Librarians' Line-Up: Summer Reads

This month's librarians' line-up topic is summer/beach reads. Feel free to share what you think of as a summer book below!

Originally when I was told to come up with a favorite summer book I thought about beach reads, books that are easy and fun to read on the beach, but that you can easily place aside to take a dip in the lake. Then I thought about one of my other favorite things about summer: farmers’ markets and fresh produce! We go from the doldrums of winter to a vast array of colorful fruits and vegetables and suddenly I want to be Ina Garten. I love Ina’s cookbooks. They are beautiful, helpful, and inspiring. She has amazing recipes that will wow any dinner party and are never too complicated. She truly wants to feature the ingredients in her food and her recipes reflect that desire. I suggest trying Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics and Barefoot Contessa at Home.
~Kristin

I’ve talked about this book in an earlier review because, for me, summer is all about revisiting a classic. And A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is one of my favorite summer reads. It’s a slowly paced book, so there’s no better time to dig in with protagonist Francie Nolan and her family during those long summer days. Francie loves nothing more than sitting on her fire escape, enjoying a good book and I love sharing the ups and downs of life with her. It’s a beautiful book perfect for this time of year.

~Meredith

The Summer I Turned Pretty is my summer book. It’s a great coming of age story that takes place at an ocean cottage. It’s got young love, loss, the ocean, it’s perfect and I highly recommend it! And it’s a series, and all three books are wonderful!

~Amanda

My favorite summer book is Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen. It is one of her older books, but all of Dessen’s books take place in the summer, because it is that time when anything can happen in a teen’s life. Things are different in the summer, plain and simple. This one is about a teen girl who goes to a beach town to stay with her aunt for the summer. While there she discovers a lot about diners, her mother, and being herself. It is a sweet story that deals with a few issues, but nothing too heavy. I like to sink into it every summer, enjoying the fireworks, the sticky weather, and the sandy beaches.

~Cailey

This summer Dead Ever After, the 13^th and final installment of Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series, came out. What does our favorite telepath do when she is not solving uncanny crimes, navigating her paranormal love-life, and navigating the politics between vampires, werewolves, fairies, and all the other supernatural creatures Sookie spends her time with? Well, she decompresses by lying out in the sun and soaking up rays. What says summer more than that?

~Mary

On the Edge by Ilona Andrews. This is the book I take to the beach with me. It’s light and fluffy. Very fun to read but if it gets lost or more likely sandy and wet, I don’t mind too much. The world set up is very interesting with the magic world bordered a normal world and a group of people who live on the edge between the two worlds.

~Amy