Summer is just around the corner and that means it’s time to start planning summer reading lists!
My recommendations for the best books to read summer 2024 include recently published contemporary fiction, historical fiction, romance, and mysteries that I have already read or that are on my TBR for this summer.
Whether you’re looking for a book to read on vacation or while relaxing at home, there should be something to suit your reading mood. Happy summer reading!!
You Might Also Enjoy Reading:
35 of the Best Books To Read Summer 2023
35 of the Best Summer Beach Reads for 2022
29 of the Best Summer Beach Reads in 2021
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1. The Briar Club by Kate Quinn
Setting: Washington, DC
Publication Date: July 9, 2024
Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.
Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?
2. A Wedding in Lake Como by Jennifer Probst
Setting: Lake Como, Italy
Publication Date: May 14, 2024
Best friends Ava, Madison, and Chelsea made a pact to reunite for each other’s weddings when their careers sent them in different directions. But after one of them makes a choice that tears the group apart, an upcoming wedding might be their last chance to heal old wounds.
Ava is about to marry the man she loves in a lavish ceremony on the shores of Lake Como, but she’s haunted by the mistakes she’s made.
Madison’s made a name for herself as an influencer in the fashion world but is threatened by a scandal impacting everything she holds dear.
And Chelsea has the perfect family she always craved, but her professional dreams have fallen by the wayside.
As they return to Italy’s gorgeous coast, the three women revisit their life-changing first trip to Lake Como during college. When Madison comes face-to-face with the college sweetheart who was at the heart of one of the most pivotal times of her life, can they forge a new way forward?
3. Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan
Setting: Hawaii, Marrakesh, Los Angeles, England
Publication Date: May 21, 2024
Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshambury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel has a problem: the legendary Gresham Trust has been depleted by decades of profligate spending, and behind all the magazine covers and Instagram stories manors and yachts lies nothing more than a gargantuan mountain of debt. The only solution, put forth by Rufus’s scheming mother, is for Rufus to attend his sister’s wedding at a luxury eco-resort, a veritable who’s-who of sultans, barons, and oligarchs, and seduce a woman with money.
Should he marry Solène de Courcy, a French hotel heiress with honey blond tresses and a royal bloodline? Should he pursue Martha Dung, the tattooed venture capital genius who passes out billions like lollipops? Or should he follow his heart, betray his family, squander his legacy, and finally confess his love to the literal girl next door, the humble daughter of a doctor, Eden Tong? When a volcanic eruption burns through the nuptials and a hot mic exposes a secret tryst, the Gresham family plans—and their reputation—go up in flames.
Can the once-great dukedom rise from the ashes? Or will a secret tragedy, hidden for two decades, reveal a shocking twist?
4. The Guncle Abroad by Steven Rowley
Setting: Italy
Publication Date: May 21, 2024
Patrick O’Hara is back. It’s been five years since his summer as his niece Maisie and nephew Grant’s caretaker after their mother’s passing. The kids are back in Connecticut with their dad, and Patrick has relocated to New York to remain close by and relaunch his dormant acting career. After the run of his second successful sit-com comes to a close, Patrick feels on top of the world . . . professionally. But some things have had to take a back seat. Looking down both barrels at fifty, Patrick is single again after breaking things off with Emory. But at least he has a family to lean on. Until that family needs to again lean on him.
When Patrick’s brother, Greg, announces he’s getting remarried in Italy, Maisie and Grant are not thrilled. Patrick feels drawn to take the two back under his wing. As they travel through Europe on their way to the wedding, Patrick tries his best to help them understand love, much as he once helped them comprehend grief. But when they arrive in Italy, Patrick is overextended managing a groom with cold feet; his sister, Clara, flirting with guests left and right; a growing rivalry with the kids’ charming soon-to-be-launt (lesbian aunt), and two moody young teens trying to adjust to a new normal, all culminating in a disastrous rehearsal dinner.
Can Patrick save the day? Will teaching the kids about love help him repair his own love life? Can the change of scenery help Patrick come to terms with finally growing up? Gracing the page with his signature blend of humor and heart, Steven Rowley charms with a beloved story about the complicated bonds of family, love, and what it takes to rediscover yourself, even at the ripe age of fifty.
