Happy Friday!

Since we've been spending so much time at the beach lately, I thought I'd round up some good beach read recommendations.

Beach Tip: I've learned is a paper book is definitely better for reading on the beach than a tablet! You don't have to worry about a glare from the sun, or sand, or water.

When I think of a beach read, I want something that will be easy to get into, something that grabs my attention pretty quickly. I want to be able to put it down to go for a swim and come back and get right back into it. I prefer a quick read, something I will be able to finish over a weekend away. Sometimes when I am travelling I try to read a book set in the same city. And sometimes when I go to the beach I like to read books that are actually set at the beach! I've tried to include a good mix of different options (all descriptions are adapted from Chapters)

 

 The Best of Us by Sarah Pekkanen

Four college friends  reconnect during an all-expense-paid vacation at a luxury resort. A hurricane bears down on the island, forcing each of the women to reevaluate what she knows about her friends and herself. 

 

The Thousand Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars)

Veronica Mars was a TV series about a teenage detective. Ten years later where this book picks up, she’s traded in her law degree for her old private investigating license. It's spring break, and college students descend on Neptune, transforming the beaches and boardwalks into a frenzied, week-long rave. When a girl disappears from a party, Veronica is called in to investigate.

 

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Alice Love is twenty-nine, crazy about her husband, and pregnant with her first child. So imagine Alice’s surprise when she comes to on the floor of a gym (a gym! She HATES the gym) and is whisked off to the hospital where she discovers the honeymoon is truly over—she’s getting divorced, she has three kids, and she’s actually 39 years old. Ultimately, Alice must discover whether forgetting is a blessing or a curse, and whether it’s possible to start over...

 

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walters

Beautiful Ruins is the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962...and is rekindled in Hollywood fifty years later. 

 

The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

American Rebecca Porter was never one for fairy tales. Her twin sister, Lacey, has always been the romantic who fantasized about glamour and royalty, fame and fortune. Yet it's Bex who seeks adventure at Oxford and finds herself living down the hall from Prince Nicholas, Great Britain's future king. And when Bex can't resist falling for Nick, the person behind the prince, it propels her into a world she did not expect to inhabit, under a spotlight she is not prepared to face.

 

Modern Lovers by Emma Straub

Friends and former college bandmates Elizabeth and Andrew and Zoe have watched one another marry, buy real estate, and start businesses and families, all while trying to hold on to the identities of their youth. But nothing ages them like having to suddenly pass the torch (of sexuality, independence, and the ineffable alchemy of cool) to their own offspring.

 

One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid

In her twenties, Emma Blair marries her high school sweetheart, Jesse. On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse is on a helicopter over the Pacific when it goes missing. Just like that, Jesse is gone forever. Years later, now in her thirties, Emma runs into an old friend, Sam, and finds herself falling in love again. When Emma and Sam get engaged, it feels like Emma’s second chance at happiness. That is, until Jesse is found. He’s alive, and he’s been trying all these years to come home to her. With a husband and a fiancé, Emma has to now figure out who she is and what she wants, while trying to protect the ones she loves.

 

Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben

Former special ops pilot Maya, home from the war, sees an unthinkable image captured by her nanny cam while she is at work: her two-year-old daughter playing with Maya’s husband, Joe—who was brutally murdered two weeks earlier. The provocative question at the heart of the mystery: Can you believe everything you see with your own eyes, even when you desperately want to? To find the answer, Maya must finally come to terms with deep secrets and deceit in her own past before she can face the unbelievable truth about her husband—and herself.

 

Pretty Girls by Karen Slaughter

More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia’s teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. Forming a wary truce, the surviving sisters look to the past to find the truth, unearthing the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago.

 

Memory Man by David Baldacci

Amos Decker's life changed forever--twice. The first time was on the gridiron. On his very first play, a violent helmet-to-helmet collision knocked him off the field for good, and left him with an improbable side effect--he can never forget anything. The second time was at home nearly two decades later. Now a police detective, Decker returned from a stakeout one evening and entered a nightmare--his wife, young daughter, and brother-in-law had been murdered. But over a year later, a man turns himself in to the police and confesses to the murders. At the same time a horrific event nearly brings Burlington to its knees, and Decker is called back in to help with this investigation. Decker also seizes his chance to learn what really happened to his family that night.

 

Happy reading :) Have a great weekend!