I always have so much fun putting together seasonal TBRs, although I’m not always the best at sticking to them! These lists completely contradict my unofficial goal to be less hung up on reading seasonally this year, but there are some books on my list that just scream summer to me. It didn’t take too long to scour through my challenge plans for this year and find some books that were obvious choices for summer. The one new thing that I’ve been considering for this year which might shake things up a bit is the possibility of trying to participate in Summerween. This is a weeklong readathon hosted by Gabby (@GabbyReads) and the idea is to read a few spooky books in the summer. Weeklong readathons are a bit challenging for me logistically, but I really like the idea of trying Summerween, even if it’s my own version, because I often find that I trap myself by saving all my spooky books for October/early November and then don’t have time to get through them all. It would be great to have an excuse to pick up a few early without feeling like I’m too out of season! This year, Summerween is scheduled to run from July 5 – July 12 which coincides with one of my weeks of staff training, so there’s a chance I can make it work. I may share a separate list of some Summerween options late, but for the rest of the summer TBR, I decided to choose books that seemed to be set in summer, involved vacations or tropical settings, or have some kind of connection to beaches/pools/water since those feel like summer to me!
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
1) Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez
This was one of my most obvious choices for summer! This book is about a man named Justin who believes he is cursed because everyone he dates goes on to find their soulmate immediately after they break up. When he meets Emma, a woman who seems to have the same problem, through her response to his Reddit thread about it, they decide to date each other in hopes of their curses cancelling each other out when they break up. What is supposed to be a summer fling soon becomes much more serious when both find themselves navigating difficult and unexpected family situations. I’ve started reading Abby Jimenez’s backlist already and I’m especially looking forward to her more recent releases. I didn’t realize that this one was technically connected to Part of Your World and Yours Truly. I’m sure I probably could read them independently, but I think I’d rather stick to publication order which means I need to get to these as soon as possible so I can read this one in the summer!
2) One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware
I’ve fallen a little behind on this author’s recent releases, but I’m especially excited for this one! This book is about a woman named Lyla whose life seems to be in a rut until her aspiring actor boyfriend Nico gets the opportunity to audition for a reality show. After a whirlwind audition, Nico and Lyla are sent to the tropical Ever After Island, where they must compete against four other couples to win the cash prize. Not long after they arrive, things start to go wrong. With the first challenge leaving everyone angry and scared, an overnight storm makes everything worse. Cut off from the mainland and without any way to contact the production team or anyone at home, the cast must work together to survive when the stakes become life or death. I’ve been really interested in books dealing with reality shows lately, for some reason, and this just sounds so fun. This kind of island setting seems just perfect for the summer!
3) Cool for the Summer and Going Bicoastal by Dahlia Adler
Not only are both of these books screaming summer, but Dahlia Adler is also on my priority list to read this year so there really shouldn’t be any excuse not to pick at least one of these up! Cool for the Summer is about a teenage girl named Lara who has spent her entire time at high school wanting to date Chase, a football star who is finally showing interest in her. Everything should be perfect, except Lara keeps remembering a confusing, strangely perfect romantic summer spent with a girl named Jasmine. This only becomes more confusing when Jasmine shows up at their school causing Lara to question what she really wants. Going Bicoastal is about a teenage girl named Natalya who has only 24 hours to decide if she wants to spend her summer with her dad in NYC and hopefully get the courage to ask out the girl she has a crush on, or with her estranged mom in LA in hopes of fixing their relationship and meets a guy she never saw coming. Both storylines play out in a “sliding doors” kind of story with alternating timelines. Both books seem like great ones to read in the summer since they are so heavily focused on the season, and both could potentially be great options to squeeze in toward the end of Pride Month.
4) My Summer Darlings and A Likeable Woman by May Cobb
This is another case where I couldn’t choose between the two options by the same author! My Summer Darlings is about three women who have been close friends since childhood, who become obsessed with a mysterious new man who comes to their town. They are all completely unprepared for how much he disrupts their lives especially after he abruptly pulls away, leaving them wondering what happened until what they uncover is much more sinister than they expect. A Likeable Woman is about a woman named Kira who fled her affluent town never to look back after her mother’s mysterious death. She reluctantly returns to attend a frenemy’s vow renewal party, and soon finds there are certain things calling her back to her hometown including her childhood crush. When Kira’s grandmother gives her a memoir her mother was writing before her death, she is pulled back into the past and gets closer to finding out what really happened to her mother. Both of these books seem like the perfect summer thrillers, and the titles/cover art are a big factor in that! Unfortunately, I don’t yet have a copy of A Likeable Woman so I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to read that one, but I’m hoping to snag a copy soon so I can read both!
