Vacation Reads
I am currently in the harried state of: end of school, going out of town, all of the details to leave the country, preparation.
It is going, that’s all.
So instead of being productive I began to make a list of some books I’ve read over the last few years that I literally could not put down. These quick snippets are gathered from all over!
VACATION READS!
The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
Libby turns 25 and receives a letter in the mail, it tells her not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of an abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. There are others who have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them. This is a dark twisty mystery that keeps the pages turning.
A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw
Travis has a gift for finding missing people and things. He is on the hunt for Maggie St James a missing woman. Hidden away is a place called Pastoral, this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it…he disappears. Just like Maggie St. James. This book is beautifully written and stuck in my mind days after reading it.
The Fire Keeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
I was instantly drawn into this story and the characters. Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of college, but when family tragedy strikes, Daunis puts her future on hold to look after her fragile mother. Then she meets Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi’s hockey team.
As Daunis falls for Jamie, she senses he is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into an FBI investigation of a lethal new drug.Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I loved this book, maybe because I grew up in Southern California, I could picture the setting perfectly. This is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind. Four siblings throw a yearly party but things turn tragic as each sibling faces secrets past and present.
The Last Thing He told Me by Laura Dave
Hannah’s new husband Owen has disappeared, leaving his daughter Bailey and a mystery to solve. Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And Bailey may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he disappeared.
This is also a show you can watch, AFTER you read it, of course!
The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley
Julian Jessop, is an eccentric, lonely artist. He believes most people aren't really honest with each other. But what if they were? And so he writes—in a plain, green journal—the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It's found by the efficient Monica, who adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, others find the notebook and add the truth about their own lives. Soon enough they find each other In Real Life at Monica's Café. This book was so sweet and fun, gave me faith in humanity.
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
William grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, there was no love, so he left and never looked back. In college he meets ambitious Julia Padavano, and the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable. William experiences a love and joy in their house filled chaos.
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable devotion to one another. What a beautiful story of family love.Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Here is a quick snippet about the book. “Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be Black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post–9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.” This story is about finding home, when you are away from home.
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
This book was one where I did not see the twist coming! Such a great creepy read! Alicia’s life is perfect, at least it looks that way. She is a famous painter married to an in-demand photographer, they live in a large house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. What!? I will leave it at that.
The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
Last night Elle and her oldest friend, Jonas, crept out the back door into the darkness with each other, all while their spouses chatted away inside. The book takes place over 24 hours. Elle will have to decide between the life she has with her husband Peter, who she truly loves. And the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn’t forever changed the course of their lives.
Beach Read by Emily Henry
Augustus and January are both authors, but couldn’t be more different. The only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.
Until, one evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will write a Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult. Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.
The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse
An isolated getaway spot high up in the Swiss Alps is the last place Elin wants to be. But she’s taken time off from her job as a detective, so when her estranged brother, Isaac, and his fiancée, Laure, invite her to celebrate their engagement at the hotel, Elin has no reason not to accept.
Elin arrives in the middle of a storm and immediately feels on edge. The hotel is creepy and makes her nervous. They wake the following morning to discover Laure is missing. Elin must trust her instincts if they hope to find her. With the storm closing off all access to the hotel, the longer Laure stays missing, the more the remaining guests start to panic.
The Starling House by Alix E Harrow
Opal and her brother have raised themselves in the coal mining town of Eden Kentucky, where most people think bad luck is just part of living there. The town also has a haunted house that has had various owners that always seem to keep to themselves, and don’t always have a happy ending to their story.
Opal dreams of the house and soon takes an offer to clean it to make cash to get her brother Jasper out of the town and on to better things. The house begins to share its secrets with Opal and when mysteries begin to unfold, she learns more about herself and her own history than she thought possible. She must fight to learn what family and home might look like, even when she thought she was all alone.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Dark thriller for sure! After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. Her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region. Secrets begin to unfold behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.
The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary
I LOVE this book, such a fun read! Tiffy and Leon share an apartment but have never met. They start writing each other notes - first about what day is garbage day, and politely establishing what leftovers are up for grabs. Even though they are opposites, they soon become friends. And then maybe more.
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The author writes this book to his son and it is beautiful and heartbreaking. Here is a snippit off the book, “Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race”, a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of Black women and men - bodies exploited through slavery and segregation and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a Black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?”
What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
Alice Love is 29, loves her husband, and pregnant with her first child. So imagine Alice’s surprise when she wakes up on the floor of a gym (She HATES the gym). She is taken to the hospital, where she learns none of what she knows is true - she’s getting divorced, she has three kids, and she’s actually 39 years old. I instantly fell in love with these characters and the story. I went on to read every Liane Moriarty book after this one!
Well there you have it friends, all the books I couldn’t put down over the last couple years. Chime in here with the books on your vacation read books. And happy traveling!
