Summer brings heat, and with it water for cooling down. Transporting the reader to another time, place or circumstance, beach reads are the perfect remedy for hot lazy days by the pool or seaside. Grab a paperback and get lost in a summer romance, thriller or the latest must-read.

Maine Characters by Hannah Orenstein is about two half-sisters, strangers to one another, thrown together after their father’s death. Both Lucy and Vivian spend a month every summer with their father at his lake house in Maine, separately. Forced to spend the summer together, they grapple with issues of grief, family, betrayal and the lost thirty years together.

The Island Club by Nicola Harrison throws three unlikely women together. Set in 1950s Balboa Island, California, Milly, Sophia and Adele are all fighting for the lives and the lifestyles they know. Tennis and the ladies’ unlikely friendship might be all that saves them.

Let’s Not Go Overboard Here by Erica Hendry. “A pop culture obsessive uses her reality TV expertise to investigate a suspicious disappearance aboard a yacht—while falling for a hot deckhand and avoiding confronting her best friend’s untimely passing,” describes the book blurb.

Down With the Shipmans by Meg Mitchell Moore. Three sisters, Jordan, Natalie and Mae, all face personal disasters, but come together at the family beach house for a reunion after the death of their mother. Their father announces he is selling the house, and the news sends the girls into personal tailspins and family drama.

Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden. Debbie is an advice columnist who always gives sound and responsible counsel. But as her life spirals out of control, she becomes less censored and more brash with her responses until finally she takes her own advice and delights in payback to everyone in her life who deserves it most.

Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum. Everything seems idyllic on tiny Fire Island, New York until a body washes up, face down, next to the boardwalk during a hot summer. When everyone has secrets worth keeping, murder might be the biggest of them all.

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry. Alex and Poppy are unlikely best friends who take a weeklong summer vacation together every year for a decade, until they drift apart. Poppy invites Alex on one more trip to try to repair what is broken. The movie adaptation just released on Netflix in June.

Dolly All the Time by Annabel Monaghan. Dolly takes care of everything and everyone. But when she and her son move back to Whitfield, Rhode Island, for the summer, her help turns into more than she bargained for with Stewart Whitfield, scion of the town’s founding family.

American Fantasy by Emma Straub is about 3,000 middle-aged fangirls on a cruise with aging ‘90s boy band members, an open bar, the open ocean and scream-singing. Annie is newly divorced in her empty nest but goes on the themed cruise to appease her sister, where she reconnects with a long-buried part of herself and makes friends with one of the band members.

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid. “Glamorous siblings throw a legendary end-of-summer party in 1980s Malibu—with explosive consequences,” describes thegoodtrade.com. Nina Riva, is a famous surfer and model with equally glamorous siblings and parents. The Riva kids, each with the kind of baggage that comes with fame, gather for the annual party, which is out of control by midnight and burns the house down by dawn.

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. Sally is a comedy-sketch writer for a late-night TV show who has sworn off love. But when the musician guest host challenges her cynicism on-air, Sally begins to wonder if she could be lucky in love too.

 

By Celeste McNeil; courtesy photos