5) The Layover and/or From the Jump by Lacie Waldon
This is the last pair of books I have from the same author for this list, which is great because for some reason it’s been giving me a hard time formatting when there’s more than one picture in each chunk. The Layover is this author’s debut and it is about a woman named Ava who is going on her last trip as a flight attendant before giving up the career, and is irritated to learn that former pilot Jack Stone, whom she’s had a grudge against for years is on her flight. When mechanical issues cause them to be stuck together at a luxury resort in the Caribbean, Ava begins to question everything she thought she knew about this man and about what she wants for her own life. From the Jump is about a woman named Liv who decides to finally start saying “no” to things, leading her to quit her job and jump on a plane to join her friends in South Africa. Instead of the easy and relaxing time with her friends that she expects, Liv finds the constant proximity makes everything more complicated, especially with the emotionally unavailable Lucas. Liv vows to do whatever she can to keep the group together, but once they get home to LA, she discovers her life is in freefall, and she must decide whether she can take another risk and pursue what she really wants. Both of these sound very cute and fun to read, and they seem like they will make quick summer romance reads!
6) Summer Reading by Jenn McKinlay
I completely misunderstood what this book was about when I first added it to my list! I somehow assumed it would be similar to Beach Read and focus on authors, but it is actually quite different. This book is actually about a woman named Samantha who is hoping to revive her career as a chef, and instead is forced to spend her summer chaperoning her younger half-brother who is spending his summer at the library for a local robotics competition. Samantha is dyslexic and hates the library, and even moreso when she learns that the library’s interim director is the same man whose book she accidentally destroyed on the ferry ride over to the island. This man, Bennett, is there to find the father he has never known, taking a temporary job at the library to research the summer his mother spent there. Bennett isn’t interested in a relationship right now, but finds that he can’t stop thinking about Samantha, and the two of them soon begin to help each other toward their goals and realize that their summer fling may be heating up into something more. I’m a little more on the fence about this book now that I know it isn’t quite the storyline I expected, but it still seems like it could be really cute!
7) Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth
This book feels like summer to me mostly because of the cover art. I tend to associate anything that has any kind of pool or beach scene naturally with summer. This book is about three woman, Jessica, Norah and Alicia who were all rescued from family tragedies and raised by a foster mother Miss Fairchild on a farming estate where they were given a second chance for a happy family. However, their childhood was not the ideal family life that everyone assumed due to Miss Fairchild’s unpredictability and strict rules. In a moment of desperation, all three managed to break away and thought they were free of that home forever, even though Miss Fairchild was always somewhere in their minds. When a body is discovered under their foster home, the three foster sisters find themselves back in the spotlight as key witnesses and potentially even suspects. I have really enjoyed all three of the books I’ve read by this author so far, and I still have a few backlist titles to catch up on. This book sounds especially intriguing and I was very excited to get it through BOTM, so I’m hoping to get to it very soon!
8) Hook, Line, and Sinker by Tessa Bailey
This is a book that I really should have read last summer, but somehow I didn’t get to it! I did read the first in the series last summer and I liked it although there were aspects of the writing that didn’t quite work for me. This one follows Hannah Bellinger, the sister of the main character from the first book, who insists that she is just friends with Fox, a notorious ladies’ man and even seems immune to his usual charms. When she turns to Fox for some tips on how to win the attention of the coworker she is crushing on, Hannah soon realizes that she may actually want him instead although she does not want to be just another notch on the bedpost. Hannah and Fox’s friendship was one of my favourite things from the first book in this series and I’m very excited to see more of them! One of my main issues with the first book is that I found the main character Piper annoying so I’m hoping I’ll like this one even better when it’s characters that I already like more!
9) The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren
To be honest, I chose this one as a summer read mostly because of the very tropical-looking cover, but it does not quite seem to match the synopsis. It is about a young woman named Anna who married Liam for access to subsidized family housing in college, assuming that they divorced right after graduation. Three years later, Liam is on the verge of inheriting his family’s corporation if he can prove that he has been happily married for at least 5 years. With pressure mounting from his family to meet his wife, Liam has no choice but to ask Anna for help, but soon begins to worry that his family’s privileged world might corrupt her. I definitely assumed that this book would be more along the lines of The Unhoneymooners, which is still my favourite by this author duo aside from their YA book Autoboyography. I’m not quite sure how the title or cover really relate to the rest of the book, but those two elements scream summer to me.
10) Daughter of Mine by Megan Miranda
This book actually just came up on @GabbyReads list of thriller recommendations, where she said it was perfect for summer so that’s already encouraging! Personally, I chose it because of the focus on the lake on the cover and in the synopsis, although it’s not necessarily as summer-y as some of the others here. This book is about a young woman named Hazel, the daughter of Mirror Lake’s longtime local detective, who unexpectedly inherits her childhood home and gets drawn back into the town she left almost a decade before. Soon after she returns, a drought hits the area causing the lake levels to drop and reveal long-buried secrets, some of which may even explain Hazel’s mother’s mysterious disappearance. This is another book that I was very excited to get from BOTM recently, and yet another author where I’m quite behind on her releases! I definitely need to get caught up and this book may be a great place to start.
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