Finding a New Road to Connection: What Jeremiah Brown’s Book Club Can Teach Fathers

When Jeremiah Brown was voted off Love Island USA, he didn’t find love. But in a moment that could have faded into social media oblivion, he did something profoundly unexpected: he asked his TikTok followers what he should do next. Their answer — “start a book club” — might have sounded like a joke for a reality TV star. But Jeremiah said yes. And in doing so, he opened a door to connection that’s strikingly relevant to fathers and families today. Alexandra Alter writes about Brown’s journey in a weekend New York Times feature.

The result? A book club — Jeremiah’s Reading Room — that now counts over 120,000 members, many of them young people engaging with literature, discussing ideas, and creating community. The first book? The Song of Achilles, a tragic epic of love, loyalty, and sacrifice.

There’s something quietly revolutionary about what Jeremiah is doing. In a world where masculinity is often measured by toughness and silence, here is a young man inviting others — especially young men — to explore vulnerability, emotion, and intellectual intimacy through story.

It’s the kind of emotional reeducation that Dr. Daniel Casriel and I envisioned in The Road of Happiness Now, a powerful work exploring how we’ve been conditioned to suppress the very feelings that make us most human — and most able to love.

Casriel wrote, “Nature meant for you to be happy. Nature is on our side.” Yet many fathers have learned to hide their fears, joys, and pain. We learn to cope, to endure, to provide. But too often, we don’t learn to connect. That disconnect can silently shape our relationships with our partners, children, and selves.

What Jeremiah Brown is doing — whether he realizes it or not — is offering an alternative path. He’s not prescribing a solution. He’s not pretending to be a guru. He’s showing up, as a peer, ready to learn with others. That’s the heart of The Road of Happiness: not authority-over-other, but person-with-person. That’s the path to healing.

Jeremiah told the New York Times, “It feels like something we could have that’s more than just content on TikTok… something I could build and have a community around.” Fathers take note: this is what our children — and many of us — are longing for. Not content. Connection.

Book clubs may not be the answer for every dad. But the idea of building community around shared emotional experiences — of opening space for storytelling, reflection, and growth — is timeless. And it starts, as Jeremiah shows, with a simple, courageous question: “What’s next?”