5. This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune
Setting: Prince Edward Island
Publication Date: May 7, 2024
Lucy is the tourist vacationing at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a very good time. The only problem: Lucy doesn’t know he’s her best friend’s younger brother. Lucy and Felix’s chemistry is unreal, but the list of reasons why they need to stay away from each other is long, and they vow to never repeat that electric night again.
It’s easier said than done.
Each year, Lucy escapes to PEI for a big breath of coastal air, fresh oysters and crisp vinho verde with her best friend, Bridget. Every visit begins with a long walk on the beach, beneath soaring red cliffs and a golden sun. And every visit, Lucy promises herself she won’t wind up in Felix’s bed. Again.
If Lucy can’t help being drawn to Felix, at least she’s always kept her heart out of it.
When Bridget suddenly flees Toronto a week before her wedding, Lucy drops everything to follow her to the island. Her mission is to help Bridget through her crisis and resist the one man she’s never been able to. But Felix’s sparkling eyes and flirty quips have been replaced with something new, and Lucy’s beginning to wonder just how safe her heart truly is.
6. Every Time We Say Goodbye by Natalie Jenner
Setting: Rome, Italy
Publication Date: May 14, 2024
In 1955, Vivien Lowry is facing the greatest challenge of her life. Her latest play, the only female-authored play on the London stage that season, has opened in the West End to rapturous applause from the audience. The reviewers, however, are not as impressed as the playgoers and their savage notices not only shut down the play but ruin Lowry’s last chance for a dramatic career.
With her future in London not looking bright, at the suggestion of her friend, Peggy Guggenheim, Vivien takes a job in as a script doctor on a major film shooting in Rome’s Cinecitta Studios. There she finds a vibrant movie making scene filled with rising stars, acclaimed directors, and famous actors in a country that is torn between its past and its potentially bright future, between the liberation of the post-war cinema and the restrictions of the Catholic Church that permeates the very soul of Italy.
As Vivien tries to forge a new future for herself, she also must face the long-buried truth of the recent World War and the mystery of what really happened to her deceased fiancé. Every Time We Say Goodbye is a brilliant exploration of trauma and tragedy, hope and renewal, filled with dazzling characters both real and imaginary, from the incomparable author who charmed the world with her novels The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls.
7. The Break-Up Pact by Emma Lord
Setting: Beach town in the U.S.
Publication Date: August 13, 2024
June and Levi were best friends as teenagers―until the day they weren’t. Now June is struggling to make rent on her beachside tea shop, Levi is living a New York cliché as a disillusioned hedge fund manager and failed novelist, and they’ve barely spoken in years.
But after they both experience public, humiliating break-ups with their exes that spread like wildfire across TikTok rabbit holes and daytime talk shows alike, they accidentally make some juicy gossip of their own―a photo of them together has the internet convinced they’re a couple. With so many people rooting for them, they decide to put aside their rocky past and make a pact to fuel the fire. Pretending to date will help June’s shop get back on its feet and make Levi’s ex realize that she made a mistake. All they have to do is convince the world they’re in love, one swoon-worthy photo opp at a time.
Two viral break-ups. One fake relationship. Five sparkling, heart-pounding dates. June and Levi can definitely pull this off without their hearts getting involved. Because everyone knows fake dating doesn’t come with real feelings. Right?
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
8. Husbands & Lovers by Beatriz Williams
Setting: Cairo and New England
Publication Date: June 25, 2024
New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son, Sam, had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, searching for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams— one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters—a fairy tale cut short by a devastating betrayal.
Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself—marriage to a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men . . . and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.
9. The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson
Setting: England
Publication Date: May 7, 2024
It is the summer of 1919 and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or—horror—a governess, she’s sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after she rescues the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy Wirrall, from a social faux pas.
