Anyone else out there get excited about summer just to fill up your reading list and load up your beach bag with great stories you can’t put down? From love stories to mysteries and even beyond, there’s nothing as enchanting as a great summer read. Whether you’re lounging poolside, on the front porch or the beach is your summer reading nook, having a good reading list is one of the greatest ways to let your summertime imagination soar.
#1. The Girls by Emma Cline Image and excerpt via Penguin Randomhouse
An indelible portrait of girls, the women they become, and that moment in life when everything can go horribly wrong—this stunning first novel is perfect for readers of Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad.
#2. Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent Image and excerpt via Algonquin
When Isabel meets Edward, both are at a crossroads: he wants to follow his late wife to the grave, and she is ready to give up on love. Thinking she is merely helping Edward’s daughter—who lives far away and asked her to check in on her nonagenarian dad in New York—Isabel has no idea that the man in the kitchen baking the sublime roast chicken and light-as-air apricot soufflé will end up changing her life.
#3. Modern Lovers by Emma Straub Image and excerpt via Penguin
Friends and former college bandmates Elizabeth and Andrew and Zoe have watched one another marry, buy real estate, and start businesses and families, all while trying to hold on to the identities of their youth. But nothing ages them like having to suddenly pass the torch (of sexuality, independence, and the ineffable alchemy of cool) to their own offspring.
#4. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi Image and excerpt via Penguin Randomhouse
A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.
#5. Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam Image and excerpt via Harper Collins
This irresistible debut, set in contemporary New York, provides a sharp, insightful look into how the relationship between two best friends changes when they are no longer coming of age but learning how to live adult lives.
Which one is first on your summer must-read list?
