The first time my husband joined my family for a beach vacation, he brought eggplant parmigiana and an anthropologist’s curiosity about the Jersey Shore. I don’t know what he was expecting — boardwalks? a brush with Bruce Springsteen? — but, after a day or two, he asked: “So we’re just going to read? The whole time?”
We were. My family rented a house on Long Beach Island for a week each summer and spent every waking moment with our noses buried in books. My sister and I had a love-hate relationship with this itinerary, but the instant we exited the Parkway and sand glinted from the shoulder of Route 72, we fell in line with tradition. Our dad staked out a spot on the deck, where he plowed through mysteries and biographies for eight hours a day. My sister and I read on the beach with our mom, barely speaking, breaking only for lunch, which was silent except for the sound of pages turning.
Luckily my husband is a reader too (although he did rent a Jet Ski one afternoon, just to be a rebel). In the years since that first trip, we’ve put our own twist on beach vacations, from Maine to South Carolina to Florida, with detours to a lake in Vermont and a highway-adjacent Airbnb outside Santa Barbara, Calif. We’ve dabbled in activities: kayaking and biking, sun printing and shell decoupage, water slides and paddle ball. Our Scrabble set has seen its share of picnic tables; our kids know their way around an arcade.
But we always return to Long Beach Island, and we always arrive with towers of books. We’ve determined that the best time for beach reading is late afternoon, after the lifeguards and families with Bluetooth speakers have gone home, preferably at low tide when the shoreline is as deep as it is wide. Our optimal spot is dune-adjacent — close enough that you can hear the wind in the sea grass, but far enough away that you’re not interfering with frat bros playing Spikeball. If it’s chilly, bring a sweatshirt. If it’s sweltering, bury your feet in the sand. If you have Bugles or Fritos, they pair well with smart, fun novels like these.
I want a book I can hand to anyone, then discuss
What Kind of Paradise
by Janelle Brown
Like bottles of sunscreen, the best beach reads are shareable. Pass this one-size-fits-most gem among fellow vacationers and, odds are, everyone under your Cool Cabana will find something to appreciate. In Brown’s sixth novel, a father-daughter duo live off the grid in remotest Montana. Only something isn’t quite right in their tightly controlled world: Jane, a perspicacious teenager, begins to realize that her father isn’t who he says he is. When she makes a courageous — and dangerous — break for freedom, we find ourselves embedded in the early dot-com boom in San Francisco. If the Unabomber had a daughter, this could be her story. It might prompt a pop-up book club, and it will definitely make you think about our reliance on technology (especially if you’re squinting at a screen). (Comes out June 3)
I’d like a love story that’s out of this world
Atmosphere
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Imagine “Apollo 13” crossed with Kristin Hannah’s “The Women” and you have the gist of Reid’s latest, set in the 1980s space program in Houston. Here we encounter a handful of astronaut hopefuls, including Joan, who winds up in Mission Control, and Vanessa, who finds herself aboard the shuttle Navigator on the brink of a Challenger-level crisis. How their orbits converge is the crux of the book, but Reid packs in plenty of detail about spacesuits, thermal tiles and depressurization, not to mention sexism. “There are no cowboys here,” she writes of NASA. Thankfully, that rule doesn’t apply to her characters, who are bold, bighearted and more than willing to test boundaries — atmospheric and otherwise. (Comes out June 3)
I’m in the mood for a dark comedy with plenty of heart
Maggie; Or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar
by Katie Yee
This is one of the most delightful debuts I’ve read in a long time, and kudos to Yee for delivering on the promise of her unconventional title. Its rogue semicolon sets the scene: Yee’s tale takes place during a pause — between divorce and marriage, sickness and health, the unknown and the status quo. The titular visit to a bar turns out not to be a setup for a joke, but a husband’s admission to his wife that he’s leaving her for a woman named Maggie. Then our narrator — the soon-to-be-ex-wife — learns that she has cancer. She navigates both upheavals with dry humor, even finding it in her heart to write a “Guide to My Husband: A User’s Manual.” (Comes out July 22)
Give me modern romance with a hint of historical fiction
Great Big Beautiful Life
by Emily Henry
Welcome to Little Crescent Island, Ga., where two journalists are vying to write the memoir of Margaret Ives, a reclusive heiress who calls to mind both Patty Hearst and Priscilla Presley. Alice Scott is hoping to shore up her fledgling career with this white whale of a story, while Hayden Anderson coasts into the competition fresh off a Pulitzer win. Of course the two fall for each other — this is Henry’s world, we just read in it — while violating every basic rule of journalism. Surprisingly, Ives’s back story proves more scintillating than the sunset trysts and cozy diner meals. “Queen of the beach read” is an oft-bandied term, but let the record state: Henry wears the crown.
