📚Bonus books for your summer beach bag

Summer reading season is upon us!

Hello, readers!

Today’s newsletter is a very special joint issue to celebrate the start of the summer reading season! Michelle of

Michelle Reads Books

and I teamed up to ensure that you will have no shortage of books to read this season. We’re both curating summer reading guides for our Substack communities, and we want to share the bookish love with as many fellow bibliophiles as possible. We also wanted to get some bonus picks into your inboxes and hands!

I love perusing other readers’ summer reading guides as much as I love creating my own, and I’m always eager to see what Michelle is recommending! Michelle loves books that are deeply human, with nuanced characters who you can’t help but root for. Whenever I’m in the mood for something character driven, introspective, and immersive, I turn to Michelle’s feed. I can’t wait to see her summer reading suggestions this year!

As a thank you to both our communities, we’re sharing a few bonus summer reading recommendations below. Both Michelle and my full summer reading guides will be sent out to our paid Substack subscribers this month, and we’re each offering a limited discount on subscriptions so you can stock your summer TBR! To celebrate the summer reading season, we’re both offering paid subscriptions at $40 for the year if you subscribe before May 31st. You’ll get access to our summer reading guides as well as the full backlog posts available to paid subscribers. Reading recommendations abound!

So, read on for a handful of summer reading recommendations from both of us and let us know in the comments what your favorite summer reading genres are. We’d love to hear!

Michelle’s Summer Reading Recommendations

Summer reads (aka beach reads) have a certain reputation. Many people think of something breezy that is easy to read. But I’m a firm believer that you should do you! Summer reading is whatever you want it to be. Knowing your reading tastes is important, and you should follow your interests and find summer reading books that work for you. Perhaps that’s a chunky historical novel, a light and fun rom-com, or an escapist fantasy. Whatever will let you sink into its pages and lose yourself in it for a while is perfect. 

My summer reading mood generally leans towards darkly comic novels, literary mysteries with a strong sense of atmosphere, and engrossing family novels. Those genres typically grab me and entice me to park it in the backyard with a book instead of scrolling on my phone. Here are three I love to recommend:

1. Who is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews is a gripping literary thriller that takes you from upstate New York to the dusty streets of Morocco. It’s intriguing, moody, and unsettling. I read this 325-page novel in two sittings at the pool a few summers ago, and it remains one of my favorite recent summer reading experiences. Fans of Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller and The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz will enjoy this one. 

2. Exalted by Anna Dorn is a strange and funny novel in which Emily, a popular social media astrologist, reads a perfect birth chart and believes that this person is the love of her life. The birth chart belongs to Beau, a well-known photographer in LA. She sets off to follow him around LA, crossing paths with Dawn, an older woman who has recently been dumped and is back waitressing tables at the same restaurant she worked at when she was 18. As the three stories begin to converge, it sets off a bizarre and laugh-out-loud story. This is perfect for fans of Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed and Ottessa Mosghfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. 

3. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu is a refreshingly creative novel about a Chinese American family told from the perspective of Willis, the leading man. It’s written like a screenplay, which makes it come to life in your mind as you read. It’s insightful, funny, incredibly inventive, and tender. It’s also a wonderful audiobook experience! It’s hard to draw comparisons for this unique novel, but I thought of The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans and Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason while reading.

Sara’s Bonus Summer Reading Recommendations 

I want to feel transported by my summer reading. Whether it’s traveling through time, visiting new places, or even being transported to a state of awe by simply fantastic writing, I love a summer book that grabs me and lifts me out of my daily rhythm. To me, the best beach books are the ones I spend all day thinking about and the books I can’t wait to open again at any opportunity. 

I think we all crave this feeling of escape during the summer. Who doesn’t want to recapture that youthful wonder of a long day stretching out in front of you with no obligations or expectations? Here are three books that transported me and made the rest of the world melt away:

1. Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead. One of my favorite rich-people-behaving-badly stories, Seating Arrangements takes place over a wedding weekend where things don’t quite go as planned. The story centers around Winn Van Meter–father-of-the-bride, forever social climber, forecaster of worst-case scenarios–as he struggles to play host through the extravagant weekend and keep his mind off his daughter’s alluring best friend and bridesmaid. When a beached whale washes ashore on the island, the planned precision of the festivities take an off-kilter turn and Winn finds himself in an unstoppable spiral. This book is literary but juicy, and perfect for readers who enjoyed The Nest or Pineapple Street. 

2. The Garden of the Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng. Set in dual timelines in Malaya, this novel explores the life of Yun Ling Teoh, a former prisoner of a Japanese war camp whose successful career as a judge is threatened by the onset of an incurable illness. Leaving her prominent position behind, Yun Ling returns to Cameron Heights, a lush Japanese garden in the Malayan mountains where she found healing after the war. This book is a haunting exploration of memory interspersed with stunning imagery of mountain gardens. It’s utterly breathtaking and a great read for fans of Inheritors and Pachinko. Eng has a new novel releasing later this year, so now is the perfect time to pick up this Booker finalist if you haven’t yet.

3. When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky by Margaret Verble. Set in 1920s Nashville, the main plot of the book follows a Glendale Park horse diver (yes, like in Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken) named Two Feathers after an accident begins a strange string of events at the park. The book’s biggest strength is the way it evokes its setting, both the larger setting of this time in the American South and the more specific setting of the historic Glendale Park and Zoo. There is a large cast of lovable characters, a few love stories to root for, and an overall feeling of heart and hope. This would be a perfect poolside read for readers allergic to anything too saccharine and historical fiction lovers looking for something a little different. Pick it up if you loved Swamplandia! or The Night Watchman.

HAPPY SUMMER READING! For questions, comments, or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out by emailing fictionmattersbooks@gmail.com or responding directly to this newsletter. I love hearing from you!

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Happy reading!

Sara