Breezy Books for the Beach
July 2021 Issue
by Kelly Hunter
There’s no better way to spend a summer day than with your toes in the sand and your nose in a book. If you’ve read everything on your shelf, these five new novels should definitely be on your summer reading list!
The Wife Upstairs
by Rachel Hawkins
A Southern Gothic Reboot of Jane Eyre
Meet Jane, a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates—the kind of place where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name. Eddie Rochester is the most mysterious resident. His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend, their bodies lost to the deep. Jane sees an opportunity in Eddie; not only is he rich, brooding, and handsome, he also could offer her the kind of protection she’s always yearned for.
Yet as they fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the legend of Bea, an ambitious beauty with a rags-to-riches story, who launched a wildly successful Southern lifestyle brand. How can she, plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie’s heart before her past—or his—catches up to her?
People We Meet on Vacation
by Emily Henry, the Best-selling Author of Beach Read
They have nothing in common. Poppy has insatiable wanderlust; Alex prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.
Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. She knows the last time she was truly happy was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. So she convinces her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right.
Now she has one week to fix everything. If only she can get around the big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?
Under the Southern Sky
by Kristy Woodson Harvey, Best-selling Author of The Peachtree Bluff Series
When Amelia discovers that a cluster of embryos belonging to her childhood friend Parker and his late wife, Greer, have been deemed “abandoned,” she’s put in the unenviable position of telling Parker—and dredging up old wounds in the process.
Parker and Amelia slowly begin to find solace in each other as they navigate an uncertain future against the backdrop of the pristine waters of their childhood home, Cape Carolina. The journey of self-discovery leads them to an unforgettable and life-changing lesson: family—the one you’re born into and the one you choose—is always closer than you think.
The Newcomer
by Mary Kay Andrews, the Queen of the Beach Reads
After she discovers her sister Tanya dead on the floor of her New York City townhouse, Letty Carnahan is certain she knows who did it: Tanya’s ex, the sleazy real estate entrepreneur Evan Wingfield. Even in the grip of grief and panic, Letty heeds Tanya’s warnings: “If anything bad happens to me, it’s Evan. Promise me you’ll take Maya and run. Promise me.”
Tanya, a woman with a past shrouded in secrets, left behind a “go-bag” of cash, a big honking diamond ring, and a wailing four-year-old daughter—but only one clue: a faded magazine story about a sleepy mom-and-pop motel in a Florida beach town. Letty sheds her old life and checks into an uncertain future at The Murmuring Surf Motel.
As she settles into the motel’s former storage room, she tries to heal Maya’s heartache and unravel the key to her sister’s shady past, all while dodging the attention of the owner’s attractive son Joe, who just happens to be a local police detective. Can Letty find romance as well as a room at the inn—or will Joe betray her secrets and put her behind bars? With danger closing in, it’s a race to find the truth and right the wrongs of the past.
Surviving Savannah by Patti Callahan
A weightier read for those long summer days
When Savannah history professor Everly Winthrop is asked to curate a collection of artifacts recovered from the steamship Pulaski, she’s shocked. The ship sank after a boiler explosion in 1838, and the wreckage was just discovered, 180 years later.
Everly’s research leads her to the astounding history of a family of eleven who boarded the Pulaski together, and the extraordinary stories of two women from this family: a known survivor, Augusta Longstreet, and her niece, Lilly Forsyth, who was never found. These aristocratic women were part of Savannah’s society, but when the ship exploded, each was faced with difficult and heartbreaking decisions. This is a moving and powerful exploration of what women will do to endure in the face of tragedy, the role fate plays, and the myriad ways we survive the surviving.