The end of the season is always a little bittersweet. The kids are back in school. No more lazy summer mornings. On the other hand, there’s Fall festivities to look forward to, spooky season reading plans, and quiet evenings with a cup of tea and the fire blazing. But if you’re still chasing those summer vibes, here are four books that can help you do that…
My Friends, Fredrik Backman
Long summer days spent on a pier. Relaxing with friends. It’s the perfect summer scene. This book centers around a painting. It’s worth millions now but once upon a time, it was painted by a 14 year old boy who simply wanted to capture his friends on the canvas.
In a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it.
Dry, Neil Shusterman
Dry and hot. That sums up a lot of summers here in the desert climate of my home state. Watering restrictions and drought are something that I’m no stranger to. Dry captures this feeling in this post-apocalyptic climate survival novel.
The drought—or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it—has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take long showers.
Until the taps run dry and one teen is forced to make life and death decisions for her family in this harrowing story of survival.
The Survivors, Jane Harper
Summers and mistakes gone by. Memories that bring pain and haunt. Guilt remains. A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and a body washed up on the beach. A town finally ready for answers.
Kieran Elliott’s life changed forever on the day a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences.
The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal community he once called home.
Kieran’s parents are struggling in a town where fortunes are forged by the sea. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn.
When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge. A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and questions that have never washed away…
We Were Liars, E. Lockhart
An unreliable narrator and friendship gone wrong will keep you guessing. Summers on the island have been plagued by secrets that end in destruction. But what really happened?
A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.
