The Olve's Summer Reading List
The first days of summer are here—time to start planning your summer vacation. Here’s what you need to read by the sea, at the campground, on a whirlwind trip overseas, or on an escape to your own backyard.
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Happy Place by Emily Henry Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college—they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now—for reasons they’re still not discussing—they don’t. They broke up five months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends. After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week…in front of those who know you best? |
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Excavations by Kate Myers On a remote archeological site in Greece, the mythic home of the first Olympics, four women discover an unusual artifact. It’s a piece of history that definitely shouldn’t exist. And for the head archaeologist in charge, a relic himself, it means something’s gone horribly wrong. |
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Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum White Lotus meets Gossip Girl in this sizzling debut. Welcome to Salcombe, the ritzy enclave of New York’s Fire Island, where the sun is hot, the money is old, and the booze and Botox flow freely. But this summer, it’s not just the tennis rivalries that are cutthroat. A body turns up, and everyone has something to hide. Scandal is par for the course on the island, but which misbehaving prepster is capable of murder? |
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Hula by Jasmin Iolani Hakes Jasmin Iolani Hakes's stunning debut novel is both a sweeping introduction to Hawaii's history and culture and a multi-generational epic. As Hula charts successive generations of the fictional Naupaka family (with a spotlight on its mothers and daughters and their ties to the hula tradition), it deftly explores the detrimental impacts colonialism has had on Hawaiians—past and present, fictional and real. |
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Good Fortune by C. K. Chau So the trip to the Big Apple didn’t pan out. Pick up the latest Austen update, set in New York’s Chinatown. Hong Kong investor Darcy Wong has purchased a decrepit but beloved community recreation center; his real estate agent is the striving mother of this adaptation’s Elizabeth, a.k.a. LB, one of five sisters Mrs. Chen plans to launch out of meager circumstances. Sparks fly as LB goes to war against Darcy for the future of her neighborhood—and love inevitably ensues. |
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Tom Lake by Anne Patchett Fans of The Dutch House and Commonwealth will be more than satisfied with Ann Patchett's latest novelistic exploration of love and family dynamics. Tom Lake braids together two engrossing narratives: one following a woman's romance with famous actor in the past, the other of the same woman's daughters hearing this story, and coming to a new understanding of a woman they thought they knew, at their family orchard in the near-present |
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A Quitter Paradise
by Elysha Chang When Sarah Jessica Parker launched her literary imprint SJP Lit, she promised it would publish "big-hearted literary and commercial works ... inclusive of ... underrepresented voices." The first book on the actor's imprint is Elysha Chang's debut novel A Quitter's Paradise, a drolly comedic tale about a young Taiwanese American scientist doing all the wrong things at work and in her personal life, while trying to avoid what her parents' immigrant story and her mother's death might mean to her. |
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Loot: A Novel
by Tania James A hero's quest taking place across India, England, and France, Loot is an engrossing heist meets love story about a young artist coming of age in the eighteenth century. Throughout the book's 304 pages, Tania James takes readers on a journey spanning two continents and seven decades and tracing the gruesome legacy of colonialism. Intrigue, romance, and an elusive mechanical tiger? |
At the OLVE, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We are not affiliated nor do we have an advertising partnerships with the brands we may feature.