This Summer’s Must-Reads, According to Bookstagrammers

Even if you have the best of intentions to plough through this season’s #TBR lists (that’s ‘to be read,’ for the uninitiated), trying to find your perfect book out of a list of 50 can be intimidating. Never fear: With the help of Instagram’s most reliable Bookstagrammers, we’ve done the grunt work for you with seven new reads to dive into this summer. Whether you’re lounging by the pool or sweating it out on the subway, these are the summer must-reads you never knew you (or your Amazon wishlist) needed.

#summerreads #bookstagrammer #bookish #readmore #mustread #tbr #bookster #bookblogger

“I think from a very young age, I’ve been drawn to people who were dangerous. I was drawn to the bad girl who had seen all the R-rated movies at age twelve and could tell me about them. I’ve always been interested in people who don’t seem to think about rules or have no concept of boundaries. My sense of boundaries and rules are very clear, to the point where I have a desire to test them because I feel so bound by them.” — Chelsea Hodson in an interview with @believermag • That quote from the interview perfectly reflects this collection of essays, which is why I was fascinated by this book at first. I’m still relatively at that “reckless youth” age so I was able to relate to a big chunk of this book. There were snippets where I would be wowed and would say out loud, “dang, I felt that.” However, as I kept on reading that’s all there was...just snippets, clever one-liners of profound emotion but I wanted more than that. I wanted to go farther deep into that hurt and longing and explore it and dissect it. Yet by no means did I not like this book, I was still able to connect to it, and it did make me eager to read whatever Hodson writes next. Also I recommend you watch the book trailer for this on YouTube, it includes an original song by Chelsea Hodson and also accurately represents the atmosphere of this book. So good and emo...def my kind of thing🤘🏻 A huge thank you to @henryholtbooks for sending this my way!💕

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Tonight I’m Someone Else, by Chelsea Hodson “From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. Both tender and jarring, this collection is relevant to anyone who’s ever searched for what the self is worth.”

Florida, by Lauren Groff “The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida—its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind—becomes its gravitational center: an energy, a mood, as much as a place of residence.”

(This book was gifted to me by @bloomsburypublishing) . ‘We watch the bird as it flies high above us, singing like it’s the only thing in the world that matters. And I feel it - that life can be beautiful. That there are possibilities.’ -Skylarks, Karen Gregory I’m only on chapter six on this book and I love it. It’s the kind of writing I like , real, pithy and fast moving. I’m in love with the main character - she has a strong voice and is feisty yet endearing and she is LGBT which is amazing because but there are so few strong female gay characters in books. And the cover is so simple yet beautiful (and it meant I had to have a go at making origami birds which are not my strong point to say the least!) I have a feeling this book will make my favourites list. Thank you @bloomsburypublishing for including me in your #skylarksbook and check out my story to see where the tour takes us tomorrow. . #bookstagram #bookworm #booklover #bookish #booknerd #bookaddict #bookaholic #booklove #bookphotography #booking #bookstagrammer #booklovers #booksofinstagram #bookblogger #booknerdigans #bookcover #bookishfeatures #bookgeek #bookphoto #bookgram #bookoftheday #bookworms #bookcase #fromabove #booklife #bookslover #bookcommunity #bookie

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Skylarks, by Karen Gregory “‘Keep your head down and don’t borrow trouble’ is the motto Joni lives by, and so far it’s seen her family through some tough times. So when Annabel breezes into her life, Joni’s sure they’re destined to clash. Pretty, poised, privileged – the daughter of the richest family in town must have it easy. But sometimes you find a matching spirit where you least expect it.”

BOOK REVIEW - IN THE GARDEN OF THE FUGITIVES - CERIDWEN DOVEY. Written as a sequence of letters to one another, ‘In the garden of the fugitives’ tells of a wealthy benefactor and his young protégée. Each holds on to the past, harboring their own guilt and it’s only when Royce reaches out to his estranged protégée Vita, that the two can finally open up and unburden some of that guilt onto each other. . Vita, for the way she views herself as a white South African during the days of Apartheid, and Royce for the selfish love he carried for Kitty and his actions towards her while excavating in modern day Pompeii. . Royce, an old man at the end of his life, reaches out to Vita to correct a wrong between them, and hopes that by opening up to her about Kitty, it will redeem the both of them and release them from their own individual prisons. . It’s an engaging read, that kept me intrigued and it was fascinating to learn more about Pompeii. I’m a sucker for a historical angle and have always been interested in the ancient tragedy. . Again, not one I’d consider a favourite, but it was one that held my attention and I was curious to see how it all unfolded.

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In the Garden of the Fugitives, by Ceridwen Dovey “Almost twenty years after forbidding him to contact her, Vita receives an email from her old benefactor, Royce. Once, she was one of his brightest protégées; now her career has stalled and Royce is ailing, and each has a need to settle accounts.”

Happy Book Birthday to @elizabethklehfoth and All These Beautiful Strangers- what an engaging thriller 😍😍😍 I'm halfway through and DYING to know where this is going ☠☠☠ ••• In the last day of summer, Grace Fairchild, the beautiful young wife of real estate mogul Allister Calloway, vanished from the family’s lake house without a trace, leaving behind her seven-year old daughter, Charlie, and a slew of unanswered questions. Years later, seventeen-year-old Charlie still struggles with the dark legacy of her family name and the mystery surrounding her mother. Determined to finally let go of the past, she throws herself into life at Knollwood, the prestigious New Englandschool she attends. Charlie quickly becomes friends with Knollwood’s “it” crowd. Charlie has also been tapped by the A’s—the school’s elite secret society well known for terrorizing the faculty, administration, and their enemies. To become a member of the A’s, Charlie must play The Game, a semester-long, diabolical high-stakes scavenger hunt that will jeopardize her friendships, her reputation, even her place at Knollwood. As the dark events of past and present converge, Charlie begins to fear that she may not survive the terrible truth about her family, her school, and her own life.

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All These Beautiful Strangers, by Elizabeth Klehfoth “A young woman haunted by a family tragedy is caught up in a dangerous web of lies and deception involving a secret society in this highly charged, addictive psychological thriller that combines the dishy gamesmanship of Gossip Girl with the murky atmosphere of The Secret History.”

Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou “The full inside story of the breath-taking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar biotech start-up, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end, despite pressure from its charismatic CEO and threats by her lawyers.”

ROOM TOUR complete series is now live on IGTV! 🌻 . Finally, the last and final bit of everything I recorded is up and available for you to watch ❤️ I do apologise for dragging this and I promise, next thing I upload to my IGTV channel will be breve and concise 🙊 . On the photo: VOX, set in a dystopic reality where women are only allowed a certain number of words (releasing in August!) and Our Kind of Cruelty, the dark, obsessive and twisted story of a man still in love with his ex, who he thinks is still with him even though she is engaged and about to marry someone else. Or in other words, a dark and gripping thriller-ish. . . #bookster #bookstagram #bookish #booklover #booknerd #bibliophile #bookworm #vsco #bookstagrammer #igreads #blogger

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Our Kind of Cruelty, by Araminta Hall “A spellbinding, darkly twisted novel about desire and obsession, and the complicated lines between truth and perception, Our Kind of Cruelty introduces Araminta Hall, a chilling new voice in psychological suspense.”

THE GET

If you don’t own this “Books Are Magic” tote, do you even read bro? Author Emma Straub‘s perfect Brooklyn bookstore of the same name sells some of the most iconic book merch in the game.