, the latter of which can be forgiven. That plot twist at the end, however, is another matter entirely…
Don’t let the bright and cheery cover fool you: This is not a beach read. It covers some pretty dark and triggering topics (namely, sexual assault.) If you’re up for the emotional challenge, this tale of two women navigating an incredibly complex friendship will stick with you long after the last page has been read.
Then Came You shares similarities with Little Earthquakes: Both are centered on four women whose lives are intertwined through motherhood. Each woman also has their own impossible problem to work through. Still, it’s a decent little read, with the storylines differing enough to hold fans’ interest.
Everyone loves a good love story, and true to its cover, Weiner’s homage to l’amour is wholly enjoyable, if a bit non-linear. Rather than going from meet-cute-to-dating-to-marriage-to-babies, former hospital patients Rachel and Andy’s romance is all over the map: They meet again and again over 30 years to mixed bag results. But at some point, they’ll have to either look past their glaring differences and go all in or give each other up for good...
A New York Times best-seller, Little Earthquakes introduces us to three mothers in a childbirth class who bond over parenting and problems: One has a famous husband who’s not exactly faithful, one has a mother-in-law who’s the devil reincarnate, and the other has a lazy spouse who's seemingly more concerned with soaps than their child. Then, a fourth woman enters the picture who is about to have her life changed by their friendship. The best part about this book? The high level of relatability. Any of the characters could be you, your sisters, your friends, or your coworkers, allowing you to really see yourself in Weiner’s pages—something she has a real knack for.
You don’t need a Jennifer Weiner book to tell you sibling relationships are complex, but In Her Shoes is a terribly fun reminder. Protagonists Rose and Maggie Feller couldn’t be more different—one’s a hotshot lawyer with a love life that’s dead on arrival while the other is an aimless dreamer with no trouble in the man department. And now that they’re living together, they’re about to find out just how many of the other’s antics each sister can take.
“Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique,” was the general readership consensus of Weiner’s 2001 Good in Bed debut. (Or the best Lady Gaga quote ever, but, hey, it applies.) More than 20 years after its release, the story of pop culture reporter Cannie Shapiro, who (among her many misadventures) was labeled a “larger woman” in an op-ed written by her ex-boyfriend about loving her, is still garnering the author new fans. And if the rumored Mindy Kaling-led movie adaptation ever comes to fruition, we strongly suspect she’ll scoop up even more.
As the only Weiner book to rank higher than her Good in Bed debut and her claim to Hollywood movie fame, In Her Shoes, Mrs. Everything nabs our No. 1 spot. Spread out over nearly 500 pages, it’s not exactly a quick read. Rather, it’s an epic saga about two Jewish-American sisters that spans their childhood in the 1940s to a fictionalized present with a female president. Weiner explains it best, having told Kveller.com, “Through their eyes and through their experiences, it’s the story of women in America. That’s what I was setting out to do. I wanted to tell a sister story and a woman story and an American story, a story about America. That’s what I hope I did.” Mission, accomplished, Jen. Mission accomplished.
