Summer 2024 Reading List (from my TBR stash)
Hey there, fellow book lovers! We are well into the summer season by now. And, as you know, I love creating a reading list for each Season. Not only does it keep me on track with my reading goals but it's also helping me to tackle my huge TBR pile. You know the one – the ever-growing stack of books that's been staring at me from my nightstand or tucked away on my e-reader for ages.
Well, there's no better time than now to finally give those pages some love! I've put together a list of must-read summer books taken straight from my own TBR stash, so you know they're the real deal. I figure there are at least 12 weeks left of sunny weather and I've chosen exactly 12 books (one per week). I've tried to keep them in theme with all things Summery. Get ready for some sizzling summer reads that'll keep you hooked from the first page to the last!
These are all from my TBR stash so there's no new releases. But oldies can still be goodies!
3. The Au Pairs by Melissa de la Cruz
SUMMER AU PAIRS NEEDED IMMEDIATELYFor four energetic children, between 3 and 10 years old.Join a NYC family for the best summer of your life inEast Hampton, July 4-Labor Day.Pay: $10,000.00Driver's license a must.Familiarity with the Hamptons, a plus.Send resumes and head shots to HamptonsAuPairs@yahoo.comMeet Mara Waters, Eliza Thompson, and Jacqui Velasco -- new au pairs for one of New York City's wealthiest families -- who will spend their summer in one of the most posh, most exclusive spots for summer summering: the Hamptons.For good girl Mara, this job is a way out of another go-slow Massachusetts summer. Eliza, New York City's former It Girl, knows this is the fast lane back to the stylish world she wishes she'd never left. And for Brazilian bombshell Jacqui, it's a boarding pass back to her American love who told her he'd e-mail as soon as he got home, and didn't.After all, how hard can an au pair job be?
Slap sunscreen on the kids during the day and party at the coolest hot spots at night, right??Wrong.While Eliza is desperately trying to hide her baby-sitting job from her superspoiled friends who think she's still just as rich as she used to be, Mara's getting awfully cozy with the kids' extremely attractive older brother, Ryan. And Jacqui is heartbroken when she discovers that the love of her life may have been nothing more than a spring fling.If the girls can manage au pair duties -- all the while mastering the ins and outs of the Hamptons' social scene -- it might just turn out to be the most incredible summer of their lives. But to do it they'll have to stick together. And that's where things definitely get sticky.
4. The Summer of Us by Holly Chamberlin
The little beach house on Martha's Vineyard has a rickety porch and no closets, but the gorgeous location is unbeatable--and more than enough to entice three total strangers into a house share for the summer. . .At first, the only thing Gincy, Danielle, and Clare have in common is a desire to spend weekends away from the city. No-nonsense Gincy has worked hard to leave her small-town childhood behind. Danielle grew up with every advantage and is looking for a husband who'll fit neatly into her pampered life, while Clare is enjoying a last burst of independence before marrying her ambitious fianc . Yet lazy beach days and warm, conversation-filled nights forge an unexpected connection. And over the course of one eventful summer, Gincy, Danielle, and Clare will discover that friendship isn't always measured in how well you know a person's past--but in opening each other's eyes to everything the future could hold. . .
"Nostalgia over real-life friendships lost and regained pulls readers into the story." -USA Today on Summer Friends"It does the trick as a beach book and provides a touristy taste of Maine's seasonal attractions." --Publishers Weekly on The Family Beach House
5. A Life of Bright Ideas by Sandra Kring
A secret tore best friends Evelyn "Button" Peters and Winnalee Malone apart. Now, nearly a decade later, a secret brings them back together. Nine years ago Button and Winnalee began recording observations in their Book of Bright Ideas, a tome they believed would solve the mystery of how to live a mistake-free life. Now it's 1970, a time of peace, love, war, and personal heartbreak. Button's mother is dead and her grieving father has all but abandoned his children. Quiet, thoughtful Button has traded college for a sewing job in her mother's bridal shop to help her Aunt Verdella raise her whirlwind six-year-old brother. In Button's free time, she writes letters to the boy she loved from afar through high school, hoping he will come to love her as more than a friend.
Then, like that magical Wisconsin summer of '61, Button is greeted with the wild, gusty arrival of Winnalee. Now a beautiful flower child, Winnalee is everything Button is not. She's been to Woodstock and enjoys "free love," but their steadfast bond of friendship is tested as Button begins to notice the cracks in Winnalee's carefree fa ade. And then Winnalee's mother arrives with a surprise that Button never sees coming, and the fiery determination to put things right in both families once and for all.
6. The Summer of Naked Swim Parties by Jessica Anya Blau
Jessica Anya Blau's passionate and poignant debut novel of one girl's coming of age in 1970s southern California, replete with stoners, hippies, surfers, bitchy girlfriends, first love, first heartbreak, and OPI shorts
Jamie Green will remember "the summer of naked swim parties" for the rest of her life.
It's the summer in which she has her first serious boyfriend, Flip, who is three years older and comes with friends for Jamie's friends; it's the summer in which Jamie's older sister is away at Outward Bound, leaving Jamie with her parents (and very often the house) to herself; it's the summer in which Jamie's parents throw naked swim parties, leaving Jamie cringing with embarrassment. And it's the summer in which Jamie will be forced to confront love, loss, family, and heartbreak for the very first time.
