6 Perfect Additions to Your Summer Beach Reading List

There’s nothing better than getting lost in your favourite book on a nice and hot beach day. If you don’t have these books on your summer reading list, it’s time for an update…

Every Last One – Anna Quindlen

Every Last One is your ultimate summer beach read. Straying from your typical summer romance binge, Anna Quindlen tells the story of a middle-aged mother and how one choice that she did not have a hand in making changed her family forever. Though this is a deeply emotional novel, its intense detail and character development is worth every smile and tear.

This novel is raw and suspenseful. It bares the idea that no matter how hard you try, there are some things that cannot be controlled or foreseen. It shows that you don’t have to be at any specific stage of life to learn a tragic lesson about mindfulness.

Ugly Love – Colleen Hoover

This page-turner hooks you from the first word to the very last. This truly envious love story is just the right amount of tragic, hopeful, and mysterious. One of Colleen Hoover’s greatest works, it follows a young woman who moves in with her brother to start her career but ends up meeting his best friend and falling for him despite everyone’s wholehearted attempts to discourage her.

The storyline is beyond compelling and proposes a love story unlike one you have ever read before. It is full of passion and pain, and keeps you rooting for the ending that both characters deserve until the final chapters, where you’re still kept waiting on your toes.

The Couple Next Door – Shari Lapena

We all have those moments while we’re reading where we decide we either absolutely love a book or hate it. The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena is one of where we can tell we’d love it from the first page. Action immediately ensues when Anna and Marco’s infant goes missing, leaving us to feel heartbroken and angry at every character because we do not know who committed the crime.

Though we question the parents for leaving their child unattended, question the authorities for accusing the parents of putting their child in danger, and question humanity, we also begin to question ourselves for not being able to trust our own judgment to place the blame.

Something Borrowed Series – Emily Giffin

Wedding season is the time for dressing up, eating good food, and, apparently, sleeping with your best friend’s fiancé. Emily Giffin’s novel is a captivating story about bad karma and bad friendship. A story crammed with oohs and ahhs until the very end. This beach read allows us to live vicariously through the mischievous and unexpected choices of your typical Plain Jane, Rachel. And if the ending isn’t enough to tide you over until the end of summer, you can grab yourself a copy of the novel’s sequel, Something Blue.

Each novel after Something Borrowed, picks up from where Rachel’s story left off and continues from a new character’s viewpoint. Something Blue follows Darcy, Rachel’s former best friend, and Love the One You’re With follows Ellen, Rachel’s close friend.

Titles include:

Something Borrowed
Something Blue
Love the One You’re With

After Series

For all you young readers, or those of you who still dabble in the teen series section at the bookstore, you should give the After Series a try. These books are an easy read, have a very predictable storyline, but somehow leave you hanging on every last word. No matter what stage of life you’re in, you can look upon the recklessness portrayed by characters in these novels and find a connection to yourself.

This series follows a young college student named Tessa and her conflicting feelings towards  her on-and-off-again boyfriend, Hardin. Hardin is an unpredictable mess that Tessa desperately wants to fix, but she is risking her own happiness to do so. Their love story is one that you will constantly find yourself thinking about even after you have put the book down.

Titles include:

After
After We Fell
After We Collided
After Ever Happy
Before
Nothing More
Nothing Less

Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda and Leah on the Offbeat

This novel is the perfect light-hearted LGBTQ read to kick-start your summer reading. The main character, Simon, a high-school student, is being blackmailed by a fellow classmate threatening to out both Simon and his online lover, Blue. Throughout the story, Simon is trying to deal with complying with his blackmailer, teenage high-school drama, coming out as gay to his family and friends, and finding out Blue’s true identity.

The second book in this series is also worth a read. It follows Simon’s best friend, Leah, and her struggles with admitting her bisexuality to herself and the rest of the world. These two novels perfectly depict not only the teenage hardships young people all over the world face, but the additional anxieties those in the LGBTQ community face as they come of age. The best part about this series is that it is completely and wholly relatable. The characters share experiences of love, heartache, and finding themselves, which we have all faced at some point in our teenage life.