My Gigantic Summer Reading List
almost 100 books and, unlike me, you don't have to read them all this summer!
Back in June, I thought I would jot down a few books I was looking forward to reading this summer, and then I blinked and it was a 100 row color-coded spreadsheet, and I blinked again and it was August. I blame this on being sick; I didn’t want to “waste” a book I wanted to read by reading it when I was distracted, but I also wanted to be distracted by reading a book I wanted to read, and that’s how I ended up scrounging around all summer for the literary equivalent of Below Deck: Mediterranean instead of actually making progress on books I was looking forward to. This was depressing from the standpoint of someone who enjoys reading and maybe even more depressing from the standpoint of someone who enjoys checking boxes off a list.
On Monday, though, I had the incredible realization that there were still four weeks left until Labor Day. I also remembered that I’m (somehow???) a grown woman and can continue pretending that it’s summer for as long the weather holds.
In this newfound spirit of abundance, I decided to post my list here for all of you. Commit to choosing one new book with me before the summer ends or line something up for the fall if you’re a quitter. I’ve divided the list loosely by genre, but I’ve marked out the books I’m really looking forward to. Please don’t be scared off of genres you don’t usually read! We can get through it together.
The whole list is also up on my bookshop if you want to get overwhelmed and give up without having to read thousands of words first.
Historical Fiction
**Valiant Ladies - A list of words from reviews that will get me to pick up your book: “swashbuckling,” “sword lesbians,” “these two hard-headed idiots,” “teen girl vigilantes.” Set in 1600s Peru during the days of the Spanish Empire and inspired by real women (!), this book follows two teen girls who spend their nights secretly drinking, gambling, and fighting until one’s brother turns up dead and they must find out what happened to him. Also, I think they’re in love?
**Briefly, A Delicious Life - a teenage ghost, who’s been hanging around a Mallorcan monastery since the 1400s, falls in love with George Sand when she and Chopin come to stay in her village. I am charmed!
**Trust - I have only a vague sense of what this is but the reviews are great. It has an unusual structure, with at least one book within the book, and is about 1920s Wall Street and capitalism from what I understand.
**A Caribbean Heiress in Paris - this is technically a romance but the setting is so strong that I thought it belonged here. A Dominican woman goes to Paris to sell the rum her family business produces at the 1889 Exposition Universelle . The romance, with a Scottish earl who’s there to sell his whiskey, was good but I mostly loved the world of the book. The cast of supporting characters was so diverse and such an antidote to all the books that take place in the past and act like only straight white people have ever existed.
The Lost Summers of Newport - Three popular authors each take a timeline and write the history of a Newport mansion. Spanning from 1899 to 2019.
A Ballad of Love and Glory - A sweeping epic romance where an Irish immigrant fighting for the US in the Mexican-American War meets and falls in love with a healer serving as an army nurse when he switches side.
Take My Hand - Based on the people and events behind the Supreme Court case Wyatt v Alderholt, this follows a Black nurse at the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic in post-Roe Alabama. Content warning for infertility and just generally if the topic of reproductive rights is too sensitive for you right now.
Forbidden City - The Cultural Revolution as seen through the eyes of the teenage Mei Xiang, who at 16 becomes Chairman Mao’s lover and confidant. I liked Hua’s last book and am really interested to see a major historical event like this centering a teen girl narrator.
Lessons in Chemistry - A female chemist and single mom in the ‘60s reluctantly ends up the star of her own science-based cooking show. I did read this one and was surprised to find that it has a sad but beautiful love story in it. It’s (probably) not going to have you crying at the beach but not as light as I expected.
**Woman of Light - According to Random House, this is “a dazzling epic of betrayal, love, and fate that spans five generations of an Indigenous Chicano family in the American West.” Looks like it may also be lightly magical realist.
By Her Own Design - The story of Ann Lowe, the Black fashion designer who designed Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress among other creations and received little credit in her lifetime for her work. I read this one; Lowe had a fascinating life story and I was glad to learn more about her.
Fiction
let’s pretend we’re somewhere else
The Patron Saint of Second Chances - The de facto mayor of a tiny town in Italy tells a white lie about a movie star coming to film in the area that spirals out of control and puts the whole town in uproar. Looks like a perfect beach read.
Island Time - Two very different families whose daughters are married end up stranded on a tropical island after a nearby volcano disrupts travel.
