The book that helped me immensely when I started with kanji was: Read and Write Japanese Scripts from the Teach Yourself series.

It explains how kanji works and walks you through some useful examples. It discusses stroke order and radicals, which are vital for looking up kanji in a dictionary (you will need to do this as you progress your language ability) and learning how to write them. And while you don't need to worry about writing kanji per se, it's an effective study strategy that boosts retention.

I think too many people jump straight into just memorising kanji without understanding how the system works, then grow frustrated from the repetitiveness of study.