Seven Books for Your Summer Reading List

Labor Day weekend is just around the corner and we’re soaking up as many beach and pool days as we can. Here are seven books we recommend you toss in your beach bag before fall hits.

If you want to read the breakout hit of the summer...

You may have watched author Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s book-turned-streaming series “Fleishman is in Trouble” earlier this year and now the author is back with a late summer release, Long Island Compromise. The addictive novel skewers the unique problems that come with generational wealth in a book that The Los Angeles Times calls the latest entrant into the “pantheon of Great American novels.” Read it now as there will surely be a TV show based on it in the coming years.

If you relate to Millennials taking care of everyone...

Author Catherine Newman has been writing long enough that her stories show the arc of what it’s like to be a modern woman. From her experience as a mother to a newborn to her latest Sandwich, about the trials and travails of taking care of both your tweens and your elderly parents–a Millennial experience that has launched a thousand think pieces. In the fictional Sandwich, all three generations spend their annual week in Cape Cod. Catherine Newman–who NPR’s Maureen Corrigan compares to Nora Ephron in her ability to find humor in universal subjects–takes the classic summer novel and elevates it with prose many of us can relate to.

If you’re still thinking about the ‘Man or Bear’ question...

Julia Phillips’ sophomore novel, Bear, is a modern-day magical fairytale of sorts. Bear starts as a story of two twenty-something sisters struggling to care for their ailing mother with low-paying jobs in a wealthy, tourist-friendly island town in Washington state. When a bear shows up swimming in the water one night, the novel takes a terrifying turn. But it’s figuring out if the bear is helpful or harmful when the novel hits its stride – and turned it into one of the most anticipated books of the summer, with publications from The New York Times to People putting it on their must-read summer lists.

If you never miss an Emily Giffin summer read...

If there was a pageant for the queen of Chick Lit (i.e. women authors writing about love, life, friendship, family and universal female struggles), Emily Giffin might just top that list. The prolific author has been turning out women-centric hits for years. This summer, in The Summer Pact (with the word ‘Summer’ having a double meaning here), Giffin writes about the importance of friendship in the midst of grief in her signature prose. Another novel we’ll surely be watching on the big screen in the future.

If you want to read the book and see the movie in the same summer...

Blake Lively has mostly been seen of late next to Taylor Swift at Kansas City Chiefs games and in the VIP section of her BFFs’ summer concert tour. But on August 9, she’s back on the big screen playing the protagonist in author Colleen Hoover’s novel-turned-movie, It Ends with Us. The book was a runaway hit in 2016 with Hoover fans and is getting new life as a movie. But don’t be fooled by the floral cover and romanticized book description. It Ends with Us dives deep into domestic violence as main character Lily struggles with a relationship that only looks perfect on paper.

If you can’t get enough of the ‘Bravo-lebrities’...

If you think ‘The Real World’ was the first reality show, you’d be wrong. Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker writer Emily Nussbaum explores the way back roots of reality television (that actually started with radio) in Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV. From the first foray into the genre on radio to The Real World to Survivor to Bravo’s breakout stars to the Bachelor to The Apprentice, this deep dive looks at how reality television has infiltrated the American way of life all the way up the White House.

If you love (or hate) the endless options on dating apps...

In this quick, quirky read (The Washington Post called it “a bottomless champagne flute of a novel") by Holly Gramazio, The Husbands finds Lauren coming home from her flat in London after a raucous bachelorette party for her best friend – only to be greeted by her husband. The only problem? She was single and living alone when she left her home for the party. What follows is a frothy romp that sees husband after husband go up into her attic and return as someone entirely new. Lauren tries on countless lives as The Husbands explores what it means to find the ‘perfect’ mate.

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