Nothing feels better right now than curling up with a new great book. We reached out to our friends at BookSparks to hear about what books they’re most looking forward to reading in the coming months. Here’s what they had to say.
1. The Water Keeper by Charles Martin
Meet Murphy Shepherd, a man with many secrets who lives alone on an island. When he pulls a woman named Summer out of Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway, Murph’s life changes. Drawn to this woman who is desperate to find her missing daughter, Murph is thrown into the world of modern-day slavery in The Water Keeper.
2. Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner
Six years after a fight that ended their friendship, Daphne Berg is shaken when Drue walks back into her life with a favor to ask—to be her maid of honor at her wedding. As they come back together during a weekend in a waterfront Cape Cod mansion, they both start to realize how much they have both changed, forcing them to contemplate what kind of relationship they’ll have moving forward.
3. If You Must Know by Jamie Beck
Two sisters have hardly anything in common aside from the fact they grew up with each other. Amanda follows the rules and Erin follows her heart. They are both content with leading separate lives until one event that upsets both of their lives. Forced to confront the truths of their family and themselves, they’ll have to build a new form of trust within each other in order to save their family.
4. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical, but after years of growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age 16, everything is different. One lives with her black daughter in the same town she tried to leave, and the other secretly passes for white, leaving her husband without any knowledge of her past. Brit Bennett creates a riveting story in The Vanishing Half that explores why people feel pulled to live differently than they did growing up.
5. A Star Is Bored by Byron Lane
Charlie is about to have a crazy job interview with Kathi Kannon, an iconic actress in Hollywood. She needs an assistant and he needs a job. When the two are pushed together, they develop more than just a professional relationship, finding a true friendship and companionship with one another. But as time goes on, they both must make a choice, will Charlie be someone else’s assistant forever or will he summon the courage to finally be the star he’s always dreamed of being?
6. Beach Read by Emily Henry
What happens when you put a romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer suffering from writer’s block together for a summer? In Emily Henry’s Beach Read, writers Augustus Everett and January Andrews have both fallen into a creative rut. But with each other’s support, they forge a deal that will require both of them to write outside of their comfort zones, leading to a new relationship they never anticipated.
7. We Came Here to Shine by Susie Orman Schnall
Vivi is about to star in her first role in a Hollywood film when she gets shipped off to New York as a favor to a friend. Assigned a leading role in the heralded Aquacade synchronized swimming spectacular at the World’s Fair, Vivi believes it will destroy any chance of an acting career she once had. When her world collides with Max’s, an aspiring journalist, they find solace in one another and spend the summer learning what matters most.
8. Almond by Won-Pyung Sohn
Yunjae was born with a brain condition called Alexithymia that makes it hard for him to feel emotions such as fear or anger. But he finds solace in his home above his mother’s used bookstore, where sticky notes remind him when to smile and say “thank you.” When a troubled teen named Gon arrives at his school and begins to torment Yunjae, they both realize they might have more in common than they thought. As they get to know each other, they strike up an unusual friendship which causes Yunjae to open up to more people.
9. The Half Sister by Sandie Jones
Sisters Kate and Lauren meet for Sunday lunch every week no matter what, especially after the loss of their father. But when a young woman by the name of Jess shows up at the door, DNA test in hand, claiming to be their half sister, a major fallout between the siblings begins. It’s clear someone is keeping a major secret and slowly they’ll all begin to realize that their family was never as perfect as they had appeared.
10. Take A Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert
Take A Hint, Dani Brown details the life of a young woman who agrees to fake date her friend after a video of him “rescuing” her from their office building goes viral. Danika knows what she wants: professional success, academic success and the occasional casual hookup. Romance is not on that list. When she starts fake-dating security guard Zafir, the prospect of love begins to come into focus and Danika will have to consider what would happen if she let herself truly fall for him.
