Summer might look a little bit different this year, but we’ve still got some exciting reads to look forward to! Here are 5 of our must-read books of the summer:
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ story lines intersect?
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
Naoise Dolan’s debut centers around Ava, an Irish millennial who has moved to Hong Kong, where she works as an English tutor to the children of the ultra-wealthy. Politically alert, heartbreakingly raw, and dryly funny, Exciting Times is thrillingly attuned to the great freedoms and greater uncertainties of modern love. In stylish, uncluttered prose, Naoise Dolan dissects the personal and financial transactions that make up a life-and announces herself as a singular new voice.
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl, our dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. She’s grieving the death of her father, avoiding her loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future… Bold, tender, and unexpected, Pizza Girl is a moving and funny portrait of a flawed, unforgettable young woman as she tries to find her place in the world.
Sad Janet by Lucie Britsch
Janet works at a rundown dog shelter in the woods and her brain is full of anxiety. She has a meddlesome family, eccentric coworkers, one old friend who’s left her for Ibiza, and one new friend who’s really just a neighbour she sees in the hallway. Most of all, Janet has her sadness—a comfortable cloak she uses to insulate herself from the oppressions of the wider world. That is, until one fateful summer when word spreads about a new pill that offers even cynics like her a short-term taste of happiness . . . What follows is life-changing for all concerned—in ways no one quite expects. Hilarious, provocative and profound, Sad Janet is the antidote to our happiness-obsessed world.
The Lightness by Emily Temple
One year ago, the person Olivia adores most in the world, her father, left home for a meditation retreat in the mountains and never returned. Yearning to make sense of his shocking departure, Olivia runs away from home and retraces his path to a place known as the Levitation Centre. The Lightness revolves around a group of students based at a sinister Levitation Center. Playful, sensuous and rippling with delicious menace, Temple’s inspired debut is a wickedly enjoyable treat!