Half-Blown Rose - Leesa Cross-Smith writes beautiful, emotional books and I love the premise of a fortysomething woman spending a year in Paris after her divorce but I feel I should warn you that her books usually have some horribly traumatic thing waiting to knock you out. I’m hoping this one does not but prepare to possibly cry.
fhopping/shopping scams/art/art scams/scams
**Kaleidoscope has two sisters whose family has a shopping empire have their world shattered when some event unnamed in the description happens; Counterfeit has a woman who gets sucked into her old friend’s international counterfeit luxury goods scheme; Fake has a professional art forger who works for museums get seduced by the world of the ultra rich; Portrait of a Thief has five Chinese-American teenagers plan a heist to steal back and repatriate looted Chinese art from some of the most famous museums around the world; and Cover Story has a pure scammer story for people who know who Anna Delvey and Caroline Calloway are.
misc but very anticipated
**Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - I am TRASH for books about two friends embarking on creative endeavors together (how many times have I reread The Animators and when is Kayla Rae Whitaker going to write another novel) and this one follows the relationship of two friends who create a video game company over the course of decades
**Carrie Soto Is Back - the newest Taylor Jenkins Reid, this one about a tennis superstar coming out of retirement in her late 30s. I was already interested but Serena announcing her imminent retirement has increased interest by 10%.
Mercy Street - a character study set in and around a Boston abortion clinic. This came out a few months before Roe was reversed, not sure how it’ll read now.
Post-Traumatic - A Black Latinx woman who defends patients in a psychiatric hospital addresses her own mental health. Though it deals with trauma, is supposed to also be funny at times.
True Biz - A coming of age set at the River Valley School for the Deaf, this is supposed to be a joyful read, “both personal and political.”
Disorientation - I read this one! A satire on academia and race, I thought it had a bit of a slow start but got increasingly absurd and funny once the protagonist makes her first discovery about the dissertation topic she never wanted to do and has come to dread.
**Either/Or - Batuman is doing a series of books about a teenage girl’s college experience. I absolutely loved the first half of the the first one, but I have to admit I quit halfway through. The character went to study abroad and it’s excruciating enough having to listen to your college friends talk about their study abroad trips. I was certainly not going to do it voluntarily! This sequel picks up on the protagonist’s sophomore year. Batuman’s previous books have been named after Dostoevsky novels; this one takes its name from Kierkegaard. I am well read enough to have this substack but not enough to make anything of that.
families that aren’t yours
Memphis - A family epic following three generations of Black women in Memphis from the ‘30s to present day. I strangely received a free copy of this from my cable company, which was somewhat mysterious but worked out great.
Marrying the Ketchups - “Here are the three things the Sullivan family knows to be true: the Chicago Cubs will always be the underdogs; historical progress is inevitable; and their grandfather, Bud, founder of JP Sullivan’s, will always make the best burgers in Oak Park. But when, over the course of three strange months, the Cubs win the World Series, Trump is elected president, and Bud drops dead, suddenly everyone in the family finds themselves doubting all they hold dear.”
Nuclear Family - I think this is a satire, or at least it’s supposed to be darkly funny, about a family whose son’s attempt to cross the border into North Korea is captured on youtube. Set in Hawaii just before the 2018 false missile alert.
**Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta - A trans woman gets paroled and spends Fourth of July weekend reconnecting with family. Hanrahan’s previous novel Delicious Foods made a big impression on me.
friendship!
These Impossible Things - about a pivot point in the friendship between three British Muslim women
**Boys Come First - “three Black gay millennial men looking for love, friendship, and professional success in the Motor City”
**Dele Weds Destiny - Three college friends in Nigeria reunite after thirty years at the wedding of one of their daughters
Mad About You - Mhairi McFarlane’s books are a comfort read for me. They’re usually advertised as romcoms but I find them to be a little more general fiction than that, somewhere between a romance and a Marian Keyes type novel.
Mystery
**The Peacekeeper - HELLO. A mystery set in a world where North America was never colonized, by an author who is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. This is a debut and first in a series. HOW GOOD does this sound?