7. Northwater by Cecily Crowe
Althea North has come home to Northwater a very different person from the wild and beautiful girl who left the New England mansion eleven years before. She has lived through a disastrous marriage to an Italian Count, a harrowing bout with narcotics and several promiscuous love affairs. Now, Althea has returned to settle an account with her life - and to die. Ill with an incurable disease, she knows that she has little time to find the peace she longs for or to help her younger sister, Kitty, who is tormented by the mysterious death of their domineering mother.
Althea sets to work to reopen Northwater and to become reacquainted with Kitty and her husband Jack, the garage mechanic whom Kitty married in defiance of her mother's wishes. Plagued by her worsening illness and by terrible nightmares of her mother's ghost, Althea tries to desperately uncover the horror of her family's life and death.
As her relationship with Kitty deepens, Althea slowly develops friends among the people of the town who at first view "the Countess Branzini" with suspicion. Then, as if by a miracle, she finds something even more wonderful, a never-before realized capacity to love.
Writing in the same graceful style that made her The Tower of Kilraven so popular, Cecily Crowe weaves Althea's strange story against the background of life and it's conflicts in a New England resort town to create a novel of ever-mounting suspense which ends only at the last, and crucial, confrontation between two haunted sisters.
8. Hungry Woman in Paris by Josefina Lopez
A journalist and activist, Canela believes passion is essential to life; but lately passion seems to be in short supply. It has disappeared from her relationship with her fianc, who is more interested in controlling her than encouraging her. It's absent from her work, where censorship and politics keep important stories from being published. And while her family is full of outspoken individuals, the only one Canela can truly call passionate is her cousin and best friend Luna, who just took her own life. Canela can't recover from Luna's death. She is haunted by her ghost and feels acute pain for the dreams that went unrealized. Canela breaks off her engagement and uses her now un-necessary honeymoon ticket, to escape to Paris. Impulsively, she sublets a small apartment and enrolls at Le Coq Rouge, Paris's most prestigious culinary institute. Cooking school is a sensual and spiritual reawakening that brings back Canela's hunger for life. With a series of new friends and lovers, she learns to once again savor the world around her. Finally able to cope with Luna's death, Canela returns home to her family, and to the kind of life she thought she had lost forever.
9. Outer Banks by Anne Rivers Siddons
In her magnificent classic Outer Banks, acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Anne Rivers Siddons brilliantly recalls a lost time of hope and dreams--of comradeship, love, secrets, and betrayal--and creates characters brimming with life who will live in the heart forever.
In the uncertain '60s, four young women came together as sorority sisters on a Southern campus: elegant Kate; sensitive, sensible Cecie; sexy, vibrant and richer-than-sin Ginger; and poor, hopeless, brilliant Fig. At Nag's Head, North Carolina, over the course of two idyllic spring breaks, their bonds of friendship were strengthened into something rare and powerfully binding. Now, thirty years later, they are returning to the isolated strip of barrier islands, hoping to recapture what has been lost--the love, the enthusiasm, the passion--and to finally understand what pulled them apart and cast them adrift.
10. The Sea King's Daughters by Barbara Michaels
Since Sandy Frederick first set foot on the volcanic Greek isle of Thera, this breathtaking place of ancient myth and mystery has haunted her dreams. Joining her estranged, obsessed father on a dive to find astonishing secrets from the ocean's floor, she cannot shake the feeling that she was meant to be here; that some ancient, inscrutable power is calling to her. But there are others who have been eagerly waiting for her arrival to drag her into a tangled and terrifying web of secrets, dark superstition, betrayal, blood, and death. And suddenly Sandy's heritage and her destiny could be her doom.
11. Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly
First published in the 1940s, Seventeenth Summer is considered the first young adult novel. Now with refreshed text and a brand-new look, this timeless, sweeping romance is perfect for fans of Morgan Matson and Jenny Han. Angeline "Angie" Morrow always thought high school romances were just silly infatuations that come and go. She certainly never thought she would fall in love. But when she's asked out on her first date by the school basketball star, Jack Duluth, their connection is beyond any childish crush. Suddenly, Angie and Jack are filling their summer with stolen moments and romantic nights. But fall is coming--Angie is going off to college in Chicago, while Jack is planning to move to Oklahoma to help with the family bakery--and they must figure out if their love is forever, or just a summer they'll never forget.
12. Up Island by Anne Rivers Siddons
"A wonderful story. . . .Siddons has returned to what she does best: gives us a book full of laughter and adventure that has enough soul to leave us with something to think about after we finish reading." -- Detroit News/Free Press
From childhood, Molly Bell Redwine was taught by her charismatic, domineering mother that family is everything. But no one warned Molly that family can change unexpectedly. In rapid succession, her husband of more than twenty years abandons her for a younger woman, her mother dies, and her Atlanta clan scatters to the four winds. Molly is set adrift in a heartbeat.
With her old world crumbling, Molly takes refuge with a friend on Martha's Vineyard, hoping to come to terms with who she truly is. When the summer season ends, Molly decides to stay on, renting a small cottage on a remote up-island pond--becoming part of an odd, new, very real family that taxes her old outworn notions. And as the long Vineyard winter approaches, Molly braces herself for the arduous task she must undertake: a search for renewal and identity, and the strength to carry her through to the warm and healing spring.
So there you have it – a summer reading list filled with hidden gems from my very own TBR stash.
Some of these books I have had stashed away collecting dust for quite a while. Others are vintage and may be hard to find (I find my really old books on Amazon and Ebay).
Remember, the beauty of having a diverse TBR pile is the opportunity to discover new favorite authors, genres, and literary adventures. I hope you'll find a new read (or two). Happy reading, and here's to a summer filled with unforgettable stories that inspire, thrill, and transport us to new worlds!
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