Thanks to the author for providing a complimentary review copy.
All the Summers In Between is a story of complicated female friendship set in the Hamptons and told with dual timelines: the summer of 1967 when local girl Thea meets wealthy summering socialite Margot, and 10 years later on the night of Thea’s 30th birthday celebration when Margot unexpectedly returns to town. Thea, who once had artistic aspirations, is now a wife and mother, while Margot has left her husband and his questionable business dealings behind in NYC. Margot is looking to Thea for safe harbor, but the two haven’t seen or spoken to one another since the summer a decade ago when their quick, intense friendship mysteriously ended.
This is a quintessential beach read! I really enjoyed the 60s and 70s setting, it’s captured so well, the exploration of female friendship dynamics as well as the roles we fall into or choose for ourselves adds a little meat to chew on and the mystery surrounding Margot and Thea’s falling out keeps the pages turning. All steeped in a background of sand, surf, and sunshine – perfect poolside or beach reading!
Thanks to the publisher for providing a complimentary review copy.
Ali is a professional organizer whose life is a mess. 2 years ago she lost her mother to illness, a year ago she lost her husband when he walked out on her while she was still under the haze of grief, and much longer ago she lost herself to the chaos and upheaval of mothering three children.
Just about the time Ali decides she must do something to get her life in order – beginning with wearing hard pants again – she has a meet cute of sorts with a hunky man at the dog park. While he may not be Mr. Right, he’s Mr. Alright-For-Now and Ali is willing to add a little mess to her life in the form of a fun summer fling because she deserves a little fun!But Ali might just be in for more than she bargained for.
For the last 3 years I have had the pleasure of ushering in summer with an Annabel Monaghan book and in my opinion Summer Romance is her best yet! Ali is a heroine to cheer for with a relatable arc of struggling to find herself amidst the chaos of raising kids and managing a household. I always appreciate that Monaghan’s stories feature more mature MCs; middle aged moms deserve a little romance too!
I loved Ali and Ethan together and adored the coastal New England small town setting. This story has romance, redemption, cute dogs, a quaint setting, descriptions of highly organized pantries, and grown up skater boys – truly what more can one ask for in a beach read?!
Thanks to the publisher for providing a complimentary review copy.
Alexa, play “Smooth” by Santana featuring Rob Thomas.
Now that we’ve set the tone…
New York City, summer 1999. Sawyer, a lowly publishing assistant and recent NYC transplant is staring down the barrel of a summer filled with long, lonely weekends as office buildings empty early on Fridays allowing white collar workers to escape the heat of the city by decamping to beachier destinations. While her fiance works nights and weekends with his too-close-for-comfort co-worker Kendra, Sawyer spends a lot of time alone in their apartment waiting for life to begin. A chance encounter with Kendra’s boyfriend, Nick, leads Sawyer to unexpected summer adventures and an opportunity to reexamine her choices and future.
Summer Fridays is a nostalgic romance that captures NYC at the turn of the millennium. Sawyer and Nick correspond a lot over email and AIM and, as someone who spent much time during formative years chatting online I can assure, the dialog is pitch perfect. The chats beg for a You’ve Got Mail comparison and I don’t think that’s far off, Summer Fridays definitely lives in the same universe as your favorite Nora Ephron rom-com.
Messy and gray and a little angsty this story won’t be for every reader, but I found a lot to appreciate and I expect this book will find its way to many a reader’s tote or beach bag this summer!
Another month of amazing new book releases is upon us and June is stacked! Here are 26 June book releases on my TBR.
June 4
Summer Romance // Annabel Monaghan (Putnam)
The romantic and hilarious story of a professional organizer whose life is a mess, and the summer she gets unstuck with the help of someone unexpected from her past.
All the Summers in Between // Brooke Lea Foster (Gallery)
A page-turning novel about two estranged friends whose unexpected reconnection in the Hamptons forces them to finally confront the terrible event that drove them apart.
Shortlisted for The Women’s Prize. An exquisite and provocative novel that reads with the pace of a thriller and is filled with astute and witty observations of life with a young child.
Past Present Future // Rachel Lynn Solomon (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
They fell for each other in just twenty-four hours. Now Rowan and Neil embark on a long-distance relationship during their first year of college in this romantic, dual POV sequel to Today Tonight Tomorrow.
A coming-of-age story that follows the meteoric rise of singer Amber Young as she navigates fame in the late-90s and early-2000s era of pop music superstardom.
A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman’s attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world.
Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell // Ann Powers (Dey Street)
Celebrated NPR music critic Ann Powers explores the life and career of Joni Mitchell in a lyrical style as fascinating and ethereal as the songs of the artist herself.
The Friday Afternoon club: A Family Memoir (Penguin Press)
Griffin Dunne’s memoir of growing up among larger-than-life characters in Hollywood and Manhattan finds wicked humor and glimmers of light in even the most painful of circumstances.
Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books // Kirsten Miller (William Morrow)
A bracing, wildly entertaining satire about a small Southern town, a pitched battle over banned books, and a little lending library that changes everything.