**Four Aunties and a Wedding - This series is very funny and a perfect beach read. The first book Dial A For Aunties is a play on Weekend at Bernie’s and stars a woman who works weddings with her many loving and perhaps overly involved Chinese-Malaysian aunties and mom. After a terrible man she’s on a blind date with dies unexpectedly, she panics and ends up having to cart the corpse all over the luxury destination wedding she and her family are working. Oh and of course she runs into her ex, the one who got away, that same weekend. This sequel is again set at a wedding, this time her own. Remains fresh and funny and though there’s not QUITE a corpse to hide, plenty of hijinks and shenanigans ensue.
Homicide and Halo-Halo - The second in a cozy mystery series about a woman who moves back home to help out with her family’s Filipino restaurant, this one revolves around a murder at the Miss Teen Shady Palms Beauty Pageant, a pageant the protagonist reluctantly entered and won as a teenager
**More Than You’ll Ever Know - A woman on the Texas-Mexico border has a family in each country until one husband finds out about and murders the other. Now, a true crime writer tracks her down to get the full story. Dual timelines of the 1980s murder and the 2010s writer. This sounds SO good.
The Woman in the Library - Four strangers at the same library table become each other’s alibis when a woman is murdered. There’s a cool structure where the main story is actually a book within a book, and each chapter alternates with letters from the writer’s beta reader, which become a story on its own. It’s less confusing in context!
**The Red Palace - A historical mystery set in 1700s Korea. A nurse at the palace, who’s the illegitimate child of a noble father who doesn’t acknowledge her, plunges into court politics when her beloved mentor is accused of murder. I read this one and loved the protagonist and setting. It also has a sweet romantic subplot.
Thriller/Suspense/Horror
**So Happy For You - .A “viciously funny” skewering of the wedding industrial complex, takes place around a queer woman reluctantly agreeing to become maid of honor for her childhood best friend. I’m not sure how this is a thriller but I think it is.
Hurricane Girl - Another hard to categorize book. May be thriller or horror but also supposed to be funny.
Blood Sugar - A woman accused of killing her husband must prove her innocence, which is hard because she’s definitely killed OTHER people, just not this one. Love a prickly protagonist in a murder mystery. (See also: Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian, one of my favorite reads from last year.)
Cherish Farrah - It seems like Bethany Morrow has a book in every genre and EVERY ONE is excellent. This one is a page-turner. It starts with the classic premise of “everything is not what it seems in this beautiful suburb” but adds twists on race, class, and the intensity of friendships between teen girls, with a tiny bit of body horror thrown in. If you’re squeamish, reply to me and I will tell you exactly what page to skip because you should not miss this one over something so minor!
Manhunt - In a post-apocalyptic world where a virus turns anyone with a certain amount of testosterone into a zombie, two trans women hunt feral men for parts while navigating the threat of deadly men, a deadly virus, and a TERF faction trying to kill them all. This is splatterpunk body horror.
**The Pallbearers Club - Paul Tremblay is a solid horror writer and this sounds like his most interesting premise yet. An author writes a memoir that includes his memories of a friend from his teenage years, who was into exhuming the dead and hitting up funerals with him. In the present day, she somehow reacts to it (details unclear). I like the ‘80s/‘90s New England setting with creepy female friend and am interested in the meta parts about writing that supposedly appear.
**The Hacienda - LOVED this gothic set in Mexico in the years after the War for Independence. A new bride comes to the home of her richer/more powerful husband and discovers a menacing house and disquieting stories of his dead first wife. This is a classic Gothic with a perfect spooky house, social commentary regarding colorism and sexism, AND a forbidden love story with a hot priest.
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau - Moreno-Garcia always has great premises, and each book has been better than the last. This one transplants The Island of Doctor Moreau to 1800s Mexico.
Non-Fiction
**An Immense World - I knew Ed Yong from his pandemic reporting in The Atlantic and because I am the worst nonfiction reader, his new book seemed like a strong choice for a book I could lose interest in while sick. I picked it up with the thought that I would do what I always do, read a few pages and never finish it. Those few pages were RIVETING. The second I finished them, I went back and read them out loud to the person sitting next to me. This book will make you very annoying to the people in your life, because you’ll follow them around spouting little facts you’ve just learned but it can’t be helped because it’s so fascinating. It’s about animal senses but it’s really about how, even though we all live in the same world, each species is living in its own version of reality, or as Yong put it, “all is not as it seems and…everything we experience is but a filtered version of everything that we could experience.” Did you know birds see millions more colors than we do and that some humans, but only ones born with XX chromosomes, can see ultraviolet? That dogs have two chambers in their noses, one for containing smells? That seals can navigate perfectly well blindfolded because they actually use their whiskers to sense where they need to go? It’s dense with information so you may end up reading it for months like I have been.