Poppy wears trousers, operates a taxi and delivery service to employ local women, and runs a ladies’ motorcycle club (to which she plans to add flying lessons). She and her friends enthusiastically welcome Constance into their circle. And then there is Harris, Poppy’s recalcitrant but handsome brother—a fighter pilot recently wounded in battle—who warms in Constance’s presence. But things are more complicated than they seem in this sunny pocket of English high society. As the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, Constance and the women of the club are forced to confront the fact that the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.
10. Summers at the Saint by Mary Kay Andrews
Setting: Coastal Georgia
Publication Date: May 7, 2024
Traci Eddings is the widowed owner of the St. Cecelia, a posh resort on the coast of Georgia known as The Saint. Locals refer to people who vacation there as ‘Saints” and anyone who can’t afford to stay there as “Ain’ts‘. Traci grew up locally and was an Ain’t working at the resort with her best friend, Shannon, until she married the younger son of the owner but his death in a helicopter crash four years earlier left her in charge of running the Saint.
The hotel is struggling financially but Traci is determined to get the Saint back on track as the summer season gets underway. Traci hires staff including her niece and her estranged best friend’s daughter and is hopeful that the summer will be successful but problems keep popping up around the resort, a stranger shows up in town asking about a drowning that happened 20 years earlier and then the death of someone at the resort threatens to destroy everything Traci has been working to save.
Mary Kay Andrews can always be relied on to craft a good story! Summer at the Saint is a page-turner with family drama, a twisty whodunnit murder mystery and a bit of romance. It takes several chapters to introduce the cast of characters but once they’re set up then the plot starts rolling.
The book has a great cast of characters, the story flows well, the whodunnit will keep you guessing and there’s a happy ever after ending. The story also has a great sense of place and summer vibes – The Saint sounds like the perfect vacation destination (minus the murder of course!). Summers at the Saint is a fun and engaging read – perfect for the beach bag this summer!
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
11. Swan Song by Elin Hilderbrand
Setting: Nantucket
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Chief of Police Ed Kapenash is about to retire. Blond Sharon is going through a divorce. But when a 22-million-dollar summer home is purchased by the mysterious Richardsons—how did they make their money, exactly?—Ed, Sharon, and everyone in the community are swept up in high drama.
The Richardsons throw lavish parties, flirt with multiple locals, flaunt their wealth with not one but two yachts, and raise impossible hopes of everyone they meet. When their house burns to the ground and their most essential employee goes missing, the entire island is up in arms.
The last of Elin Hilderbrand’s bestselling Nantucket novels, SWAN SONG is a propulsive medley of glittering gatherings, sun-soaked drama, wisdom and heart, featuring the return of some of her most beloved characters, including, most importantly, the beautiful and timeless island of Nantucket itself.
12. Sandwich by Catherine Newman
Setting: Cape Cod
Publication Date: June 18, 2024
For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family’s yearly escape to Cape Cod. Their humble beach-town rental has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, great meals, and messes of all kinds: emotional, marital, and—thanks to the cottage’s ancient plumbing—septic too.
This year’s vacation, with Rocky sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, promises to be just as delightful as summers past—except, perhaps, for Rocky’s hormonal bouts of rage and melancholy. (Hello, menopause!) Her body is changing—her life is, too. And then a chain of events sends Rocky into the past, reliving both the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers.
It’s one precious week: everything is in balance; everything is in flux. And when Rocky comes face to face with her family’s history and future, she is forced to accept that she can no longer hide her secrets from the people she loves.
13. And So I Roar by Abi Daré
Setting: Nigeria
Publication Date: August 6, 2024
When Tia accidentally overhears a whispered conversation between her mother—terminally ill and lying in a hospital bed in Port Harcourt, Nigeria—and her aunt, the repercussions will send her on a desperate quest to uncover a secret her mother has been hiding for nearly two decades.
Back home in Lagos a few days later, Adunni, a plucky fourteen-year-old runaway, is lying awake in Tia’s guest room. Having escaped from her rural village in a desperate bid to seek a better future, she’s finally found refuge with Tia, who has helped her enroll in school. It’s always been Adunni’s dream to get an education, and she’s bursting with excitement.
Suddenly, there’s a horrible knocking at the front gate. . . .
