Seasonal
Best Beach Reads Worth Your Tote Bag
A beach read does not need to be lightweight. It needs to survive sand, sunscreen, and one bottle of seltzer per chapter, and it needs to grab you fast enough that you forget the kid building a moat at your feet. These eight do that — page-turners with enough texture that you do not feel cheated when you close them.
8 books on this list.
Fourth Wingby Rebecca Yarros
4.0“Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros 2023 review. Violet Sorrengail, a fragile scribe, is forced into the brutal dragon-riding war college. The first book of the Empyrean series and the romantasy novel that defined the 2023-2024 BookTok moment.”
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugoby Taylor Jenkins Reid
5.0“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid 2017 review. An aging Hollywood icon agrees to tell the true story of her career and her seven marriages, but only to an unknown journalist. The TikTok-era literary fiction novel that defined contemporary Hollywood-memoir-fiction.”
It Ends with Usby Colleen Hoover
4.0“Colleen Hoover at her most daring. A romance that refuses to be comfortable, and is more powerful for it.”
Six of Crowsby Leigh Bardugo
5.0“Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo 2015 review. A crew of six outcasts attempts an impossible heist in the corrupt city of Ketterdam. The YA fantasy heist novel that defined the contemporary Grishaverse and made Bardugo the major YA fantasy writer of her generation.”
A Game of Thronesby George R. R. Martin
5.0“A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin 1996 review. The book that rewrote what epic fantasy was allowed to do. Westeros, the Iron Throne, the deaths nobody saw coming. Required reading.”
The Midnight Libraryby Matt Haig
4.0“A gorgeous concept executed with warmth and wit. The Midnight Library will make you think differently about the choices you have made - and the ones still ahead.”
American Godsby Neil Gaiman
5.0“American Gods by Neil Gaiman 2001 review. An ex-convict named Shadow takes a job as bodyguard to a strange man named Wednesday and learns the old gods of immigration are still here, dying slow. The defining American urban fantasy of the 2000s.”
The Lightning Thiefby Rick Riordan
5.0“The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan 2005 review. Percy Jackson, twelve, discovers he is the son of Poseidon and that someone has stolen Zeus's master lightning bolt. The first Percy Jackson novel and the middle-grade fantasy series that defined the post-Harry Potter mythological-YA register.”