**Shy - Mary Rodgers, author of Freaky Friday, composer of Once Upon a Mattress, daughter of Richard Rodgers of Rodgers and Hammerstein and Rodgers and Hart, friend of Stephen Sondheim and basis of the character Mary in his Merrily We Roll Along, had some really good gossip that she wasn’t afraid to spill, and I can’t wait to read it in this memoir.
Speculative Fiction
**Siren Queen - A tale of 1930s Hollywood, starring a character based on Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star, but make it fantasy??? Everything I could want! I missed Vo’s queer scifi take on The Great Gatsby starring Jordan Baker but loved her novella The Empress of Salt and Fortune.
**Cult Classic - The description of this “comic mystery” mentions cults but also running repeatedly into ex-boyfriends. I can’t tell if that’s related to the cult but what a diabolical cult it would be if so. By Sloane Crosley, who is mostly known for her humorous nonfiction.
**The Stardust Thief - A thief, a jinn, a sultan’s son, and a trader go on a quest. Fantasy book inspired by One Thousand and One Nights. It is a known fact that any fantasy book with a thief is 40% better than a fantasy book without a thief.
**End of the World House - To be honest, I barely got past the words “two best friends get caught in a time loop at the Louvre.” How good is that concept?! Supposed to be funny or at least light-hearted as well. Time loop stories are really having a moment. Also on my list are This Time Tomorrow, where an almost 40-year-old whose dad is dying travels back to her 16th birthday (my impression is this book is devastating) and See You Yesterday, where a teenager reliving her terrible first day of college finds a classmate who’s been stuck in the same time loop for months. One Italian Summer is technically not a time loop but since it involves a young person meeting a young version of her mother after her mother has died, it qualifies as another in the time foolery genre.
**Drunk On All Your Strange New Words - The locked room mystery is one of my favorite tropes, especially when the locked room is a spaceship and the lock is the nothingness of space. I’m not sure that’s the situation here, but the book is a locked room mystery with a protagonist who is a translator for an alien race (the act of translating the alien language leaves you feeling drunk, thus the excellent title). If that doesn’t excite you, we are not the same.
Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 - a fictional oral history set in the 2050s celebrating the 20th anniversary of the New York Commune. It’s depressingly rare to find scifi about a utopia.
The Cartographers - For the National Treasure/Da Vinci Code fan who wants their entertainment slightly less ludicrous. Nell’s cartographer father has blacklisted her in their field over an argument about a seemingly worthless gas station map. When he turns up dead, she becomes embroiled in a conspiracy centering on that same map which brings to light secrets about her parents’ past. The fantasy elements are very light here. A fun ride.
Wrath Goddess Sing - A retelling of the Trojan War where Achilles is a trans woman. Jennifer Saint also has a new book retelling the Trojan War but from the point of view of Clytemnestra, Cassandra, and Elektra.
The Women Could Fly - A dystopian set in a world where women must marry by the age of 30 and witches are real.
Invisible Things - A crew on the first mission to Jupiter is surprised to find a human city in a bubble on one of Jupiter’s moons and even more surprised when they’re kidnapped and forced to start lives there. This may be satire? It may be fun? The description says it’s a “madcap, surreal adventure.”
Ordinary Monsters - Gigantic book (over 600 pages) set in Victorian London about people hunting orphans with supernatural powers that has been compared in goodreads reviews to: Umbrella Academy, Penny Dreadful, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and the X-Men.
The Last White Man - A twist on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the white protagonist wakes up one day to find that his skin is brown. By the author of the acclaimed Exist West and inspired by his own experience as a British Pakistani man after 9/11.
specfic where you have to read the previous books first
Ruby Fever - the conclusion to the Hidden Legacy series. If you read urban fantasy, you already know! If you don’t, starting with an Ilona Andrews series is smart.
Eclipse the Moon - LOVE a female bounty hunter, even more if she’s in space.
**A Prayer for the Crown-Shy - The first novella is unusual for scifi, a spare little meditation on the meaning of life in the form of a conversation between a robot and a tea monk. Cozy, life-affirming, set in a forest and not a spaceship or a desert. Book 2 continues their story.
