The school holidays are nearly upon us and I cannot tell you how much I'm looking forward to our family holiday. With the animals we normally only manage to get away for a week once a year but this summer we will be beside the seaside for ten whole days.
I'm so excited about it I've already bought the books I'll be packing away in my suitcase. I've gone for paperbacks, for obvious reasons, with three being fiction and one non-fiction.
Incidentally does anyone else scrutinise what people are reading around the pool on holiday behind their sunglasses? Or is that just me? Obviously ebooks have taken some of the joy out of that particular hobby of mine but there's still a few on sunloungers reading paperbacks with edges that curl up in the heat.
My Box-Shaped Heart by Rachael Lucas
[I'm reading this book as part of a sponsored instagram post scheduled in the next week or so.]
I've been a big fan of Rachael's writing for some time. She started writing with her blog and self-published her debut, Sealed with a Kiss, that was bought and re-published by Pan Macmillan. Rachael went on the write more books for adults. My Box-Shaped Heart is Rachael's second young adult novel.
It's the story of Ed and Holly who form an unlikely friendship around a swimming pool. Holly wants to be invisible and Ed returns to the swimming pool because it was part of his old life.
I love reading a book that resembles what I'm doing in real life. So reading about a swimming pool whilst being beside a swimming pool gets a big thumb up from me.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Anne Shaffer & Annie Barrows
I started reading this book a few years ago and really enjoyed it. Then, for some reason, I stopped reading it half way through. Now it's become a film - a film I really want to see - so I'm determined to start it again.
Juliet Ashton is a writer and has writer's block. The war has just come to an end, it is 1946, when she receives a letter from a reader in Guernsey. They start corresponding and she soon receives letters from members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. She learns about life living on the island under German occupation and sets sail to visit.
The Sunday Lunch Club by Juliet Ashton
Okay, so this is weird (and completely accidental) but I've just realised the author of this book has the same name as the main character in the previous.
Juliet is actually a nom de plume for writer Bernie Strachan. She has also written under the name Claire Sandy and it was one of her novels written under this name, called A Very Big House in the Country, that I read one summer a few years ago and LOVED. I thoroughly recommend it if you want a book to read about summer during the summer.
Claire captured families so brilliantly in her novels under that pen name I'm thinking she'll do a fabulous job under the Juliet name, too. The Sunday Lunch Club is about Anna and her extended family who meet for lunch every few weeks. Drama is on the horizon.
Hungry Heart by Jennifer Weiner
This is Jennifer Weiner's first memoir and I'm really excited to read it. I loved her earlier books: Good in Bed, In Her Shoes and Goodnight Nobody. In fact, Good In Bed is probably one of my favourite 'women's fiction' books of all time. Hungry Heart is described as 'adventures in life, love and writing' which sounds right up my street.
I almost always pick up a book in the airport book shop, too, and I'm tempted by Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman as I'm probably the only person who hasn't read it yet.
So, what about you? What have you got planned to read this summer?
