It’s that time of year again! School’s out, vacations are planned, the days are long and everything can be done poolside! Last year I I shared this list of 2013 Summer Reads, and this year’s line-up promises to be just as good! Let’s get this party started!!
I’m really excited to read another book form this author, Rainbow Rowell. I adored Eleanor and Park and so I can’t wait to try this one out. This book is geared to adults whereas Eleanor and Park was a young adult novel. It’s about and woman named Georgie and her struggling marriage to Neal. Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past, and has to decide if she wants to fix her marriage or if it would be better if they had never been together in the first place. They depth and description of the relationship in Eleanor and Park was fantastic so I’m hoping this one is just as amazing.
This book is a collection of underground short stories that are supposedly astonishing, heartbreaking and beautiful. There’s been a lot of hype surrounding this book lately so I think I’m going to try it out. The author gives instructions at the beginning to read the stories in order. Certain characters and stories weave themselves into other parts of the book. I haven’t read a lot of short story collections so I’m hoping this one lives up to its hype!
I’m going to put the book blurb for this one because it’s so interesting and different:
A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.
We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.
Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.
Doesn’t that make you want to read it??? Me too.
Julie James’ FBI/US Attorney Series is my favorite guilty pleasure series. I’ve read all her other books in this series and while I don’t usually read romance books, I’ve loved all of these. They are sexy and witty and always a great beach/vacation read. This one is about Sydney Sinclair who is nursing her wounds over a failed engagement when her sister gets engaged. Sydney is determined to shut down the advances of the best man, Special Agent Vaughn Roberts. Julie James is sure to deliver the witty banter and tension that I love.
This book promises to be one of those books that will stay with you for a long time. It’s about a social worker named Pete who helps a undernourished, almost feral eleven-year old boy in the Montana wilderness. Pete’s journey to help this boy lands him in the middle of an FBI manhunt that will make it impossible to put down.
I’m a big Liane Moriarty fan (My reviews of The Husband’s Secret, What Alice Forgot, & The Hypnotists Love Story). I’m really excited about her new book, which comes out July 29, 2014. Big Little Lies is the intersection of three women’s lives: Madaline, the funny, 40 year old woman who is working through the fallout from her divorce, Celeste, the beautiful mom who seems to have everything lined up perfectly and Jane, the young mother who has been mistaken for the nanny. Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands, second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.
I guess I’m embracing collections of short stories this summer! B.J. Novak, aka the actor, writer and director of The Office delivers his debut this summer. It’s an endlessly entertaining, surprisingly sensitive, and startlingly original debut collection that signals the arrival of a welcome new voice in American fiction. Across a dazzling range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, Novak’s assured prose and expansive imagination introduce readers to people, places, and premises that are hilarious, insightful, provocative, and moving-often at the same time.
The premise of this book just sounds so interesting I have to pick it up: Paul O’Rourke is a man made of contradictions- he loves the world, but doesn’t know how to live in it. He’s a Luddite addicted to his iPhone, a dentist with a nicotine habit, a rabid Red Sox fan devastated by their victories, and an atheist not quite willing to let go of God. Then someone begins to impersonate Paul online, and he watches in horror as a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account are created in his name. What begins as an outrageous violation of his privacy soon becomes something more soul-frightening: the possibility that the online “Paul” might be a better version of the real thing.
I’m really excited about this thriller! Check out the blurb: Can you commit the perfect crime? Pilgrim is the codename for a man who doesn’t exist. The adopted son of a wealthy American family, he once headed up a secret espionage unit for US intelligence. Before he disappeared into anonymous retirement, he wrote the definitive book on forensic criminal investigation. But that book will come back to haunt him when there’s a textbook murder – and Pilgrim wrote the book.
I’m finishing up my summer reads list with a book I’ve read TWICE since it was released last October! I adore this book! It just won the Pulitzer Prize and is very well deserving. Donna Tartt is amazing with her descriptions and you feel completely immersed in Theo’s world.
The Goldfinch is the story of Theodore Decker whose life veers onto a new path when he survives a terrible accident in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that kills his mother. Inextricably connected to the Goldfinch painting, his whole life is altered by this one event. It’s an epic story that will give you book-hangover and make you wish you could read it for the first time all over again.
You can read my original review of it HERE. I will also be moderating the discussion of this book at the beginning of July for the Delicious Reads Book Club and I’m so excited!! I really recommend the audio-version, read by David Pittu who does a fantastic job. The book is a whopping 771 pages (I can’t BELIEVE I read that twice!) and so having the audio version is really helpful.
Well, that’s my 2014 Summer Line-Up! Have you read any of these yet? Do you have other recommendations for me? I hope you have an amazing summer and that you are able to relax and spend some time immersed in some of these books!
See ya next week!
Brooke