Fevered Star - I remember very little of the first book in this epic fantasy series set in pre-Colombian America but I remember it had gods, prophecies, and that I loved it.
Romance
Husband Material - Its predecessor Boyfriend Material was the rare book for me that actually lives up to the romcom name. The m/m romance between a hot mess and a buttoned-up barrister who has it all together had Bridget Jones vibes, and this sequel is one of my most anticipated romances.
Yerba Buena - Nina LaCour’s Everything Leads to You is one of the swooniest YA romances I’ve read, so I was so excited to see she had her first adult romance out about two women, one married, who fall in love and have to deal with some real adult issues.
You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty - I was surprised to see that the author of one of my favorite reads of the 2010s had hopped genres to write their first romance! I didn’t even check the description before adding it to my TBR.
Love in the Time of Serial Killers - Full disclosure, the author and I sometimes talk on instagram and we have a mutual friend, but that has nothing to do with why I’m excited to read this debut! The premise, that the heroine, who is writing her dissertation on true crime, thinks her new neighbor (and eventual love interest) may be a serial killer is very funny. Writing a romance whose heroine is obsessed with true crime seems like such a good idea I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before.
Delilah Green Doesn’t Care - This was probably my favorite read of the year so far. A woman mostly estranged from her family reluctantly agrees to shoot her stepsister’s wedding and falls in love with a bridesmaid. Just perfect.
The Dead Romantics - I think this is about a woman who falls in love with a ghost and I don’t care to investigate further!!
Honey and Spice - Two college students get in a fake relationship for Reasons. The writing keeps getting cited as especially lyrical and beautiful, and a few bigtime writers have posted about how much they loved it. I know it may sound reductive to say a romance sounds romantic, but a lot of romance novels are more successful at a certain atmosphere than in actually making you feel invested in the relationship itself, so it’s notable to me when a book brings that feeling.
The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes - Cat Sebastian is one of my favorite writers of queer historicals, and this one, about a former highwayman who becomes involved with the woman he’s blackmailing, is so charming.
Always Be My Duchess - “Pretty Woman meets the Bridgertons in this witty, vivacious historical take on 90s romcoms.” Choosing a romance novel is 50% I like this author and 50% vibes, here the vibes are carrying the day.
The Sizzle Paradox - Teaching someone to date is one of my least favorite romance tropes, probably because the teaching is usually done by a duke being high-handed about how he’s a MAN, but I have hopes that it will be less obnoxious in a contemporary setting, especially when it’s in a book by Sandhya Menon.
Savvy Sheldon Feels Good as Hell - This leans slightly more toward general fiction for me because of how much I enjoyed spending time with Savvy as she made over her life. The romance was cute but almost beside the point.
The Hookup Plan - Liked the first two books in this series a lot and am seeing a lot of people saying this enemies to lovers romance is the best one yet.
Half a Soul - A Regency fantasy romance where the heroine has been cursed as a fairy to never experience fear or embarrassment has me tripping over myself to read it.
Wicked Beauty - To be quite honest, though I often love the idea of her books, Katee Robert’s stuff often bounces right off of me. I didn’t finish the second book in this series, which stars various characters from Greek gods in a metropolitan version of Olympus, but a mfm romance starring Helen of Troy, Achilles, and Patroclus is too tempting a setup.
Thank You for Listening - Everyone LOVES Julia Whelan’s audiobook narration and she’s set her first romance novel in that world.
Cosmic Kind of Love - This premise is bananas. A wedding planner accidentally comes across videos from a client’s ex-boyfriend who is an astronaut on the International Space Station and starts replying to the defunct email address, thinking no one will ever see them. Of course someone does! This is one of two space romances I’ve seen this year, along with The Astronaut and the Star which has a big action star shadowing a female astronaut while prepping for a role.
Heartbreaker - If you read historicals, you know that Sarah MacLean is an autobuy.
Lucy Checks In - An American hotel manager starts over at a run down hotel in France. The heroine in this one is almost 50, which is sadly unusual for the romance genre.
A Proposal They Can’t Refuse - Childhood friends are forced into a fake relationship by their respective grandfathers and go along to save the family businesses (an Irish whiskey distillery and a Puerto Rican restaurant). I read this one and the grandfathers were scene stealers.
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