Happy Memorial Day – the weekend I publish my summer reading recommendations and my own list for summer reading.

I have already posted my choices for good summer reads that I have vetted. This post covers those I am looking forward to biting off myself.

Let me know if you have read and enjoyed or hated any of them. They will be packed in my beach bag…

As I do each year, I have listed here my favorites for the first six months of the year so you can easily find them to take to the beach. 2024 brought five 5-star books and five 4.5-star choices.

I will post another list of those I am reading this summer – who knows if they are going to be good or not…happy summer, everyone!

5-star
The Nix
The Women
The Many Lives of Mama Love
Unreasonable Hospitality
The Postcard

4.5-star
The Berry Pickers
The Last Love Note
The Secret Book of Flora Lea
The Road to Roswell
The True Love Experiment

Links to read my past summer blog posts below.

2023’s summer books are here.
2022’s summer books are here.
2021’s summer books are here.
2020’s summer books are here.
2019’s summer books are here.
2018’s summer books are here.
2017’s summer books are here.

As is usual, I am not sure how I learned about Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll. Amazon: “Masterfully blending elements of psychological suspense and true crime, Jessica Knoll—author of the bestselling novel Luckiest Girl Alive and the writer behind the Netflix adaption starring Mila Kunis—delivers a new and exhilarating thriller in Bright Young Women. The book opens on a Saturday night in 1978, hours before a soon-to-be-infamous murderer descends upon a Florida sorority house with deadly results. The lives of those who survive, including sorority president and key witness, Pamela Schumacher, are forever changed. Across the country, Tina Cannon is convinced her missing friend was targeted by the man papers refer to as the All-American Sex Killer—and that he’s struck again. Determined to find justice, the two join forces as their search for answers leads to a final, shocking confrontation.” It started off strong and had an interesting premise, but it was kind of flat and not particularly engaging. I didn’t love it.

It’s not too often lately that I tell you to put everything else down and grab a book. The Nix by Nathan Hill is it. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it was about this book that I loved, but I really, really loved it despite it being too long and taking forever to finish. Amazon: “It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson hasn’t seen his mother, Faye, in decades—not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s reappeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart. Which version of his mother is true? Two facts are certain: she’s facing some serious charges, and she needs Samuel’s help. To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. As he does so, Samuel will confront not only Faye’s losses but also his own lost love, and will relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself.” All I can say about this book is that despite its length, it was a fantastic read.

I love Alice McDermott. Absolution is her latest. Amazon: “American women―American wives―have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam. Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking wry account of that pivotal year and of Charlene’s altruistic machinations, and discovering how their own lives as women on the periphery―of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands’ convictions―have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.” I really enjoyed Absolution. There were some slow parts, but overall, it was a good read.