Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy was one of my summer picks. It was a great beach read. Amazon: “Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore. Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.” I really enjoyed this book and, if not for the ending, would have given it 5-stars!

Richard Russo is always good for a solid read and Chances Are…was no exception. I listened to this one on audio. “One beautiful September day, three men in their late sixties convene on Martha’s Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college in the sixties. They couldn’t have been more different then, or even today—Lincoln’s a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher, and Mickey is a musician beyond his rockin’ age. But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend right here on the Vineyard in 1971. Now, forty-five years later, three lives and that of a significant other are put on display while the distant past confounds the present in a relentless squall of surprise and discovery. Shot through with Russo’s trademark comedy and humanity, Chances Are . . . introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the reader’s heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga.” It was a good story, but I think some of it was lost by listening to it on audio. It might be better as a read.

Isola by Allegra Goodman had a really slow start and, if it hadn’t been one of my summer reading picks, I might have abandoned it. However, I am glad I stuck with it, as it turned out to be a really good read. While somewhat implausible, apparently this one was based on a true story. Amazon: “Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes a unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island. Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.” This is an excellent beach bag choice and a good island adventure tale. Recommend.

I really enjoyed Rabbit Moon by Jennifer Haigh (summer reading is off to a good start). The story was interesting and different, but there was something too aloof about the writing to make it a five-star choice for me. Amazon: “Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: their 22-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit and run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. The accident unearths a deeper fissure in the family: the shocking event that ended the Litvaks’ marriage and turned Lindsey against them. Estranged from her parents, she has confided only in her younger sister, Grace, adopted as an infant from China. As Claire and Aaron struggle to get their bearings in bustling, cosmopolitan Shanghai, the newly prosperous ‘miracle city,’ they face troubling questions about Lindsey’s life there, in which nothing is quite as it seems. With Jennifer Haigh’s trademark psychological acuity, Rabbit Moon is a taut, suspenseful story about the ties of marriage that no divorce can sever, and the fabled red thread that pulls two sisters together across time and space. Haigh proves yet again that she is ‘an expertly nuanced storyteller…her work is gripping, real, and totally immersive’ (New York Times).” It probably didn’t help matters that the author spelling Lindsay wrong, but…I do recommend this one, but not as enthusiastically as some.

Heartwood by Amity Gage has been everywhere lately. As sometimes happens, I was so excited to get my hands on it and read it in a day. And, while I liked it and I can understand the hype, it wasn’t as incredible as I hoped it would be. It was a good start to my summer reading though. “In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental. Heartwood is a ‘gem of a thousand facets—suspenseful, transporting, tender, and ultimately soul-mending,’ (Megan Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning) that tells the story of a lost hiker’s odyssey and is a moving rendering of each character’s interior journey. The mystery inspires larger questions about the many ways in which we get lost, and how we are found. At its core, Heartwood is a redemptive novel, written with both enormous literary ambition and love.” (Amazon) While it’s a good summer choice for sure, it wasn’t a top read for me.

Wouldn’t you grab this selection for the title alone?! Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk was a short, but satisfying read. Not Nobel to me, but who can account for taste? Amazon: “In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?” I recommend if you are looking for a good story with a short burn.

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. 2025 has brought only three 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 Last Lifeboat
The Paris Novel
What You are Looking for is in the Library

4.5-star
The Last Apothecary
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing
Dinners with Ruth
Fourth Wing
By Any Other Name

Links to read my past summer blog posts below.

2024’s summer books are here.
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.

I have had The Last Carolina Girl by Meagan Church on my Kindle for a while and decided it was time to dive in. What a good book! Amazon: “For fourteen-year-old Leah Payne, life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is as simple as it is free. Devoted to her lumberjack father and running through the wilds where the forest meets the shore, Leah’s country life is as natural as the Loblolly pines that rise to greet the Southern sky. When an accident takes her father’s life, Leah is wrenched from her small community and cast into a family of strangers with a terrible secret. Separated from her only home, Leah is kept apart from the family and forced to act as a helpmate for the well-to-do household. When a moment of violence and prejudice thrusts Leah into the center of the state’s shameful darkness, she must fight for her own future against a world that doesn’t always value the wild spirit of a Carolina girl.” This was a quick read and an interesting story. Not the best of the year, but certainly decent, compelling, and based on a history I didn’t know.

Playground by Richard Powers has been on my TBR for a long time. It finally came up from the library and I eagerly dove in. While I really liked the story, it was too long and I found myself skimming at the end to get to the end. I would have rated it higher if it wasn’t so long as I really liked the story and the characters and how they all wove together. Amazon: “Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough. They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island’s residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away. Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.”