Fun Beach Reads! Part 1
Because life and reading are about balance #82
Tensions are high, Covid cases are up, democracy feels like it’s hanging by a thread and apparently I am once again forced to constantly check Twitter to see what the bad men have done before 9 AM West Coast time. Is anyone else having Summer 2020 deja vu?!? Also, it’s Cancer Season, if you believe in that, meaning that all the feelings and confrontations apparently are flooding toward us. Batten down your emotional hatches, babies!
“Please, Kerry,” you say, “this cheerfulness is overwhelming, and also where are the fun books you promised in your click-bait title?” Yes, I’m getting to those, but here’s my point - if you read last week’s newsletter, I’m mad and worried and disappointed as hell. We’re facing some tough forces - but I’m not giving up and I hope you don’t either.
However, we can’t throw all the wood on the fire all at once if we hope to sustain. So that means we have to find ways to burn and ways to smolder, ways to rage and ways to rest, ways to engage and ways to escape for a while.
In summary, all of that is truly the worst introduction to a “Fun Summer Reading, Y’all Lol Emoji Tropical Drink Emoji Three Exclamation Points” theme in the history of book newsletters, and perhaps an easier way would be to say - now, more than ever, we need our sugar as much as our substance. So please, enjoy any and all of these recommendations with complete and giddy abandon. From romances to thrillers, none of these are winning the Booker Prize, but they’re fun and frothy and engaging and pretty well written and all 4 or 5 lambies. Auntie Kerry prescribes at least two a week for what ails you.
Stay tuned for part 2 next week! (And if fun summer reading isn’t up your alley, check the archive for heftier, more sober reads.)
The Lioness is “Jurassic Park” meets “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” in the Serengeti, and I loved every tense page of it. Or maybe it’s Agatha Christie meets National Geographic? Basically, Tanzania, 1964: A group of wealthy, some famous Americans go into the Serengeti on safari. From page one, you know some don’t come out, but you don’t know who and you don’t know why. Fun and exciting!
The Arc is a romance meets tech satire: Ursula and Rafael are fed up with the dating apps and want something more, so they pay ungodly sums of money to a shadowy tech service that guarantees to find their One True Partner.
This wasn’t a perfectly written romance; there were a few threads I felt the author didn’t perfectly weave in, and it felt like she herself waffled between justifying and critiquing tech, and The Wing-esque spaces, and general capitalism. But the writing was snappy, the dialogue was excellent, and it will definitely scratch an itch for a smartish romance. Fun and romantic!
Counterfeit is a caper, a heist, a social commentary. Ava meets up with her old college roommate, Winnie, and finds out that Winnie is running a counterfeit luxury handbag scheme. When “good girl” Chinese-American Ava and iconoclastic Mainland Chinese Winnie connect, the scheme grows larger, and more dangerous. Thought-provoking and neither as predictable nor as tidy as you’d think. Fun and intriguing, with good fashion!
Okay, virtually none of you read my LGBTQ newsletter last year (but whatever, it’s fine, I’m totally over it) and so you probably missed my suggestion of The Guncle, but when you think of summer books, this. is. it. So I’m re-upping it!
Retired actor “Gay Uncle Patrick” loves his niece and nephew from afar in his Palm Springs hideaway, but when tragedy strikes, he’s forced to take them for the summer and upend the life he’s created. Stylish, smart, moving, sweet, and so very funny. I will never not love a book where adults speak to children like they’re just miniature jaded barflies. Do yourself a favor and read this! I might even re-read it, that’s how fun it is! Fun and fabulous!
