If You Love Summer, Read These Books

Cracking reading for a hot day

Hello and welcome to the second edition of the If You Love That, Read This newsletter!

It’s been a scorcher of a week here in the UK — much too hot for most of us — but if you’re someone who revels in high temperatures and enjoys summer, then I have some great reads for you — all of them among my favourites. Mary Jane, in particular, is one I have made it my personal mission to handsell as much as possible in DC and now in London, although it’s out of print in the UK currently. According to the wholesaler Gardners website, reprinting is “under consideration”, so if anyone with any decision-making power is reading this — please make me and many other readers happy by supplying us more copies!

And in the meantime, I have other suggestions for summery reads.

Instructions For a Heatwave, by Maggie O’Farrell

Set during the Great British Summer Heatwave of 1976, this Maggie O’Farrell novel opens with the disappearance of Richard Riordan from the home he shares with his wife of forty years. Their three grown-up children come to London to help with the search, and we get to know each of them and their lives, and the many secrets they conceal. The characterisation in this book is superb.

Summerlings, by Lisa Howorth

It’s a sweltering summer in Washington DC in 1959 — that much is no surprise to anyone who’s ever visited the US capital in July. But what is surprising in Lisa Howorth’s fictional account is that this particular year, a swarm of large and unusual spiders has descended. When you’re ten years old, there’s no better way to spend your summer than by chasing and catching them — and that’s what this group of kids does, as well as concocting a plan to get the neighbours to like each other. That’s no mean feat in the suburbs of DC, in the middle of the Cold War, with people from all over the world and with different allegiances living alongside each other. This is a wonderful read, told by someone who knows and loves DC.

Seven Days in June, by Tia Williams

Coincidentally, this book also has a DC link: the protagonists first met as high schoolers in the capital, and had a brief but intense relationship. Many years later, they’re both successful authors: he as a sought-after, award-winning lit fic bro and she as a bestselling romance writer. When they meet again, sparks fly.

Very Nice, by Marcy Dermansky

And if you love reading about the world of authors — especially if you enjoy a gentle parody of the academic side of that world — pick up this one about a young woman who brings her creative writing professor home for the summer after accidentally kissing him. But then he meets her mother…

Bonus: this book has one of the most perfect last lines I’ve ever read.

Mary Jane, by Jessica Anya Blau

This novel is the story of a teenage girl from a very conservative family in 1970s Baltimore who spends her summer nannying a doctor’s daughter. But what Mary Jane’s parents don’t know is that the doctor is in fact a psychiatrist, and he’s helping a rock star get sober. Her life and understanding of the world change as she is thrown into a world of demonstrative love, spontaneous singing, and fun. This is a touching, tender, warm coming-of-age story I thoroughly recommend — and makes for a great book for mothers and daughters to read together, too.

Want more?

More summer books can be found here (US) and here (UK).

Feedback is welcome on the format of this newsletter, and please feel free to comment with the thing you love, so I can recommend relevant books for you!

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