It’s only the beginning of a harrowing ordeal that will see Tia forced to make a terrible choice between protecting Adunni or finally learning the truth behind the secret her mother has hidden from her. And Adunni will learn that her “louding voice,” as she calls it, is more important than ever, as she must advocate to save not only herself but all the young women of her home village, Ikati.
If she succeeds, she may transform Ikati into a place where girls are allowed to claim the bright futures they deserve—and shout their stories to the world.
14. Long Island by Colm Toibin
Setting: Long Island, New York
Publication Date: May 7, 2024
Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.
One day, when Tony is at his job and Eilis is in her home office doing her accounting, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting.
15. Tiananmen Square by Lai Wen
Setting: Beijing, China
Publication Date: June 4, 2024
As a child in Beijing in the 1970s, Lai lives with her family in a lively, working-class neighborhood near the heart of the city. Thoughtful yet unassuming, she spends her days with her friends beyond the attention of her parents: Her father is a reclusive figure who lingers in the background, while her mother, an aging beauty and fervent patriot, is quick-tempered and preoccupied with neighborhood gossip. Only Lai’s grandmother, a formidable and colorful maverick, seems to really see Lai and believe that she can blossom beyond their circumstances.
But Lai is quickly awakened to the harsh realities of the Chinese state. A childish prank results in a terrifying altercation with police that haunts her for years; she also learns that her father, like many others, was broken during the Cultural Revolution. As she enters adolescence, Lai meets a mysterious and wise bookseller who introduces her to great works—Hemingway, Camus, and Orwell, among others—that open her heart to the emotional power of literature and her mind to thrillingly different perspectives. Along the way, she experiences the ebbs and flows of friendship, the agony of grief, and the first steps and missteps in love.
A gifted student, Lai wins a scholarship to study at the prestigious Peking University where she soon falls in with a theatrical band of individualists and misfits dedicated to becoming their authentic selves, despite the Communist Party’s insistence on conformity—and a new world opens before her. When student resistance hardens under the increasingly restrictive policies of the state, the group gets swept up in the fervor, determined to be heard, joining the masses of demonstrators and dreamers who display remarkable courage and loyalty in the face of danger. As 1989 unfolds, the spirit of change is in the air…
Thank you to NetGalley and Spiegel & Grau for providing a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
16. A Good Life by Virginie Grimaldi
Setting: Basque Country, Spain
Publication Date: May 28, 2024
Emma and Agathe are sisters. They were thick as thieves when they were young but have always been as different as can be. Agathe, the younger sister, is disorderly, chaotic, and fiery. Five years older, Emma has always been the more mature sister, the defender, the protector, the worrier. Their relationship as adults is scarred by a tragedy that transformed their happy, ordinary childhoods into something much more complex and challenging. For a long time, Emma hasn’t wanted to be involved in Agathe’s life. But then they must return together to the Basque Country, to the house of their adored grandmother, to empty out her home and in the process to reconcile, to remember, and to pour out what is in their hearts.
The story alternates between Agathe and Emma’s childhood and their present day, with everything in between, and readers see them as young girls, teenagers, young women, mothers, wives, partners, individuals, sisters. This is a story that encompasses whole lives, complex lives, women’s lives, asking all the while how the scars of the past can be healed and what, in the end, is a good life.
Thank you to NetGalley and Europa Editions for providing a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
17. Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
Setting: United States
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet’s always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.
Now, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion—fast. When her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan: she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx’s advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she’s turned it into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price?
18. How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley
Setting: England
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens’ Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards.
The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign—but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide.
When the city council threatens to sell the doomed community center building, the members of the Social Club join forces with their tiny friends in the daycare next door—as well as the teenaged father of one of the toddlers and a geriatric dog—to save the building. Together, this group’s unorthodox methods may actually work, as long as the police don’t catch up with them first.
