This Is the ’Therapeutic’ Pastime That Berkleigh Wright Can’t Get Enough Of

She finds diving into new books to be a great way to relax and process things. Here is the series she can’t put down right now.

Berkleigh Wright.Justin Edmonds/Getty Images

Kickstart your New Year with SI Swimsuit’s 31 Days of Wellness! This January, SI Swimsuit will unlock exclusive offerings with brand models, wellness experts, fitness gurus and more, who will guide you through 31 days of rejuvenating workouts, recipes and self-care rituals.

There is perhaps no better form of wellness than caring for your mental health. What better way to do that than form a great habit like reading?

Berkleigh Wright, a 2024 SI Swimsuit rookie, considers the pastime both “really therapeutic” and "really helpful” for coping and processing hardship, she tells us in an exclusive interview. Such is the case whether you’re reading fiction or nonfiction, a beach read or a heavier lift. 

For the Denver Broncos cheerleader, reading does take the form of both fiction and nonfiction, but she definitely gravitates more toward novels. Her favorites run the gambit of fiction, and though she doesn’t consider herself a lover of fantasy, she has found that rules—in this case, her favorite types of fiction—are made to be broken.

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The series that has caught her attention in recent weeks and months isn’t for the faint of heart. With five books that each amount to several hundred pages of text (and with a fantastical tint that she usually avoids in her fiction picks), Wright took on the challenge expecting it to be just that, a challenge. But she read the first one in about four days and now considers herself a convert (if not to fantasy fiction, at least to this particular series and author).

She recommends the series without hesitation, and so we thought it worthwhile to pass the suggestion on to you.

The popular series that the internet is obsessed with 

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas is the series that the 29-year-old is deep in the throes of at the moment. The adult fantasy series seems to be all the rage right now, despite the daunting length of each book.

Wright was surprised to find that she enjoyed it enough to finish the first (long) book in four days. “It was just that good,” she gushes of the first installment.

The series is solidly in the realm of fantasy, not the model’s typical subsection of fiction. She describes it as “Game of Thrones mixed with Beauty and the Beast, Fifty Shades of Grey, Twilight ... [and The] Hunger Games.”

“It keeps you on your toes” and is “so different than any other book that you’ll read,” she remarks—two of the aspects that endeared her to it.

A Court of Thorns and Roses, $10.37 (amazon.com)

The first book in the series is sure to hook you, if you’re anything like Wright. Then you’ll have your next four books lined up and ready to go.

The perks of taking recommendations from friends

By her own admission, her friends “pretty much forced [the series] upon” her. Though popular long before she picked it up, for a long time she considered it “not [her] type of book.”

It isn’t the first time she’s taken a book recommendation from a friend, and certainly won’t be the last. “I’m lucky because I have a lot of friends who share this love of reading with me,” she explains. “We are constantly talking about new books that we can all read together.”

In general, Wright loves this reciprocal practice with her friends—giving and receiving books and book recs. But it’s not her only way of finding new books, either. She’s a loyal customer of her local bookstore, West Side Books in Denver. “I go [almost] every weekend,” she admits.

But it’s time well-spent. She almost always leaves with a new book to add to her growing home library. She’s also a huge proponent of the Goodreads app, where she gets a sense of the top books throughout the year, and finds a lot of solid picks.

The benefits of getting out of your comfort zone

Not only does she consider herself a convert to Maas and this particular series, she considers herself a convert to the whole world of fantasy novels.

They’ve opened her up to books that are far different from those she would typically gravitate toward. And, for that, she’s glad. In fact, she acknowledges that variety is one of her 2024 reading goals.

“I don’t want to always gravitate toward the same books, or the same type of books, or the same authors. One of my goals for 2024 is to constantly introduce new authors into my list,” Wright explains. “I think a lot of people will find an author that they like and then stick with them, which is easy to do. But I want to try to switch it up. This was a completely new author who I wasn’t familiar with, and she’s completely swept me off my feet.”

For further recommendations and to find out Wright’s personal reading goals for the year, check back each Thursday in January. Likewise, be sure to watch her book chats on the SI Swimsuit Instagram.

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