There's a common misconception that beach reads always involve sun, sand, and string-bikini-thin plots. Readers who start summer with a straw tote full of new books know the truth. Whether you're cracking one open at a private beach resort or a lounge chair at your local pool, the best beach reads are ones that feels like stepping into an absorbing, alternate reality for a few hundred pages. It can be a lighthearted distraction from daily life or a nail-biting thriller: Whatever the specifics, if you don't want to go back in the water until you've reached the last page, you have a quality beach read on your hands.
The Great Reclamation: A Novel
The Great Reclamation defies easy genre categorization, with elements of historical fiction, magical realism, and a sweeping, captivating love story at its heart. It's set in Singapore at the time of major geopolitical shifts: British colonialism is nearing its end, but Japanese occupation and the second World War are looming nearer. In a small fishing village caught in the middle of it all, a young boy discovers an unprecedented power that can win over a girl he loves and service his community under siege.
Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding)
Readers who thought they knew Diane Ladd and Laura Dern will encounter entirely new, deeply personal sides of both Hollywood legends in this spring release. Honey, Baby, Mine compiles vulnerable conversations the mother-daughter pair had on long walks while Ladd was recovering from a difficult illness. Illuminating and honest, Honey, Baby, Mine reaffirms the special bonds shared by mothers and daughters and invites readers to get their own no-holds-barred conversations started.
Jasmin Iolani Hakes's stunning debut novel is both a sweeping introduction to Hawaii's history and culture and a multi-generational epic. As Hula charts successive generations of the fictional Naupaka family (with a spotlight on its mothers and daughters and their ties to the hula tradition), it deftly explores the detrimental impacts colonialism has had on Hawaiians—past and present, fictional and real.
Bad Summer People: A Novel
Lauren Parker and Jen Weinstein expect nothing but an idyllic summer when they vacation with their husbands in Salcombe, Fire Island: the kind where they are the center of the wealthy universe spanning the beach, the tennis court, and their vacation homes. When a dead body appears near their carefully-controlled paradise's boardwalk, long-held secrets and simmering tensions come to the surface with it threatening the order Lauren and Jen have desperately clutched with their perfectly manicured hands.
August Blue: A Novel
August Blue opens with a once-in-a-generation pianist hurrying offstage mid-performance and continues with her wandering through Europe with a potential doppelgänger at her heels. This intriguing set-up is worth following to the end, to see if she can leave her human shadow, and her past, behind.
A Perfect Vintage
In this can't-look-away summer drama, a boutique hotel consultant's meticulously constructed business—and life—is unraveled when a close friend and her daughter join a summer job in France's Loire Valley. The setting is picture perfect, but the affairs and betrayals are anything but.
The Five-Star Weekend
Elin Hilderbrand is summer beach read royalty, with more than twenty oceanfront novels to her name. This summer, the Nantucket resident returns with a new book about a woman who gathers friends from various phases of her life for what's meant to be a relaxing weekend following her husband's untimely death. Instead their reunion stirs up old feelings, new complications, and deep self-reflection, all with Hilderbrand's signature touch.
Comments
Post a Comment