19. The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr
Setting: Warsaw, Poland; Los Angeles
Publication Date: May 28, 2024
Los Angeles, 2005. Sienna Hayes, Hollywood’s latest It Girl, has ambitions to work behind the camera. When she meets Lena Browning, the enormously mysterious and famous Golden Age movie star, Sienna sees her big break. She wants to direct a picture about Lena’s life—but the legendary actor’s murky past turns out to be even darker than Sienna dreamed. Before she was a Living Legend, Lena Browning was Bina Blonski, a Polish Jew whose life and family were destroyed by the Nazis.
Warsaw, 1943. A member of the city’s Jewish elite, Bina Blonski and her husband, Jakub, are imprisoned in the ghastly, cramped ghetto along with the rest of Warsaw’s surviving Jews. Determined to fight back against the brutal Nazis, the beautiful, blonde Aryan-looking Bina becomes a spy, gaining information and stealing weapons outside the ghetto to protect her fellow Jews. But her dangerous circumstances grow complicated when she falls in love with Aleksander, an ally in resistance—and Jakub’s brother. While Lena accomplishes amazing feats of bravery, she sacrifices much in the process.
Over a decade after escaping the horrors of the ghetto, Bina, now known as Lena, rises to fame in Hollywood. Yet she cannot help but be reminded of her old life and hungers for revenge against the Nazis who escaped justice after the war. Her power and fame as a movie star offer Lena the chance to right the past’s wrongs . . . and perhaps even find the happy ending she never had.
20. The Murder After the Night Before by Katie Brent
Setting: London, England
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Molly wakes up in her London flat with a horrible hangover, no memory of the night before and a stranger in her bed. She manages to haul herself to work only to be sent home again after learning that she is trending on social media for the worst possible reason. Later that same day, she discovers her best friend, Posey, is dead. The police think it’s an accident but Molly is sure that it was murder. Molly has no choice but to deal with her shame and pull herself together so she can find out what actually happened to Posey.
The Murder After the Night Before is a well-written, fast-paced page-turner that I could not put down! I assumed from the cover that this would be a lighter read similar to the Finlay Donovan series but it covered some serious issues including grief, sexual assault, and social media toxicity narrated by Molly who has a dark sense of humour.
Molly is an unforgettable character and the mystery is gripping – everyone is a suspect, nobody can be trusted and just when you think you have it figured out, there’s a twist. This is Katy Brent’s second novel and I have not yet read her debut but definitely will now!
Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins Canada for sending a digital copy of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
21. Just One Taste by Lizzy Dent
Setting: Italy
Publication Date: July 16, 2024
When Olive Stone and her Italian pseudo-celebrity chef father fell out fourteen years ago, annoyingly handsome Leo Ricci slipped right in as his surrogate son and sous-chef. No one is more surprised than Olive when her father wills her his beloved (and now failing) restaurant. Or that his dying wish was for Olive and Leo to complete his cookbook…together.
She’s determined to sell the restaurant. Leo is determined to convince her not to. As they embark on four weeks in Italy, traveling from Sicily to Tuscany to Liguria, they’ll test each other as often as they test recipes. But the more time Olive and Leo spend together, the more undeniable their attraction grows. Olive finds herself wondering whether selling the restaurant might be running away, and what it might be like to try Just One Taste of Leo Ricci. Because he isn’t who she expected, and this trip might reveal more about who Olive is than she’s ready for.
22. You Are Here by David Nicholls
Setting: English countryside
Publication Date: May 28, 2024
Sometimes you need to get lost to find your way . . .
Michael is coming undone. Adrift after his wife’s departure, he has begun taking himself on long, solitary walks across the English countryside. Becoming ever more reclusive, he’ll do anything to avoid his empty house.
Marnie, on the other hand, is stuck. Hiding alone in her London flat, she avoids old friends and any reminders of her rotten, selfish ex-husband. Curled up with a good book, she’s battling the long afternoons of a life that feels like it’s passing her by.
When a persistent mutual friend and some very unpredictable weather conspire to toss Michael and Marnie together on the most epic of ten-day hikes, neither of them can think of anything worse. Until, of course, they discover exactly what they’ve been looking for.
Michael and Marnie are on the precipice of a bright future . . . if they can survive the journey.