Vercher deftly blurs the lines between real and imagined, past and present, tragedy and humor, and fathers and sons in this story of discovering and reclaiming a painful past.
One weekend. The elite underbelly of a Nigerian city. A party that goes awry. A tangled web of sex and lies and corruption that leaves no one unscathed.
A struggling writer is forced to walk down the aisle at her best friend’s wedding with the man who gave her book a very public one-star rating in this fresh romantic comedy.
Same As It Ever Was // Claire Lombardo (Doubleday)
A brilliantly observed family drama in which the enduring, hard-won affection of a long marriage faces imminent derailment from events both past and present.
A man must contend with the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend—and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighborhood.
The Nature of Disappearing // Kimi Cunningham Grant (Minotaur)
In this captivating novel of suspense from the USA Today bestselling author of These Silent Woods, a wilderness guide must team up with the man who ruined her life years ago when the friend who introduced them goes missing.
We Used To Live Here // Marcus Kliewer (Atria/Bestler)
Get Out meets Parasite in this eerily haunting debut and Reddit hit—soon to be a Netflix original movie starring Blake Lively—about two homeowners whose lives are turned upside down when the house’s previous residents unexpectedly visit.
All the Colors of the Dark // Chris Whitaker (Crown)
A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession and the blinding light of hope.
How the Light Gets In // Joyce Maynard (William Morrow)
The eagerly anticipated follow-up to the beloved novel Count the Ways—a complex story of three generations of a family and its remarkable, resilient, indomitable matriarch, Eleanor.
Incidents Around the House // Josh Malerman (Del Ray)
A chilling horror novel about a haunting, told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy.”
Thanks to the publisher for providing a complimentary review copy.
Violet is a young adult serving time for vehicular manslaughter.
Harriet is a retired teacher facilitating a book club for female inmates.
Frank is a widower turned unlikely handyman at an independent bookstore in Portland, Maine.
After Violet’s release from prison their paths will unexpectedly cross transforming all their futures.
How to Read a Book is a heartwarming story about unlikely friendships, fresh starts, and forgiveness centered around the transformative power of books. A cozy story with broad appeal that would make for a good book club selection.
Thanks to the publisher for providing a complimentary review copy.
A multi-generational family saga set against the backdrop of changing values and turbulent times.
Spanning WWII to just beyond present day this story is largely set in the mid-50s, told from Nick and Bets points of view, and the late 60s into the early 70s featuring their young adult children, Katherine and Harry. Their stories swirl around and return over and over to Last House, their family’s idyllic remote country home in the mountains of Vermont.
Through the Taylor family Last House explores the divide of the Silent Generation, those who experienced the Great Depression and fought in WWII, returning from war and settling into very traditional roles, and their children, the Baby Boomers shaped by the Civil Rights Movement, Rock and Roll music, the Vietnam war, and counterculture, those who rejected and challenged the traditional roles of prior generations.
It’s also a story about evolving ideology and features U.S. historical events and politics woven into the story. Nick is a lawyer for American Oil who rubs elbows with the CIA and is involved with Middle Eastern dealings, especially in Iran. Katherine is a journalist for a radial left NYC newspaper reporting on Vietnam War and Civil Rights protests of the day.
I found all of this nuanced and compelling, interestingly layered and incredibly relevant to today.
Thanks to the publisher for providing a complimentary review copy.
In a near future our unnamed narrator, a British-Cambodian translator with the British Ministry of Defence, is selected for a lucrative position with a new secretive agency aiding high-value refugees assimilate to society. What she doesn’t realize is just how far away these refugees have traveled; not merely from across the globe, but across time.
The “expat” she is assigned is Victorian polar explorer Lt. Graham Gore a real life historical figure who died in the ill-fated 1845 Franklin expedition, here plucked by the British government via time travel technology just before meeting his doomed fate and installed in our narrator’s modern day home where she is to be part roommate, part case worker, and most importantly a guide to modern living. As intimacy and romantic feelings begin to develop her loyalty becomes divided between her well-mannered and handsome Victorian ward and her increasingly sinister government employers.
The Ministry of Time is a fresh, genre-bending romp; something along the lines of speculative fiction meets spy thriller meets historical adventure meets rom-com. I liked the broad strokes of the story and appreciated the deeper themes it teases at such as historical narrative shaping our reality, imperial/colonial critique, and the displacement felt by those impacted by empire.
There’s a lot going on here and I wouldn’t say it all fits together seamlessly, but I sort of enjoyed the chaos of it all and I loved learning this book began as pandemic era Graham Gore fanfiction for Kaliane Bradley’s friends!
This book ended up being something different than I had anticipated, though I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting. The vibe is not unimportant to the success of the story and it’s a little hard to pin down. I think Lindsay Lynch of Parnassus books comes closest that I have seen describing it as: like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure had a baby with a spy thriller and that baby was raised by Emily St. John Mandel.
Tell me: if you could time travel to a different time in the past or future when would it be?
