About ReadPlug
There’s a specific kind of moment that happens when you find the right book at the right time. It doesn’t happen often. But when it does, something in you shifts — a problem you couldn’t name gets named, a feeling you were carrying alone turns out to be something millions of people know, a question you thought was uniquely yours already has an answer, waiting in chapter four.
ReadPlug exists because of that moment. We’re a team of writers who’ve each had our version of it, and who’ve spent years trying to give it to other people. We cover self-help, relationships, mental health, career, finance, health, history, science, and fiction — because the kind of reading that changes you doesn’t fit neatly into one aisle.
We are not an algorithm. We are not a brand. Every post on this site is written by a real person who read the books they’re recommending, has opinions about them, and is willing to say which ones you should skip.
The People Behind This Site
Sarah Mitchell
Sarah writes about the emotional life of being human — grief, relationships, anxiety, and the messy work of healing. She lives in Portland with her two kids and too many library holds.
Amara Hassan
Amara grew up watching her parents work double shifts and decided early that money would not be the thing she didn’t understand. She writes about finance, career, and building something from nothing.
Maya Rivera
Maya spent years trying to think her way out of anxiety before she learned to breathe through it. She writes about mindfulness, wellness, and the books that taught her to stop fighting herself.
Kai Nakamura
Kai left a PhD program in cognitive science to write for people instead of citation databases. He covers psychology, introversion, philosophy, and the science of how humans actually work.
DeShawn Brooks
DeShawn was forty years old, broke, and starting over. He writes about resilience, ADHD, reinvention, and the books that helped him build something he’s actually proud of.
Nadia Osei
Nadia has been a nurse for 20 years and a lupus patient for seven. She writes about health, sleep, self-care, and chronic illness from the inside — not as a wellness influencer, but as someone who’s had to figure it out the hard way.
James Whitfield
James taught high school history in Chicago for 31 years. Now he reads everything and writes about the books that make the world make sense — history, science, biography, and the joy of learning for its own sake.
Zoe Park
Zoe graduated from CUNY during a pandemic with no idea what came next. She writes for anyone who’s in their twenties, first in their family to go to college, or just feeling wildly underprepared for adult life.
Priya Menon
Priya has spent 15 years being the only woman in rooms where decisions get made. She writes about leadership, gender, career, and the books that told her the truth about what she was up against.
Liam Brady
Liam divorced at 44, has three teenagers who mostly ignore him, and started reading books because the apartment was too quiet. He writes about fatherhood, parenting, co-parenting, and learning emotional intelligence later than he should have.
How We Pick Books
We don’t review books we haven’t read. That sounds obvious, but it’s not how most recommendation lists work — a lot of them are built from Amazon descriptions and aggregated reviews. We do it differently: every book in a ReadPlug post was read by the person writing the post.
We include a “Skip if…” section in most posts. This is the piece that took the longest to get right. The instinct is always to sell, to be positive, to give everything five stars. But the most useful recommendation is the one that tells you who the book isn’t for — because that’s how you know the writer isn’t just flattering the author.
We also include books we had mixed feelings about. A book can be worth reading even when it’s flawed. A book can be important without being good. We try to tell you both things.
A Note on Amazon Links
Some links on this site are affiliate links. When you buy through them, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. This is how we keep the site running. It doesn’t affect what we recommend — a bad book with a high commission is still a bad book, and we’ll say so.
If a book doesn’t have an affiliate link, it’s either out of print or we couldn’t find a reliable edition. The recommendation stands either way.
