Top 5 Beach Reads to Read on Vacation

If you haven’t had enough time to read during the year, the vacation season is the perfect time to catch up. There is nothing better than relaxing with a good book by the seaside, and that’s why today we’ve prepared a list of recommendations to help you pick and choose which titles will be going with you.

Whether you’re in the mood for a lighter read, an adventure, or a good thriller – these five books offer a little bit of everything. The only thing you have to do is stop by the nearest bookstore or library before your trip.

Beach Read – Emily Henry

Just look at the cover of this novel and be sure that you found your ideal beach book. Funny enough, titled Beach Read, this novel by American author Emily Henry is a real summer romantic drama that will occupy your attention until the last page, along the way providing an interesting, subversive approach to the genre itself.

Set during the warmest part of the year, this book follows two writers who, after years of mutual intolerance, unexpectedly meet at the same resort. Realizing that despite their efforts, they can’t ignore each other any more than they can escape their own problems, January, a popular romance novel author, and Augustus, a writer of so-called ‘serious’ literature, agree to spend the rest of the summer together in order to get rid of their writer’s block.

The final product is more than entertaining, and with an excellent balance between introspection, character development, and unexpected humor, we have a novel in front of us that will dispel all stereotypes we have about beach reads.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid

If you like old Hollywood, Elizabeth Taylor, and books that you can’t put down, then The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reed is the right pick for you. Not only does this novel introduce us to an endlessly interesting and intriguing main character, movie star Evelyn Hugo, but it also provides us with all the glamor and opulence that cinematography from the era of Marilyn Monroe and other similar giants brings with it.

Told from the perspective of journalist Monique Grant, who suddenly receives an invitation to write an exclusive, official biography of one of the world’s most famous actresses, this book takes us through the ‘scandalous’ life of Evelyn Hugo and the story of her famous seven marriages. Beneath the surface, there are numerous secrets that need to come out, a confession of a woman’s hard fate in a greedy and patriarchal world, as well as a myriad of layered and imperfect characters, wrapped in the splendor and pomp of the classic film industry.

Long Bright River – Liz Moore

Liz Moore is perhaps one of the most interesting contemporary authors whose works are more than worthy of attention. And with her latest release, Long Bright River from 2020, we got one more proof of this writer’s talent. Set up as a mixture of mystery, thriller, and family drama, this book fully conveys the atmosphere of the dark streets of Philadelphia, where crime has become a common occurrence.

Focused on the relationship between two sisters, Long Bright River follows police officer Mickey as she patrols the city in search of Casey, a drug-addicted prostitute whom she has been unable to find for some time. When someone in town starts killing sex workers and the drug addiction epidemic takes off, Mickey does everything in her power to get to the bottom of it and find out what happened to the sister with whom she was once inseparable.

In the spirit of our favorite true crime shows, this novel deals with social problems in an intelligent way. 

Sisters – Daisy Johnson

In a similar spirit to Long Bright River, Daisy Johnson’s Sisters brings us a story about dark and unbreakable family relationships that we cannot always understand. Following July and September, two sisters who are so intertwined with each other that we don’t know where one ends and the other begins before us is a work about identity, grief, and toxic connections we can’t let go of.

Strikingly similar to the atmosphere of some of Stephen King’s novels, Sisters is a mixture of contemporary prose that, with skillful narration and moments of suspense and tension, almost reads like a thriller. While we wonder if paranormal things are happening in the background, or if all the surreal things that happen are the result of psychosis and the unstable mental state of the main character July before us is an exceptional novel that surpasses all expectations.

Everything I Know About Love – Dolly Alderton 

If you’re not necessarily in the mood for fiction, perhaps Dolly Alderton’s book of essays Everything I Know About Love will provide you with the kind of realistic comfort and understanding that memoirs can often evoke in a reader. As the cover itself says, this is a book about life, growing up, parties, friendships, work, and grief, as well as all those mixed feelings that arise in us in between. 

Witty, touching, and, above all, fun, this book speaks with a lot of warmth about all kinds of love (whether it be romantic, familial, or platonic), intertwined with satirical confessions from the author’s life, recipes for delicious dishes, humorous vignettes, and reminders that sometimes things don’t go according to our plan, but that that doesn’t automatically mean they have to be bad. A comfort read through and through.

Photo: haveseen/Shutterstock

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