You’re certainly right that the history of the French Revolution can get dense. Both books you cited are excellent additions to the French historiography, but they do read like history textbooks, although Citizens probably edges Popkin out on readability. Still, they certainly aren’t novels. I’d hesitate to recommend someone looking for a novel-like experience to try and read either cover-to-cover. Also bear in mind that when historians write on the French Revolution, they’re often making arguments on how the revolution should be interpreted. Was it a proto-Marxist movement? The first instance of liberal thought overthrowing the old progressive order? Was it a tragic political farce marred by senseless violence? There is great history in works from all of these camps, but if you’re just looking for an introduction, sifting through all of their argumentation can get rather tedious. If you want a true neutral take, William Doyle's Oxford History of the French Revolution is as close as you'll probably get, although it reads like a textbook.

On to the two you mentioned:

Citizens is more readable, although Schama frames his presentation of historical facts to support his view that the revolution was an inherently violent, and ultimately tragic, affair. Again, that’s not bad or wrong, but it could get tedious to sift through once you know what his angle is.

Jeremy Popkin’s work takes great care to discuss the revolution in terms of women, enslaved people, and other groups that tend to get minimal treatment in other accounts of the French Revolution, while still giving a sound retelling of events. Popkin’s interpretation skews in the opposite direction of Schama’s. While Popkin isn't the driest historian out there, it’s not light reading either.

For a more approachable foray into the French Revolution, I'd recommend Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast series on the French revolution. It’s not the most comprehensive source, but it’s very accessible, well-researched, engaging, and makes for an excellent starting point from which you could dive into some of the denser or more specific histories out there. I used his series on the Haitian Revolution as the basis for my studies on the subject and found it invaluable as I later sifted through more thoroughgoing books on the subject.

If you're interested in the history of French Revolutionary historiography, I wrote a post a while back summing up the major interpretations of the revolution over the past 200 years.