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NEW YORK – Jeremiah Brown’s secret to surviving the drama of “Love Island” may surprise you.
Known for his quickly burning relationship with Huda Mustafa, Brown had a relatively short stint on the reality dating show before being voted off by housemates. His next venture? Book club leader.
Brown’s passion for reading was among the first things “Love Island” viewers got to know about him – he proclaimed himself a “huge bookworm” in his introduction. But he didn’t get to talk about that side of him as much as he would’ve liked before leaving the villa. Posting book reviews on TikTok, which inspired his new book club “Jeremiah’s Reading Room.”
“In the villa, I didn’t even get to talk about books,” Brown told USA TODAY. His videos, he adds, help fans “see the real me, and not the me that ended up on a reality TV show.”
Jeremiah Brown wants to share more of his ‘bookworm’ side with fans
Brown, who hails from Seattle, frequented his uncle's comic book shop growing up. He has fond memories of Hi-Chew candies, comic books and manga. He loved the “Scott Pilgrim” comics and Studio Ghibli favorites like "My Neighbor Totoro," "Ponyo" and "Spirited Away."
He fell out of reading in high school and college. But during the pandemic, he began self-reflecting on the parts of himself he disliked – he was angry and overthinking. He wanted to get out of his head, he says.
He turned to self-help books to reframe his mindset.
But wait, scratch that – don’t call it “self-help," Brown is quick to correct. He prefers “self-mastery” instead. He’s taking on the genre’s rebrand himself.
“That sounds like you need it, or it just has a negative connotation to it,” Brown says. “We’re going to go with self-mastery because we’re just trying to get 1% better.”
These books helped Jeremiah Brown through ‘Love Island’
Reading helped him process life on reality TV and not “take anything personally.” He cited “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz and Ryan Holiday's books “Ego is the Enemy,” “Stillness Is the Key” and “The Obstacle Is the Way."
“When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chödrön and the author’s concept of “cool loneliness” helped, too.
“That’s why I didn’t crash out,” Brown says.
An evening with ‘Jeremiah’s Reading Room’
Brown’s book club, which he streams online with fellow readers, has tackled Madeline Miller's “Song of Achilles” and is currently reading Mark Manson's 2016 book.
Despite being new to the celebrity literary scene, Brown has already nabbed a brand partnership with Amazon Kindle and his own celebrity book club. A room full of book influencers (and crossover Love Island fans) flocked to hear Brown talk books with romance author Ana Huang. They swapped relationship advice in a giveaway contest that promised three winners a post-event conversation with him.
It’s clear that Brown is genuinely interested in the writing process and how authors bring books to life. His conversation with Huang was candid, drilling her on where she writes her “spicy” scenes and asking about passions that inspire her books. Romance readers giggled as Brown discovered what the "there's only one bed" book trope means.
I asked Brown after the event whether he’d ever consider picking up the pen himself.
“Yeah,” he says. “I just want to make sure it’s something special and I’m not just doing it to do it, and I have to pick a topic. I’ve definitely had people reach out to help me with it. But as of right now, with the schedule, I couldn’t, but maybe in the future. I don’t know what – it would probably be a fiction book or something.”
What if he could write a memoir about his time on “Love Island”? What would it be called?
“‘Now You See Me,’” Brown says.
Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at cmulroy@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jeremiah Brown shares surprising secret to avoiding a ‘crash out’ on ‘Love Island’
Reporting by Clare Mulroy, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
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