Another month of new book releases is upon us! Here are 16 new May book releases on my TBR.
Another month of new book releases is upon us! Here are 16 new May book releases on my TBR.
May 7
The Ministry of Time // Kaliane Bradley (Avid Reader Press)
An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.
From the award-winning author of The One-in-a-Million Boy comes a heartfelt, uplifting novel about a chance encounter at a bookstore, exploring redemption, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories.
Love Is a Burning Thing // Nina St. Pierre (Dutton)
A riveting memoir about a daughter’s investigation into the wirings of her loving, unpredictable mother: a woman who lived her life in pursuit of the divine, and who started two big fires, decades apart.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle comes a sweeping story of a nation on the rise, and one family’s deeply complicated relationship to the resource that built their fortune and fueled their greatest tragedy, perfect for fans of The Dutch House and Great Circle.
The House That Horror Built // Christina Henry (Berkley)
A single mother working in the gothic mansion of a reclusive horror director stumbles upon terrifying secrets in the captivating new novel from the national bestselling author of Good Girls Don’t Die and Horseman.
A young woman reunites with her teenage sister in their childhood home on Nantucket Island after their mother disappears in this alluring coming-of-age novel from the acclaimed author of It Is Wood, It Is Stone.
Undue Burden: Life and Dead Decisions In Post-Roe America // Shefali Luthra (Doubleday)
An urgent investigation into the experience of seeking an abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade, and the life-threatening consequences of being denied reproductive freedom.
From legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary new collection of twelve short stories, many never-before-published, and some of his best EVER.
You’ve Got Mail for a new generation, set in the days of AOL and instant messenger banter, about a freshly engaged editorial assistant who winds up spending her “summer Fridays” with the person she least expects.
I gluttonously inhaled James in a single day through both print and audio formats. I was completely lost in a story offering such an exceptional reading experience that when it ended I immediately began to worry how I could possibly do it justice through a review. I won’t be able to, but let’s try to organize my thoughts into something at least marginally coherent anyway.
James is Percival Everett’s reimagining of the American classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a story about, Huck, a boy and, Jim, an enslaved man who happen to become travel companions as they run away by floating down the antebellum Mississippi River on a raft. Told entirely from 13-year-old Huck’s point of view the story is, on its surface at least, a straightforward coming-of-age adventure novel, but lurking barely beneath is a satire on racism and slavery and the morals of America, quite subversive for 1885 when it originally published.
In its nearly century and a half of existence Huckleberry Finn has often been the focus of book challenges, in fact, it was first removed from a library the same year it published, and controversy, most recently regarding its relevance in the modern classroom and whether Twain is the best voice to center on the topic of slavery. I’d say a novel approaching 150 years old that still has scholars arguing is doing its job very well.
Percival Everett certainly has something to say on the issue, though I don’t think he’s necessarily interested in answering many of these outstanding questions, I think he’s more interested in telling an outstanding story. In James Everett reimagines this early American story through the eyes of Jim, now revealed to be James. Everett’s James is no longer just Huck’s foil, he is instead, fully realized, richly developed, and intentionally humanized in a way that is incredibly impactful and subversive in a way The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn can’t touch.
I think Huckleberry Finn and James can and should be compared and contrasted, they’re very much in conversation, but for purposes of this review I’ll keep it brief and say Percival Everett is once again brilliant with James. The story is smart and entertaining and challenging and absurd and profound and somehow seemingly effortlessly crafted all at the same time. It has the pacing of a plotty page turner, but the depth of a literary novel. James can absolutely be enjoyed as a stand alone, though I do think it’s worth it to at least have a basic understanding of Huck Finn, searching for a brief summary should be sufficient.
I loved this in both print and audio and I’m thrilled to see Percival Everett receiving just attention with his latest release.
Eli North’s life is in shambles when he takes a pity job offer from his mom, sheriff of their resort town in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. A former elite federal investigator, Eli now bears physical and emotional wounds from his army tour in Afghanistan that has led to substance abuse and the dissolution of his once happy family. As he struggles to gain his bearings in his new role as a small town deputy, Eli responds to a call for a noise complaint at one of the town’s resorts only to discover the dead body of one teen and reports of another who is missing, both from some of the town’s affluent summer families. Eli and the town’s small, resource strapped police department are soon over their heads embroiled in a complicated murder investigation.
Northwoods is a well plotted, well paced debut thriller. There are a lot of moving pieces to this story and I personally would have appreciated further development in some areas, but as is there’s a good balance of character and plot that will appeal to many readers. I appreciated the well rendered Northwoods setting and overall found the story very engaging and right in the zone of what I’m looking for in a thriller.
Northwoods would be perfect for your beach/travel/pool bag or backyard reading stack with its summer resort town setting.
Also recommended for fans of True Detective: Night Country. I couldn’t help but picture Jodie Foster as the sheriff in this story!
Tell me: what type of books do you prefer this time of year?
I read a mix, as always, but warm weather reading often has me reaching for more plottier thrillers and romances than usual!
That Bookish Life 