“Love Island USA” star Jeremiah Brown may have spent Valentine’s Day playing “NBA 2K,” but he’s not playing around when it comes to just how much books mean to him.
The 25-year-old reality TV star from Seattle, Washington, who first entered the spotlight on season 7 of the hit Peacock dating series last summer, built a career in modeling before stepping into the Villa — and before that, he was simply a young man who loved to read.
Romantically, Brown is in a quiet season.
“It’s great in the sense of, I don’t have a lot to worry about, but I guess that’s like coping. But now I’m very single,” he told theGrio during a sitdown on Monday (Feb. 16).
He added that while there’s “someone I’m talking to,” he hasn’t met her yet.
That single status, he joked, does come with a bit more free time — time he’s happily pouring into books.
After his headline-making run on “Love Island USA,” viewers were left trying to figure out who he really was beyond the show’s heightened drama. When the cameras stopped rolling, Brown says he leaned on the habits that grounded him long before reality TV.
“The cameras turned off and … my therapy kind of kicked in, in the sense where it’s just like, anything that happens now, good or bad, I’m going to revert to my baseline, which is, God, my family, just the good habits I’ve tried to pick up,” he explained, adding that reading is among those good habits.
While some fans only saw a high-stress version of him in the Villa, Brown says there was much more to him than what made it to air.
“People didn’t really get to see some of my personality, the things I like,” he explained. “It was, like, constant, you know, stress and drama.”
But once curious viewers dug into his old content, they found something unexpected: a book lover who had been posting reviews years before reality TV.
“It’s crazy, because I’ve been reading ever since a young age,” he said, recalling reading competitions and time spent around his uncle’s comic book shop. During the pandemic, he returned to books with a new intention, diving into authors like Ryan Holiday and other writers who profess self-mastery.
“Reading is one of the most powerful ways to change your life,” he noted. “You can literally read a book, get something from that book, implement it every day, and then in two, three weeks, like, you can have a whole new habit.”
The idea to publicly share that love came, quite literally, in the middle of the night.
“I remember, like waking up, like in the middle of the night, and I got the word that just said, do book reviews,” he recalled. At the time, he had only a few dozen followers; now he has millions. “I made like, five or six book reviews. They had, like, 100 views, 50 views.”
Then came “Love Island.” When he exited the show, and viewers went searching for context, they found and blew up those early videos. Soon after, during his first TikTok Live, a viewer suggested he start a book club.
“And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll do it.’ And then I made it, and it kind of blew up,” he said.
In August, just weeks after he stepped out of the Villa, Brown was named “Rising Star of the Year” at the first annual TikTok US Awards for his rapid growth on the platform. Now, he runs a virtual book club that meets monthly on TikTok Live, complete with weekly discussion prompts on Instagram and guest appearances from authors. In September, romance author Ana Huang joined him live for a Q&A after his club read her novel.
“Every time I’ve seen my name in the BookTok space, it’s been a lot a lot of love,” he said. “It’s not typical for, like a reality TV person to be, you know, one, to read, or two to, like, actually, push it or have a platform with it.”
He’s especially aware of another distinction: he’s a young man in a space often dominated by women. With recent studies showing that reading rates among men, particularly young men, are declining, Brown says seeing men show up in his Lives means a little extra.
“It’s really, really rewarding when you know a guy tells me in the book club that he picked up reading again because of me,” he admitted.
For young Black men looking to get back into reading as adults, Brown has a few recommendations ready. He points to Holiday’s “The Obstacle Is the Way” and “Ego Is the Enemy” as mindset-shifting starters, along with Don Miguel Ruiz’s “The Four Agreements.” But he’s also quick to highlight fiction, including Angie Thomas’ “The Hate U Give,” which his club previously read.
“We read that two months ago for our person of color author book, and it was phenomenal,” he said. “Even though it’s, you know, the main character is a girl. I feel like men can still get something out of it. I got something out of it.”
As someone who has been in therapy, Brown says reading has helped him embrace emotional vulnerability in ways that many men are discouraged from exploring.
“I think as guys, we’re kind of just told to go to the gym, not show our emotions and stuff like that,” he said.
“Reading gave me, like, a second chance at life,” he added candidly. “My baseline became joy, you know, I used to be like, I would have happy days … but then I started reading and my baseline, after some, you know, months and years of reading, like my baseline became joy, and I’m a joyous person because of reading.”
Beyond personal growth, he credits fiction with perspective.
“I think two is escapism,” he said, noting that there are books that lend greater perspective where the characters grapple with circumstances far beyond anything he’s going through.
Right now, his club is reading “The Housemaid” by Frieda McFadden, and Brown continues to champion both physical books and audiobooks, though he recently shifted back to the page.
“I want to have that skill of having my eyes on the page and reading like for hours at a time,” he said. “I think audio books are a beautiful thing if you truly don’t have the time… but I just switched back from audio books to really be present and read the book.”
For skeptics who think reading “is for the birds,” Brown keeps it simple.
“I would say, start small,” he said. “Just read 10 pages a day. Read five pages a day… If you truly are not enjoying it, go pick up another one, because you’re supposed to enjoy reading.”
As for what’s next, Brown has more modeling, “Beyond the Villa” debuting this spring, and hopes to have more irl book club events in the near future.
“Gonna keep going, keep pushing reading, and just, you know, make reading popular and like, try to like, show people it’s not just for nerds or something you do in school,” he told theGrio. “Like it truly, truly changes your life.”
