J.D. Pennington Weaves a Modern Tale of Revenge in 'The Othello Club'

In his debut novel, The Othello Club, award-winning creative director and copywriter J.D. Pennington delivers a gripping crime thriller about six divorcees who set out to exact revenge on their unfaithful spouses. Told from multiple points of views, the story centers around Emily, whose life is turned upside down after she finds out her husband, Dan, is having an affair. To cope with her devastation, she joins a divorce support group, where she meets five others who are newly single and after a night out together, they devise a plan to help each other wreak havoc on the lives of their ex-spouses. The only stipulation of their scheme is that no one gets hurt. Everything seems to go according to plan until one of the exes is found dead, and more deaths soon follow. Regarding his two main perspectives – Emily, the protagonist, and Rosa, the detective – Pennington shared that he intentionally made them both female characters for commercial reasons. “Look, women read more books… I wanted a slightly more female skew, but at the same time, because divorce is universal, happens to men and women, I wanted both male and female perspectives… but it did tip towards a female skew.”

With over twenty years of experience in film and television advertising, Pennington originally set out to write The Othello Club with streaming audiences in mind. Yet, he remarked, “Once I started writing in the novel form and falling in love with it, I forgot all about that. I forgot all about the commercial, trying to get in through the back door to get my story onscreen, and I just wanted to write the best novel I possibly could then.” Fortunately for people in the UK and Ireland, his book was adapted into a television series and viewers can catch The Othello Club – titled The Revenge Club for television – on Paramount Plus, which began streaming on December 12, 2025. American audiences will have to wait a little longer for it to make its way to U.S. platforms.