2017 Summer Reading List!

Happy almost 4th of July!!  Seriously I can't believe it's already July.  I'd been planning on making this post go live a few weeks ago, but life has just caught up with me.  For those that have been following along, I started a new position within the company I've been working at for the last 2 years & the workload has essentially trippled.  It's been incredibly challenging & I've definitely learned a lot, BUT my old position opened back up & this girl is TAKING it.  It's a lateral move & I'm OK with it! So with that said, once I officially move back over, I should be able to resume posting on a more consistent basis.  Now, let's get back to books...

So, I'm still not done with the 2016 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge (catch up here) but I'll blame that on not finishing the 2015 challenge until March of 2016.  I'm only 4 books away from finishing (woop!) so naturally, I'm looking ahead to all the books I want to read this summer.    Here's how my list is shaping up thus far...

 If you haven't read Crazy Rich Asians,  stop what you're doing & pick up this book. It's the perfect summer read & I couldn't be more excited for the 3rd installment in this series.  Rich People Problems picks up when Nicholas Young hears his grandma, Su Yi, is on her deathbed. He rushes to be by her bedside--but so has the entire Shang-Young clan from all corners of the globe, ostensibly to care for their matriarch but truly to stake claim on the massive fortune that Su Yi controls. With each family member secretly fantasizing about getting the keys to Tyersall Park--a trophy estate on in the heart of Singapore--the place becomes a hotbed of intrigue.  Kevin Kwan's gloriously wicked new novel reveals the long-buried secrets and rich people problems of Asia's most privileged families. 




Daisy’s father is always waiting for her at the bus stop, but today, he isn’t. When Daisy says her house is right down the road, she’ll be fine, & begins to wheel herself away, Fikus, the bus driver lets her go. That's the last time she is seen. Nearly everyone in town suspects or knows something different about what happened. They also know a lot about each other. The immigrants who work in the dairy farm know their employers’ secrets. The manager of the Laundromat knows who laid a curse on the town & why. The police officer doesn't realize how much he knows. They are all connected, in ways small & profound, open & secret. Tornado Weather is an affecting portrait of a complex & flawed cast of characters striving to find some measure of fulfillment in their lives. Though the characters’ triumphs are often modest, the hope for redemption is real-- Kennedy brilliantly shows that there is nothing average about an average life. 

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, & Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart. 

A beautiful & distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.
 

At what point does childhood end & adulthood begin? Mandy Berman's evocative debut novel, Perennials, captures,  through the lens of summer camp, a place that only appears to be untouched by the passing of time, both the thrills & pain of growing up. 
Rachel Rivkin & Fiona Larkin used to treasure their summers together as campers at Camp Marigold. Reunited as counselors, their relationship is more complicated. Rachel, a street-smart city kid raised by a single mom, has been losing patience with her best friend's insecurities; Fiona, the middle child of a not-so-perfect suburban family, envies Rachel's popularity with their campers & fellow counselors. For the first time, the friends start keeping secrets. Through them, & from the perspectives of other counselors & campers, we witness the tensions of the turbulent summer build to a tragic event, which forces Rachel & Fiona to confront their pasts & the adults they're becoming. A seductive blast of nostalgia, a striking portrait of adolescent longing, & a tribute to both the complicated nature & the enduring power of female friendship, Perennials will speak to everyone who still remembers that when innocence is lost forever.

Welcome to LA? 90's  Hollywood gets an Italian makeover in Things That Happened Before The Earthquake. This poignant & ruefully funny coming-of-age novel featuring a teenage girl who's on shaky ground in more ways than one.
Eugenia, a typical Italian teenager, is rudely yanked from her privileged Roman milieu by her hippieish filmmaker parents & transplanted to the strange world of the San Fernando Valley. With only the Virgin Mary to call on for guidance as her parents struggle, she must navigate her huge new public high school, complete with Crips & Bloods, Persian gang members, a car-based environment of 99-cent stores, obscure fast-food & all-night raves. She forges friendships with Henry, who runs his mother's  memorabilia store, & Deva, who introduces her to the alternate cultural universe that is Topanga Canyon. Then the 1994 earthquake rocks the foundations not only of Eugenia's home but of the future she'd been hoping for herself.

