With summer right around the corner, it’s time to start planning holidays, and dusting off long-forgotten piles of books that have been sitting on the bedside table waiting to be opened. Unless of-course you prefer to upload to your kindle and make space in your travel case!
If you’re like me and love nothing more than sitting in the garden, engrossed in a good book, or even better, lounging on a beach, soaking up the warmth of the sun after a seemingly endless winter, you’re in the right place. Here I round up five reads for summer holidays 2024 which you won’t go wrong reading:
“Funny Story” by Emily Henry
Henry is the queen of the funny romance read. Happy Place was a terrific beach read, and her latest, Funny Story, follows Daphne as she meets her dream man, Peter, falls in love with him, and moves back to his small hometown, only for her fiancé to realise that he’s actually in love with his childhood best friend – Petra.
With limited funds, Daphne proposes that Miles (Petra’s ex) move in with her in a dastardly plan to make their exes jealous. Will the plan work? (DUH!) I’m so excited for this beach read in 2024!
“This Could Be Everything” by Eva Rice
From the author of the modern classic The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets comes a feel-good novel about hope, love, and the powerful bond between sisters.
It’s 1990. The Happy Mondays are in the charts, a 15-year-old called Kate Moss is on the cover of The Face magazine, and Julia Roberts wears thigh-high boots for the poster of a new movie called Pretty Woman.
This Could Be Everything is a coming-of-age story with its roots under the pavements of a pre-Richard Curtis-era Notting Hill that has all but vanished. It’s about what happens when you start looking after something more important than yourself.
“First Lie Wins” by Ashley Elston
A thrilling and unputdownable thriller of stolen identities, romance, and espionage in a small town in Louisiana. I discovered this one on actress Reese Witherspoon’s online book club (an excellent spot for book inspiration).
Evie Porter has it all. A beautiful house, a perfect partner, and potentially a new close group of friends. Except Evie Porter is a stolen identity. And now a woman with ‘Evie Porter’s’ real name has just turned up in this small town. Cue a lot of mystery and intrigue. I couldn’t put First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston down.
If you’re looking for a page-turning beach read in 2024 that you’ll read in a single setting, then First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston is going to be right up your street!
“The Playdate” by Clara Dillon
Playdate is a psychological drama about motherhood and the long-term effects of bullying – school-gate politics but with a menacing undertone.
Sara has just moved to Dublin and is keen for her shy, sensitive nine-year-old daughter Lexie to fit in at her new school. But in her over-eagerness to make friends, Sara manages to inadvertently offend the ‘tricky‘ mother of Polly, the most popular child in Lexie’s class, who then starts to bully Lexie.
Desperate to fix the trouble she has caused, Sara invites Polly on a playdate. But the playdate ends in catastrophe with a child being rushed to hospital on the brink of death – and that’s when things take a truly dark turn.
One of my favourite genres is domestic noir, about the darkness that can lurk beneath the cosy veneer of civilisation.
”The Whispers” by Audrey Audrain
An unnamed man returns home from a romantic rendezvous, opts not to join his wife in bed, and settles in the spare room. Hours later he wakes to a phone call from a woman who tells him, “Something terrible has happened”. And with that, we’re off, piecing together the puzzle in Ashley Audrain’s highly anticipated second novel, The Whispers.
The story spins out over the course of one week, in the alternating voices of the women who live in close proximity to one another while a child on their road lies in a coma in the hospital.
This is a story that explores the quiet sacrifices of motherhood, the intuitions that we silence and the complexities of our closest friendships.
There are many more books that haven’t made this list, including the wonderful Tana French’s latest ”The Hunter”, so you could always get started on your summer reading list now instead!