23. The Paris Widow by Kimberly Belle
Setting: Paris, France
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
When Stella met Adam, she thought she had finally found a nice, normal guy—a welcome change from her previous boyfriend and her precarious jetsetter lifestyle with him. But her secure world comes crashing down when Adam goes missing after an explosion in the city square. Unable to reach him, she panics.
As the French police investigate, it’s revealed that Adam was on their radar as a dealer of rare and stolen antiquities with a long roster of criminal clients. Reeling from this news, Stella is determined not to leave Paris until she has the full story. Was Adam a random victim or the target of the explosion? And why is someone following her through the streets of Paris?
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
24. By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult
Setting: England
Publication Date: August 20, 2024
Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym.
In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.
25. The Secret History of Audrey James by Heather Marshall
Setting: Berlin, Northern England
Publication Date: June 4, 2024 in Canada (possibly later in the U.S.)
Sometimes the best place to hide is the last place anyone would look.
Northern England, 2010
After a tragic accident upends her life, Kate Mercer leaves London to work at an old guest house near the Scottish border, where she hopes to find a fresh start and heal from her loss. When she arrives, she begins to unravel the truth about her past, but discovers the mysterious elderly proprietor is harbouring her own secrets…
Berlin, 1938
Audrey James is weeks away from graduating from a prestigious music school in Berlin, where she’s been living with her best friend, Ilse Kaplan. As she prepares to finish her piano studies, Audrey dreads the thought of returning to her father in England and leaving Ilse behind. Families like the Kaplans are being targeted, and the stakes grow higher by the day. Restrictions tighten, the borders close to Jews, and rumours swirl about people being apprehended in the street and shipped off to work camps.
When Ilse’s parents and brother suddenly disappear, two high-ranking Nazi party members confiscate the Kaplans’ upscale home, believing it to be empty. In a desperate attempt to keep Ilse safe, Audrey becomes housekeeper for the officers while Ilse is forced into hiding in the attic—a prisoner in her own home. As war in Europe threatens, it isn’t long before a shocking turn of events pushes Audrey to become embroiled in cell of the anti-Hitler movement: clusters of resisters working to bring down the Nazis from within Germany itself. But resistance comes with risk, and before the war is over, Audrey must decide what matters most: saving herself, her friend, or sacrificing everything for the greater good.
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
26. Best, First, and Last by Amy T. Matthews
Setting: Peru
Publication Date: June 25, 2024
Best, First and Last is the story of three generations of women in one family who are all struggling for different reasons. Bonnie (Bon) is grieving the death of her third husband and worried about the rift between her daughter, Sandy, and her granddaughter, Heather. Sandy is an emotional wreck about the impending divorce from her philandering husband and Heather, who moved across the country to escape the difficult relationship she has with both parents, has recently broken up with a guy who is a bit of a stalker.
After a conversation with her Arizona neighbour’s photojournalist grandson, Bonnie decides to book a trip to Peru for herself, Sandy and Heather to hike the Incan Trail to Machu Picchu as a celebration of her 70th birthday. Most of the narrative takes place in the lead up to and during the trip to Peru but there are also a few flashback chapters that provide the background relating to Sandy and Bonnie’s relationships.
I had enjoyed the author’s previous book, Someone Else’s Bucket List, and was drawn to this one because this Machu Picchu trip is something I would love to do. As the three women embark on this adventure to visit one of the wonders of the world, there is a lot of fighting and tears but as they hike there is also a shedding of the past and the three begin to look forward to the future. There is also a romance storyline for Heather who meets her “Romeo” shortly after arriving in Peru.
Bon, who is carrying around her dead husband’s urn, was my favourite character – she is a riot and you never know what’s going to come out of her mouth but she loves her daughter and granddaughter deeply and will do anything for them.
Best, First and Last is an uplifting, joyful story of family and healing and an enjoyable read!
Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
27. The Year of What If by Phaedra Patrick
Setting: Various European countries
Publication Date: June 25, 2024
On the verge of her second marriage, Carla Carter knows she’s finally found the one. She and her fiancé, Tom, met through Logical Love, a dating agency she founded for the pragmatically minded, and she’s confident that, together, they will dispel an old family curse claiming Carter women are unlucky in love.