Take me home again, and make it complicated
The Other Wife
by Jackie Thomas-Kennedy
“I knew what it was like to become someone who cared, perhaps too much, about the lost twist-tie on the bag of sourdough,” Zuzu announces in the opening pages of “The Other Wife.” From there, Thomas-Kennedy lets us in on a world of dissatisfaction, the kind that’s hard to swim against because the current is so gentle. Zuzu is semi-happily married to Agnes, but preoccupied with her college friend Cash. They share an easy banter that’s elusive in Zuzu’s adult life, where she’s mired in the minutiae of her son’s routine and haunted by decisions unmade or regretted. When Zuzu suddenly gets called back to her hometown, she finally has a chance to take stock of what she left behind. Bonus points for text conversations and bite-size chapters — despite the weighty subject matter, this one is easy to dip in and out of between naps, chats and bodysurfing. (Comes out July 15)
Give me a beach read with a dash of mystery
Mansion Beach
by Meg Mitchell Moore
If you love Elin Hilderbrand and “The Great Gatsby,” Moore’s frothy confection of a novel, set on Block Island, is a satisfying treat. The outsider here is Nicola Carr (get it? Nick Carraway?), who trades a failed relationship and a miserable job for a borrowed cottage and an internship at a local maritime institute. Her stab at equilibrium is quickly thwarted by a love triangle involving her cousin’s wife (whose family is her real estate benefactor) and the party-throwing fashion entrepreneur next door. We learn about their shenanigans — which culminate in a death — in part from a chorus of podcast guests. This might not be the freshest plot device, but what Moore sacrifices in originality she makes up for with smocked maxi dresses and snarky asides. (Comes out May 27)
How about a stylish joy ride that celebrates every beach body?
Sunny Side Up
by Katie Sturino
There’s a lot going on in Sturino’s debut: A 35-year-old P.R. dynamo, Sunny Greene, needs a plus-one for her brother’s wedding. She’s having a fling with her mail carrier. She’s training a new assistant. She’s traveling with new friends (they’re “ride-or-die,” as friends tend to be in beach reads) and rebooting a newsletter that once embarrassed her ex-husband (a total dud with a podcast of his own, The Zack Attack). What gripped me about the novel had little to do with all of the above (entertaining as it is) and everything to do with Sunny’s determination to create an inclusive luxury swimwear line. In real life, Sturino is a body acceptance advocate. In fiction, she takes us along for a clever and stylish ride, from fabric swatches to boardroom presentation to creation of a logo and beyond. (Comes out June 24)
I need a reminder that old friends are the best ones
My Friends
by Fredrik Backman; translated by Neil Smith
Backman had me at his dedication: “To anyone who is young and wants to create something. Do it.” In that spirit, he unfurls a sweeping saga about young people, art and the way creativity connects friends and strangers across generations. The specifics are difficult to summarize: Three young people appear in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Decades later, another young person sets out to understand the provenance of the painting and learns more than she bargained for. If you’ve read “A Man Called Ove,” you know Backman can be depended on to show how small the world is, and how fragile. He does it again here, this time with “Stand By Me” vibes.
Take me on a getaway gone wrong
Murder Takes a Vacation
by Laura Lippman
If you’re a fan of Lippman’s, you know Tess Monaghan, the private investigator who cracks cases in Baltimore. Here we get to know Muriel Blossom, Tess’s retired colleague, who picks up an $8.75 million winning lottery ticket in a Circle K parking lot and uses it to get out of Charm City. Her destination: the M.S. Solitaire, a cruise ship bound for French ports. But Mrs. Blossom’s carefully laid plans are disrupted when she crosses paths with two men — one silver-tongued and suspicious; and one who bewitches her, then dies. What follows is a rollicking adventure of the highest order, with cameos from Tess and a refreshing spotlight on a woman who is, as my mother would say, no spring chicken. (Comes out June 17)
I’d like a tense family drama
A Family Matter
by Claire Lynch
Some prefer not to mix sand with serious subjects; I’m not among them. Lynch’s debut burns like a sparkler, quick and mesmerizing. The story unfolds from two sides of a divorce. We have a wife’s perspective from the early 1980s, when she’s a young mother in love with another woman; then, four decades later, we get her ex-husband’s view as he’s receiving a cancer diagnosis. In the meantime, their only child believes her mother is dead until she finds evidence to the contrary. Now a young mother herself, she must piece together the puzzle of her own past. In an author’s note, Lynch explains how she consulted old court cases and legal documents pertaining to lesbian mothers forced to forfeit custody of their children. “Their words are included here as a reminder of how far away the recent past is,” she writes. “And how close.” (Comes out June 3)
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