So like any (almost) teacher, I relish the sweet 9 weeks of (somewhat) uninterrupted down time.
While I have a ton of reading to do for my summer glasses, one of my favorite guilty pleasures is sitting down with nothing but a good book in my hands. I don't think I'll ever beat my record of reading 18 books in one summer, I still make an effort to finish at least 5 new books during my vacation. I bought the Emily Giffin and Joshilyn Jackson novels as soon as they were released but they have been sitting patiently on my bookshelf, with the rest of these books, just waiting for me to be able to pick them up and read them.
Here's my top 5 for summer 2014:
Me Before You by Jojo Moyes:
A Love Story for this generation, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn:
Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker
faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to
cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly
spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she
barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the
town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian
mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit
too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the
psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and
survive this homecoming.
Thirty-three-year-old Shea Rigsby has spent her entire life in Walker,
Texas—a small college town that lives and dies by football, a passion
she unabashedly shares. Raised alongside her best friend, Lucy, the
daughter of Walker’s legendary head coach, Clive Carr, Shea was too
devoted to her hometown team to leave. Instead she stayed in Walker for
college, even taking a job in the university athletic department after
graduation, where she has remained for more than a decade. But
when an unexpected tragedy strikes the tight-knit Walker community,
Shea’s comfortable world is upended, and she begins to wonder if the
life she’s chosen is really enough for her. As she finally gives up her
safety net to set out on an unexpected path, Shea discovers unsettling
truths about the people and things she has always trusted most—and is
forced to confront her deepest desires, fears, and secrets.
I finished this book in about 15 hours. IT IS THAT GOOD!! If you are a college football loving southern belle like me, You will LOVE this book!!
Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson:
Someone Else's Love Story is beloved and highly acclaimed New York Times
bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson's funny, charming, and poignant
novel about science and miracles, secrets and truths, faith and
forgiveness; about falling in love, and learning that things aren't
always what they seem—or what we hope they will be.
Shandi Pierce
is juggling finishing college, raising her delightful three-year-old
genius son Nathan, aka Natty Bumppo, and keeping the peace between her
eternally warring, long-divorced parents. She's got enough complications
without getting caught in the middle of a stick-up and falling in love
with William Ashe, who willingly steps between the robber and her son.
Shandi
doesn't know that her blond god Thor has his own complications. When he
looked down the barrel of that gun he believed it was destiny: It's
been one year to the day since a tragic act of physics shattered his
world. But William doesn't define destiny the way others do. A brilliant
geneticist who believes in facts and numbers, destiny to him is about
choice. Now, he and Shandi are about to meet their so-called destinies
head on, making choices that will reveal unexpected truths about love,
life, and the world they think they know.
11/22/63 by Stephen King:
Dallas, 11/22/63: Three shots ring out.
President John F. Kennedy is dead.
Life
can turn on a dime—or stumble into the extraordinary, as it does for
Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in a Maine town. While
grading essays by his GED students, Jake reads a gruesome, enthralling
piece penned by janitor Harry Dunning: fifty years ago, Harry somehow
survived his father’s sledgehammer slaughter of his entire family. Jake
is blown away...but an even more bizarre secret comes to light when
Jake’s friend Al, owner of the local diner, enlists Jake to take over
the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy
assassination. How? By stepping through a portal in the diner’s
storeroom, and into the era of Ike and Elvis, of big American cars, sock
hops, and cigarette smoke... Finding himself in warmhearted Jodie,
Texas, Jake begins a new life. But all turns in the road lead to a
troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald. The course of history is about
to be rewritten...and become heart-stoppingly suspenseful.
As of right now I've finished The One and Only, and I'm halfway through Sharp Objects and Someone Else's Love Story because I'm indecisive and like to be in the middle of at least two books at a time. Go figure.
What's on your summer reading list?
I'd love some recommendations from any of my lovely readers!