For peace of mind, Carla’s family insists she visit a fortune teller before she ties the knot. Except the tarot unexpectedly reveals that the love of Carla’s life is not Tom, but one of the several men she briefly dated during her European gap year—twenty-one years ago. Only weeks away from her big day, Carla sets off across Europe to track down her exes from that unforgettable year, desperate to prove the fortune teller wrong. From Spain to Portugal, Italy to France, will one be her perfect match? And can a face from her past help Carla rewrite her entire family history—forever?
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
28. The Townsend Family Recipe for Disaster by Shauna Robinson
Setting: North Carolina
Publication Date: July 2, 2024
One estranged family. One lost recipe. One last barbecue on the line. Mae is about to learn what happens when things go south…
Mae Townsend has always dreamed of connecting with her estranged Black family in the South. She grew up picturing relatives who looked like her, crowded dinner tables, bustling kitchens. And, of course, the Townsend family barbecue, the tradition that kept her late father flying to North Carolina year after year, despite the mysterious rift that always required her to stay behind.
But as Mae’s wedding draws closer, promising a future of always standing out among her white in-laws, suddenly not knowing the Townsends hits her like a blow. So when news arrives that her paternal grandmother has passed, she decides it’s time to head South.
What she finds is a family in turmoil, a long-standing grudge intact, a lost mac & cheese recipe causing grief, and a family barbecue on the brink of disaster. Not willing to let her dreams of family slip away, Mae steps up to throw a barbecue everyone will remember.
For better or for worse.
Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
29. Jenny James Is Not a Disaster by Debbie Johnson
Setting: Road trip in England
Publication Date: July 9, 2024
Thirty-something single mum Jenny James is used to the typical run-in-your-tights, milk-turned-sour, break-a-nail bad kind of day. Attitude from her teenage son? Count on it. Car problems? To be expected. Never quite enough money for monthly expenses? Guaranteed.
And then arrives the Very Bad Day–when Jenny finds out her dull but reliable office job is in jeopardy, her car totally and completely breaks down, and she arrives home (on foot) just in time to see her modest-but-cozy cottage sliding off a cliff into the sea. Jenny’s life–not to mention her home–has reached its ultimate low point.
Estranged from her parents since she became pregnant at age eighteen and set out on her own, Jenny has nowhere to turn when she and her son, Charlie, find themselves without a place to live. Her neighbor, the reclusive but attractive Luke who lives alone with his dog in a surprisingly homey RV, opens up his camper–and his vagabond lifestyle–to Jenny and her son.
As the unlikely threesome–four including the dog–hit the road, Jenny finds herself experiencing a new sense of freedom as she reflects on who she was, who she is, and who she could become. Maybe when you fall, you actually find the best way to move forward.
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Focus for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
30. Tomorrow is for the Brave by Kelly Bowen
Setting: France, North Africa
Publication Date: May 14, 2024
I have read a great deal of World War II historical fiction and a lot of it is starting to blur together but Tomorrow Is For the Brave by Kelly Bowen stands out from the rest for its originality as it tells a fascinating story set primarily in the Middle East and North Africa.
Young socialite Violet St. Croix lives a seemingly charmed life in the south of France where she is engaged to be married to a man chosen for her by her wealthy parents. Violet tries to meet the expectations of her parents and fiancé but she doesn’t fit in well with the other young women in her social circles because she loves cars and driving and feels restrained by the limitations placed on her.
When war breaks out and France falls to Germany, Violet defies her parents and trains as a nurse but it soon becomes apparent that her skills at driving under pressure far exceed her nursing abilities. Violet is recruited to drive officers of the French Foreign Legion through dangerous territory in Syria and North Africa where she becomes convinced after a number of setbacks and a brazen murder that there is a dangerous spy operating in their midst to sabotage operations.