Lina is spending the summer in Tuscany, but she isn’t in the mood for Italy’s famous sunshine & fairy-tale landscape. She’s only there because it was her mother’s dying wish that she get to know her father. But what kind of father isn’t around for sixteen years? All Lina wants to do is get back home. But then she is given a journal that her mom had kept when she lived in Italy. Suddenly Lina’s uncovering a magical world of secret romances, art, and hidden bakeries. A world that inspires Lina, along with the ever-so-charming Ren, to follow in her mother’s footsteps and unearth a secret that has been kept for far too long. It’s a secret that will change everything she knew about her mother, her father—and even herself. People come to Italy for Love & Gelato, someone tells her, but sometimes they discover much more.




One day Carver Briggs had it all—3 best friends, a supportive family, & a reputation as a talented writer at  Nashville Academy for the Arts. The next day he lost it all when he sent a simple text to his friend Mars, right before Mars, Eli, & Blake were killed in a car crash. Now Carver can’t stop blaming himself for the accident, & he’s not the only one. Eli’s twin sister is trying to freeze him out of school.  Mars’s father, a powerful judge, is pressuring the district attorney to open a criminal investigation. Carver does have some allies: Eli’s girlfriend, & only person to stand by him at school; Dr. Mendez, his new therapist; & Blake’s grandma, who asks Carver to spend a Goodbye Day with her to share their memories. Soon the other families are asking for a Goodbye Day with Carver, but he’s unsure of their motives. Will they all be able to make peace, or will these Goodbye Days bring Carver one step closer to a complete breakdown or—even worse—prison?


A nation on the verge of a new era & a girl caught between her past & the ever-expanding present. The year is 1972, &the beaches of Los Angeles are the center of the world. Dropping into the embers of the drug & surf scene is Suzy Whitman, who has tossed her newly minted Vassar degree aside to follow her older sister into open skies & the borderless adventures of stewardessing for Grand Pacific Airlines. In Sela del Mar, California-a hedonistic beach town in the shadow of LAX-Suzy skateboards, suntans, & flies daily & nightly across the country. Motivated by an escape from her past & a new taste for danger & belonging, Suzy falls into a drug-trafficking scheme that clashes perilously with the skyjacking epidemic of the day.
Rendered in the brilliant color of the age & told with spectacular insight & clarity, Fly Me is a story of dark discovery set in the debauchery of 1970s Los Angeles. 

Megan Miranda’s novel, All The Missing Girls, is a nail-biting, breathtaking story about the disappearances of two young women—a decade apart—told in reverse.
It’s been 10 years since Nicolette Farrell left her rural hometown after her best friend, Corinne, disappeared without a trace. Back again to care for her ailing father, Nic is plunged into a shocking drama that reawakens Corinne’s case & breaks open old wounds long since stitched. The decade-old investigation focused on Nic, her brother Daniel, boyfriend Tyler, & Corinne’s boyfriend Jackson.  Within days of Nic’s return, Annaleise goes missing. Told backwards—Day 15 to Day 1—from the time Annaleise goes missing, Nic works to unravel the truth about her  neighbor’s disappearance, revealing shocking truths about her friends, her family, & what really happened that night 10 years ago.

A few days after Christmas, pairs of a man's pants hang from the trees. The pants belong to Howard Young, a prominent history professor, recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Howard's wife, Annie, summons their daughter, Ruth. Freshly disengaged from her fiancé, 30-year-old Ruth quits her job & arrives home to find her parents' situation worse than she'd realized.  As Howard's condition intensifies, the comedy in Ruth's situation takes hold, gently transforming her grief. She throws herself into caretaking: cooking dementia-fighting meals, researching supplements, anything to reignite her father's once-notable memory. When the university finally lets Howard go, Ruth & one of her father's handsome former students take their efforts to help Howard one step too far. Told in captivating glimpses & drawn from a deep well of insight, humor, & unexpected tenderness, Goodbye, Vitamin pilots through the loss, love, and absurdity of finding one's footing in this life.

In a series of essays, written as a letter to his son, Coates confronts the notion of race in America & how it has shaped American history, many times at the cost of black bodies & lives. The author poignantly asks & attempts to answer difficult questions that plague modern society. In this short memoir, the "Atlantic" writer explains that the tragic examples of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, & those killed in South Carolina are the results of a systematically constructed & maintained assault to black people--a structure that includes slavery, mass incarceration, & police brutality as part of its foundation. From his passionate & deliberate breakdown of the concept of race itself to the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement, Coates powerfully sums up the terrible history of the subjugation of black people in the United States. Between The World And Me is a timely work, this title will resonate with all teens--those who have experienced racism as well as those who have followed the recent news coverage on violence against people of color




***All summaries are compliments of goodreads. Please don't think I'm that decent of a writer. Most have been shortened/slightly altered