Five Books I'm Reading This Summer and Five You Should

My oldest daughter...a long, long time ago.  *Post contains affiliated links.* 

That cute little girl in the picture turns sixteen this month! If I live through that, I've got some reading plans for the summer! Time for my annual post of Five Books I'm Reading This Summer and Five You Should. You can read an update to last year's post here. 

Five Books I'm Reading This Summer

We all know that I will read more than five, but this post is already really long! Just keep Scrolling! You can click on any image for the amazon link to that book. 

Charmed at First Sight by Sharla Lovelace 

*Available June 10th*

In the small town of Charmed, Texas, plenty of folks have found the path to true love. But now two outsiders have arrived to shake things up . . . 

The Charmed in Texas series in one of my absolute favorites. I can't wait to meet these new characters and spend some time in my favorite fictional small town. 

Believe Me by JP Delaney

*Available July 24th*

A struggling actor, a Brit in America without a green card, Claire needs work and money to survive. Then she gets both. But nothing like she expected.
 
Claire agrees to become a decoy for a firm of divorce lawyers. Hired to entrap straying husbands, she must catch them on tape with their seductive propositions.
 
The rules? Never hit on the mark directly. Make it clear you’re available, but he has to proposition you, not the other way around. The firm is after evidence, not coercion. The innocent have nothing to hide.
 
Then the game changes.

I LOVED The Girl Before. I will admit that when I saw this was by the same author, I didn't even bother reading the blurb before I requested it from Netgalley.com . After I was approved, I checked it out. I'm in. It sounds so intriguing! 

Untamed Cowboy by Maisey Yates 

*Available June 19th* 

Some things are too perfect to mess with. Bennett Dodge’s relationship with Kaylee Capshaw is one of them. They work together at their veterinary clinic and have been best friends for years. When Bennett’s world is rocked by the appearance of a son he didn’t know he had, he needs Kaylee more than ever. And he doesn’t want anything else to change. But then Kaylee kisses him, and nothing will ever be the same…

Maisy Yates. The Gold Valley Series. That's enough for me.

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch 

Are you happy with your life?” 
Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious. 
Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. 
Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”  
In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

I am WAAAAAYYYYY late to the party on this one. The book has been out two years and I just bought it last month, but I've been told it I will love it. 

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Readers of all ages and walks of life have drawn inspiration and empowerment from Elizabeth Gilbert’s books for years. Now this beloved author digs deep into her own generative process to share her wisdom and unique perspective about creativity.

I will confess I'm not sure about this one. It has been repeatedly recommended to me so I'm going to check it out and keep an open mind. I'll let you know. 

Five Books You Should Read This Summer

The One You Can't Forget By Roni Loren

*Available June 2nd* 

Most days Rebecca Lindt feels like an imposter...
The world admires her as a survivor. But that impression would crumble if people knew her secret. She didn't deserve to be the one who got away. But nothing can change the past, so she's thrown herself into her work. She can't dwell if she never slows down. 

Wes Garrett is trying to get back on his feet after losing his dream restaurant, his money, and half his damn mind in a vicious divorce. But when he intervenes in a mugging and saves Rebecca—the attorney who helped his ex ruin him—his simple life gets complicated. 

Their attraction is inconvenient and neither wants more than a fling. But when Rebecca's secret is put at risk, both discover they could lose everything, including what they never realized they needed: each other.

This is the second in Roni Loren's The Ones Who Got Away series. It's amazing. I love it and will posting a full review of the second book on June 2nd. If you are a romance fan, you will love it, too. You can fully enjoy this book without having read the first in the series, but I highly recommend that one as well! 

Breath of Deceit by Selena Laurence

The Departed gets a modern upgrade with the injection of cybercrime and four sexy Irish mob brothers fighting to stay alive amidst drug deals and FBI probes.

You can read my full review of Breath of Deceit here. Short version: Twisty fast-paced crime book that will leave you dying for the next in the series! 

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline*

*Ernest Cline wins my vote for favorite landing page on an author website.* 

In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines—puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. 

But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

Yes, I know. They made a movie. And if you take it as a separate entity, it's a pretty good movie. But read the book anyway. Why? Only about 7% of what happened in the movie happens the same way in the book. If you were an 80s kid, this book will take you down a memory lane trip in a way that movie didn't even touch. You can read my full review of the book here. 

The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor

In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.
     In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he's put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank . . . until one of them turns up dead.

I got this book as a Christmas present and spent two whole days completely absorbed. I'll be running a full review of it soon, but it's intriguing and eerie with a twist that had me texting my friends who had read it,"WTH?" but in a good way, not in a I-want-to-throw-the-book-across-the-room way. 

I'll Be Gone In the Dark by Michelle McNamara

For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Utterly original and compelling, it has been hailed as a modern true crime classic—one which fulfilled Michelle's dream: helping unmask the Golden State Killer.

It is well-established that I am a big, fat chicken, and while I enjoy watching shows about true crime, I normally can't read about it. Something about the reading process makes it that much more real in my mind. If you get my News and Reviews email, you know that the capture of The Golden State Killer fascinated me. I had to read this. 

I will be sleeping with the lights on for, oh, three or four years now, but if you enjoy true crime or have followed this case at all, I highly recommend this book. 

So, that's my list!

What are you reading this summer?