11. He Came In With It: A Portrait of Motherhood and Madness by Miriam Feldman
When their teenage son is diagnosed with schizophrenia, the O’Rourke family is torn off the conventional, idyllic course of life. With one catastrophe after another hitting them, home becomes a battlefield and relationships are tested. A narrative that inspires mothers and caregivers to rise up to the occasion, He Came In With It gives readers an inside look at mental health and the way it affects families.
12. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
This reimagining of the classic gothic suspense novel brings all the socialite secrets and drama to light. After receiving a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging for someone to save her from doom, Noemi heads up to High Place, a house in the Mexican countryside. She soon discovers that there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place and as she digs deeper, she is blown away by what she unearths.
13. Fast Girls by Elise Hooper
Based on the real lives of three trailblazing Olympians, Betty, Louise and Helen join forces to defy society’s expectations of what women can achieve. While tensions between the United States and Europe bring them closer and closer to the brink of war, these three women fight for the chance to compete as the fastest women in the world during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
14. Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
Catherine House is a school for higher learning and has produced some of the world’s best minds. Students who are accepted to the school are required to give up three years of their life to the school, completely removed from the outside world. Ines is excited to trade nights of parties for discipline when she starts at Catherine House. But the House’s strange protocols soon start to close in on her and make the school feel like a prison. When tragedy strikes, Ines begins to suspect that the school is harboring a dangerous secret agenda.
15. Hurry Home by Roz Nay
This suspenseful thriller features two estranged sisters who are desperate to keep their past in the past. Alexandra leads a picture perfect life, so she is thrown off-guard when her estranged sister shows up at her doorstep, pulling her into another one of her messes. But everything begins to unravel when a local child is put in danger and both women are forced to confront the past, and dig up all the secrets they promised to never speak of.
16. Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan
Elisabeth is an accomplished journalist and a new mother who is struggling to adjust to life in a small town. While alone with her son all day, she feels uneasy. When Sam, a senior at the local women’s college starts babysitting for Elisabeth, they both strike up a friendship. But things start to fall apart when Sam finds an unlikely connection with Elisabeth’s father-in-law, bringing the differences between them to light, including a betrayal that will affect both of them deeply.
17. The Safe Place by Anna Downes
Emily has hit a new low. She just lost her acting agent, her job and her apartment in one day. Scott Denny is dealing with his own issues but when he meets Emily, she believes she’s the one person who can solve them. When Scott offers Emily a summer job as a housekeeper on his French estate, Emily is enchanted with everything from Scott’s wife and daughter to the beauty of the estate. But when Emily realizes that the couple are hiding a dangerous secret, she learns that if she doesn’t play their game, the consequences could be deadly.
18. Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev
Chef Ashna Raje needs a new strategy. She needs to save her beloved restaurant and prove to her estranged mother that she isn’t a complete screw up. But how? When she’s asked to join the cast of Cooking with the Stars, she takes the chance to use it to put her restaurant back on the map. When paired with a celebrity who just happens to be her first love, and someone who ghosted her, she realizes leaps of faith are a recipe for disaster.
19. Brunch and Other Obligations by Suzanne Nugent
Nora, Christina and Leanne would never have found each other if it hadn’t been for their friend Molly. When she dies and leaves gifts and cryptic notes for the women, they are sent on an adventure of having brunch together every month for a year. With funny dynamics and heart-wrenching scenes, this story will remind readers that there’s hope for getting through the hard times, with patience, humor and a good brunch.
20. The Lies That Bind by Emily Giffin
No one’s more surprised than Cecily when she forms an unlikely connection with a mysterious man, Grant, at a bar over a few shots of tequila and several hours of talking. After bidding goodbye the next day, content with a one-night relationship, they both can’t seem to truly leave each other alone. But then Grant disappears in the chaos of 9/11 and it isn’t long before Cecily realizes she isn’t the only one looking for him and has to go digging for the truth.
Ready to escape with your new reads? Book your Getaway today.