My July Reading List is full of great books to curl up with or bring to the beach!
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Lets read all the books!!
I am proud to say that not only did I finish EVERY book on last month’s reading list, but I’ve already finished a couple of books on this month’s list as well. I feel so accomplished!
Also — the books I read for this month are SO GOOD! I am REALLY excited to tell you all about them and hear what you think!
In regards to last month’s list, I LOVED Only Love Can Break Your Heart and All Things Cease to Appear. Before I Go fell kind of flat for me — it was a good story but I had hoped for a bit more poignancy and emotion…it just didn’t go there for me. It was still good, but not as good as I expected.
I always look forward to Elin Hilderbrand’s new Summer book, and I really did enjoy Here’s to Us. It wasn’t my favorite of hers though — I preferred last Summer’s The Rumor to this one. But if you’re looking for a beach read, definitely pick it up. I’d give it 3 1/2 stars out of 5.
Here are my picks for this month:
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A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams
I LOVED this book. It’s part fluff, part substance, which makes it a great beachy read. The format is unusual in that it goes back and forth between present day 1938 and seven years earlier.
In 1931, we find Lily engaged to the love of her life, Nick. But in present day…he is engaged to her best friend, who she hasn’t spoken to in years. The back-and-forth makes you want to keep reading to figure out how things have ended up the way that they are. The time period and setting (New York City and Rhode Island for the Summer) made it so fun and interesting. I had a really tough time putting this down and had it finished in a couple of days. So good!
Via Amazon:
Lily Dane has returned to Seaview, Rhode Island, where her family has summered for generations. It’s an escape not only from New York’s social scene but from a heartbreak that still haunts her. Here, among the seaside community that has embraced her since childhood, she finds comfort in the familiar rituals of summer.
But this summer is different. Budgie and Nick Greenwald—Lily’s former best friend and former fiancé—have arrived, too, and Seaview’s elite are abuzz. Under Budgie’s glamorous influence, Lily is seduced into a complicated web of renewed friendship and dangerous longing.
As a cataclysmic hurricane churns north through the Atlantic, and uneasy secrets slowly reveal themselves, Lily and Nick must confront an emotional storm that will change their worlds forever…
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Heat and Light by Jennifer Haigh
I resisted this book for awhile but finally picked it up because I kept seeing it EVERYWHERE! The subject — fracking — didn’t sound particularly interesting, but I am SO glad I finally picked it up. I LOVED this book!
I really love stories with an array of interesting character whose lives intersect, and this novel was exactly that. Not only did I learn a lot about fracking (admittedly, I was pretty ignorant on the subject), but I loved reading about how different families were affected by fracking in a small, poor town, and how it changed the course of their lives. Do not let the seemingly boring subject matter fool you — this is a great novel full of interesting characters and a wonderful plot.
Via Amazon:
Forty years ago, Bakerton coal fueled the country. Then the mines closed, and the town wore away like a bar of soap. Now Bakerton has been granted a surprise third act: it sits squarely atop the Marcellus Shale, a massive deposit of natural gas.
To drill or not to drill? Prison guard Rich Devlin leases his mineral rights to finance his dream of farming. He doesn’t count on the truck traffic and nonstop noise, his brother’s skepticism or the paranoia of his wife, Shelby, who insists the water smells strange and is poisoning their frail daughter. Meanwhile his neighbors, organic dairy farmers Mack and Rena, hold out against the drilling—until a passionate environmental activist disrupts their lives.
Told through a cast of characters whose lives are increasingly bound by the opposing interests that underpin the national debate, Heat and Light depicts a community blessed and cursed by its natural resources. Soaring and ambitious, it zooms from drill rig to shareholders’ meeting to the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to the ruined landscape of the “strippins,” haunting reminders of Pennsylvania’s past energy booms. This is a dispatch from a forgotten America—a work of searing moral clarity from one of the finest writers of her generation, a courageous and necessary book.
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Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
I’ve just started this book and REALLY hope it lives up to the hype. I’ve heard a lot of great things about it and ALSO — it was written by the screenwriter for the show Fargo, which is such a great show!. It’s categorized as a “thriller,” so hopefully I won’t be able to put it down!
Via Amazon:
On a foggy summer night, eleven people–ten privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter–depart Martha’s Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: the plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are Scott Burroughs–the painter–and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul’s family.
With chapters weaving between the aftermath of the crash and the backstories of the passengers and crew members–including a Wall Street titan and his wife, a Texan-born party boy just in from London, a young woman questioning her path in life, and a career pilot–the mystery surrounding the tragedy heightens. As the passengers’ intrigues unravel, odd coincidences point to a conspiracy. Was it merely by dumb chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something far more sinister at work? Events soon threaten to spiral out of control in an escalating storm of media outrage and accusations. And while Scott struggles to cope with fame that borders on notoriety, the authorities scramble to salvage the truth from the wreckage.
Amid pulse-quickening suspense, the fragile relationship between Scott and the young boy glows at the heart of this stunning novel, raising questions of fate, human nature, and the inextricable ties that bind us together.
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Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty
Liane Moriarty has written some of my absolute favorite books (What Alice Forgot, being one of them), so I HAVE to read her new one coming out at the end of the month!
Via Amazon:
Sam and Clementine have a wonderful, albeit, busy life: they have two little girls, Sam has just started a new dream job and Clementine, a cellist, is busy preparing for the audition of a lifetime. If there’s anything they can count on, it’s each other.
Clementine and Erika are each other’s oldest friends. A single look between them can convey an entire conversation. But theirs is a complicated relationship, so when Erika mentions a last minute invitation to a barbecue with her neighbors, Tiffany and Vid, Clementine and Sam don’t hesitate. Having Tiffany and Vid’s larger than life personalities there will be a welcome respite.
Two months later, it won’t stop raining, and Clementine and Sam can’t stop asking themselves the question: What if we hadn’t gone?
In Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty takes on the foundations our lives: marriage, sex, parenthood, and friendship. She shows how guilt can expose the fault lines in the most seemingly strong relationships, how what we don’t say can be more powerful than what we do, and how sometimes it is the most innocent of moments that can do the greatest harm.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on last month’s books, and what you’ve been reading lately!
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