Must Read Books for Summer

It’s summa-summa-summertime!!! And that means it’s time for some beach-reads, lazy afternoon reads and all the reads because you can finally catch up on some of that reading you weren’t able to do earlier in the year!! I’m working on my own summer bucket reading list. I’ve knocked one off my list already…woot! And today I’m sharing a glimpse at what’s on my summer reading list this year.

Lowcountry Book Club (Liz Talbot Mystery #5) by Susan M. Boyer
Goodreads.com Synopsis:
Somebody pushed Shelby Poinsett out her second-floor library window and it wasn’t her husband. At least that what Charleston’s most prestigious law firm wants Liz Talbot to prove. Liz must run the spectrum of Southern society, from the local homeless shelter where Shelby volunteered to the one-hundred-year-old book club where Charleston’s genteel ladies are dying to join, to bring a killer to justice.

Related subjects include: women sleuths, private investigator mystery series, cozy mysteries, murder mysteries, whodunit mysteries (whodunnit), book club recommendations, Southern fiction, Southern humor, Southern living.

My Thoughts: I’ve already devoured this book in basically a 24 hour period (thank you Susan for allowing me an advanced copy!!). If you haven’t read any of Susan’s books (ie #1-4 in this series) then you must start with #1. Although, you could totally read this as a stand alone. But really…why would you want to start at #5 when you can start with number 1!

SNAG THIS BOOK: Lowcountry Book Club
::Snag the other books in the series Lowcountry Boil (Book 1), Lowcountry Bombshell (Book 2), Lowcountry Boneyard (Book 3), Snag Lowcountry Bordello (Book 4)::

The Idea of Love by Patti Callahan Henry
Goodreads.com Synopsis:
As we like to say in the south: “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

Ella’s life has been completely upended. She’s young, beautiful, and deeply in love—until her husband dies in a tragic sailing accident while trying save her. Or so she’ll have everyone believe. Screenwriter Hunter needs a hit, but crippling writers’ block and a serious lack of motivation are getting him nowhere. He’s on the look-out for a love story. It doesn’t matter who it belongs to.

When Hunter and Ella meet in Watersend, South Carolina it feels like the perfect match, something close to fate. In Ella, Hunter finds the perfect love story, full of longing and sacrifice. It’s the stuff of epic films. In Hunter, Ella finds possibility. It’s an opportunity to live out a fantasy – the life she wishes she had because hers is too painful. And more real. Besides. what’s a little white lie between strangers?

But one lie leads to another, and soon Hunter and Ella find themselves caught in a web of deceit. As they try to untangle their lies and reclaim their own lives, they feel something stronger is keeping them together. And so they wonder: can two people come together for all the wrong reasons and still make it right?

My Thoughts: I’m looking forward to picking this one up next. The synopsis pulled me in from the start!

SNAG THIS BOOK: The Idea of Love

If I Could Turn Back Time by Beth Harbison
Goodreads.com Synopsis:
The next hilarious and heartwarming novel from bestselling author Beth Harbison

What if your thirtysomething self woke up in the body of your eighteen-year-old self?

Thirty-six year old Ramie Phillips has led a very successful life. She made her fortune and now she hob nobs with the very rich and occasionally the semi-famous and enjoys luxuries she only dreamed of as a middle-class kid growing up in Potomac, Maryland. But lately Ramie has begun to feel a little…empty.

On a boat with friends off the Florida coast, Ramie tries to fight her feelings of discontent with steel will and hard liquor. No one even notices as she gets up and goes to the diving board and dives in. So no one notices when she hits her head on the board on the way down…

She wakes some time later with a throbbing headache and something beeping next to her. A heart monitor? Is she in the hospital, head wrapped sarcastically, like some amnesiac woman in a Lifetime movie? She strains to understand a voice calling in the distance: “Wake up!” It’s her mother. “You’re going to be late for school again. I’m not writing a note this time…”

Told with Beth Harbison’s wit and warmth, The Time of My Life is the fantasy of every woman who has ever thought, “If I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, I’d do things so differently.”

My Thoughts: Have you ever thought “if I could just turn back time” and relive a moment or make a different choice? I know I have. I’m curious to see what Ramie Phillips does on the eve of her eighteenth birthday and if it really will make a difference.

SNAG THIS BOOK: If I Could Turn Back Time

Will You Won’t You Want Me? by Nora Zelevansky
Goodreads.com Synopsis:
Marjorie Plum never meant to peak in high school. She was Queen Bee. Now, 10 years later, she’s lost her sparkle. At her bleakest moment, she’s surprised by renewed interest from a questionable childhood crush, and the bickering with her cranky boss—at a potentially game-changing new job—grows increasingly like flirtatious banter. Suddenly, she’s faced with a choice between the life she always dreamed of and one she never thought to imagine. With the help of a precocious 11-year-old tutee, who unknowingly becomes the Ghost of Marjorie Past, and a musician roommate, who looks like a pixie and talks like the Dalai Lama, Marjorie struggles with the ultimate question: Who does she want to be? Nora Zelevansky’s Will You Won’t You Want Me? is a funny, often surprising, novel about growing up when you are already supposed to be grown.

My Thoughts: I’m looking for something a bit funny with a heartfilled message. Looking forward to this one.

SNAG THIS BOOK: Will You Won’t You Want Me?

The Island House by Nancy Thayer
Goodreads.com Synopsis:
The charms of Nantucket tempt a woman to leave her established life in Kansas City—but with a piece of her heart, and a love interest, in each world, she discovers she must look within to choose the right path.

Every summer since college, twenty-nine-year-old Jenny has traded the familiarity of the Midwest for the allure of Nantucket. Now an established university professor in Kansas City, she finds herself caught between two lifestyles and two very different men. She chooses Nantucket and the glamorous life she associates with it, unaware that the summer will take an unexpected turn, and she will have to let her heart decide what it truly wants.

My Thoughts: I’ve always been drawn to the North East and everything surrounding beaches. Another one on my list!

SNAG THIS BOOK: The Island House

The Weekenders by Mary Kay Andrews
Goodreads.com Synopsis:
Some people stay all summer long on the idyllic island of Belle Isle, North Carolina. Others come only for the weekends-and the mix between the regulars and “the weekenders” can sometimes make the sparks fly. Riley Griggs has a season of good times with friends and family ahead of her on Belle Isle when things take an unexpected turn. While waiting for her husband to arrive on the ferry one Friday afternoon, Riley is confronted by a process server who thrusts papers into her hand. And her husband is nowhere to be found.

So she turns to her island friends for help and support, but it turns out that each of them has their own secrets, and the clock is ticking as the mystery deepens…in a murderous way. Cocktail parties aside, Riley must find a way to investigate the secrets of Belle Island, the husband she might not really know, and the summer that could change everything.

Told with Mary Kay Andrews’ trademark blend of humor and warmth, and with characters and a setting that you can’t help but fall for, The Weekenders is the perfect summer escape.

My Thoughts: Another book I’ve devoured already!! This is CLASSIC MKA. And if you are her fan (or even if you aren’t and this is the first book you’ve seen by her) you will definitely want to pick up this book!!

SNAG THIS BOOK: The Weekenders

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WHAT’S ON YOUR SUMMER READING LIST?? Comment below and tell me!