Tommorow Is For the Brave is historical fiction inspired by the life of Susan Travers who was the only woman to have officially served in the French Foreign Legion. The novel is well-written and well-researched and I loved Violet – a strong female protagonist who is willing to stand up for what she believes is the right thing to do and comes into her own through her work during the war.
This is also a tale of espionage with occasional chapters from the perspective of “the spy” who is sabotaging the efforts of the Allies in North Africa. It’s not clear who the spy is until the book nears its conclusion and it kept me up well into the night as I had to finish and find out. There’s a romance thread woven throughout the storyline as well but it takes a backseat to the overall plot.
A fast-paced, gripping pageturner about a courageous young woman who defied her family to serve her country – highly recommend!
Thank you to NetGalley and Forever (Grand Central Publishing) for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
31. Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo
Setting: United States
Publication Date: June 18, 2024
Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things.
She’s unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spikey teenaged daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that had previously kept her on a razor’s edge.
32. The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier
Setting: Venice, Italy
Publication Date: June 18, 2024
It is 1486 and Venice is a wealthy, opulent center for trade. Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a family of glassblowers on Murano, the island revered for the craft. As a woman, she is not meant to work with glass—but she has the hands for it, the heart, and a vision. When her father dies, she teaches herself to make glass beads in secret, and her work supports the Rosso family fortunes.
Skipping like a stone through the centuries, in a Venice where time moves as slowly as molten glass, we follow Orsola and her family as they live through creative triumph and heartbreaking loss, from a plague devastating Venice to Continental soldiers stripping its palazzos bare, from the domination of Murano and its maestros to the transformation of the city of trade into a city of tourists. In every era, the Rosso women ensure that their work, and their bonds, endure.
33. Such a Bad Influence by Olivia Muenter
Setting: United States
Publication Date: June 4, 2024
Hazel Davis is drifting: she’s stalled in her career, living in a city she hates, and less successful than her younger sister, @evelyn, a mega-popular lifestyle influencer. Evie came of age online, having gone viral at five years old for a heart-tugging daddy-daughter dance. Ten years older and spotlight-averse, Hazel managed to dodge the family YouTube channel—so although she can barely afford her apartment, at least she made her own way.
Evie is eighteen now, with a multimillion-dollar career and unlimited opportunities, but Hazel is still protective of her little sister and skeptical of the way everyone seems to want a piece of her: Evie’s followers, her YouTuber boyfriend and influencer frenemies, and their opportunistic mother. So when Evie disappears one day—during an unsettling live stream that cuts out midsentence—Hazel is horrified to have her worst instincts proven right.
As theories about Evie’s disappearance tear through the internet, inspiring hashtags, Reddit threads, podcast episodes, and scorn, Hazel throws herself into the darkest parts of her sister’s world to untangle the threads of truth. After all, Hazel knows Evie better than anyone else . . . doesn’t she?
34. Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan
Setting: United States
Publication Date: June 4, 2024
Benefits of a summer romance: It’s always fun, always brief, and no one gets their heart broken.
Ali Morris is a professional organizer whose own life is a mess. Her mom died two years ago, then her husband left, and she hasn’t worn pants with a zipper in longer than she cares to remember.
No one is more surprised than Ali when the first time she takes off her wedding ring and puts on pants with hardware—overalls count, right?—she meets someone. Or rather, her dog claims a man for her…by peeing on him. Ethan smiles at Ali like her pants are just right—like he likes what he sees. He looks at her like she’s a younger, braver version of herself. The last thing newly single mom Ali needs is to make her life messier, but there’s no harm in a little summer romance. Is there?
35. Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller
Setting: Small town in Georgia
Publication Date: June 18, 2024
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic” books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.
What Lula doesn’t know is that a local troublemaker has stolen her wholesome books, removed their dust jackets, and restocked Lula’s library with banned books: literary classics, gay romances, Black history, witchy spell books, Judy Blume novels, and more. One by one, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. Finally, one of Lula Dean’s enemies discovers the library and decides to turn the tables on her, just as Lula and Beverly are running against each other to replace the town’s disgraced mayor.
That’s when all the townspeople who’ve been borrowing from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. That’s when the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula will roil the whole town…and change it forever.
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