This month has the shortest list yet, but that’s okay. Once again I’m featuring authors I’ve read from before and enjoyed. You can use the hyperlinked affiliate links to learn more about each book.
1. Tell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sedoti
I loved The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett. It had the best narrative voice I’ve ever read, and the characters were cool and quirky. I expect no less from this one.
The Breakfast Club meets The Usual Suspects in this riveting YA mystery told entirely through the first-person police interviews of four teens over the course of several hours that asks: how far will you go to be remembered?
An influencer, an over achiever, a heartthrob, an outcast, and a conspiracy theorist all go into the woods.
Sometime around midnight, one of them vanishes.
The four teens who came back sit at the police station, and they each have a very different story to tell about the events of the night.
Who is telling the truth? Who is lying? And what truths will their lies reveal? The clock is ticking. Will the real story come out before one of them is gone for good?
2. Home Away From Home by Cynthia Lord
The last thing I read from this author was Rules, so it’s high time I read another of her works.
From Newbery Honor Winner Cynthia Lord, a brilliant story about how to find home when everything around us is changing.
Mia and her mom visit Grandma in Maine every summer, but this year Mia is going alone. Her mom will stay behind to get their house ready to sell. It’ll be a new start, she says, after the divorce.
Mia doesn’t want a new start. She’d rather everything just stayed the same! At least things will be the same at Grandma’s, though. Mia will walk to town for ice cream, and wait by the water, watching for birds, just like always.
Then Mia meets Grandma’s know-it-all new neighbor, who’s just her age. Cayman acts like he belongs at Grandma’s house. He acts like he’s the expert on everything. And when he and Mia spot an unusual white bird of prey, he acts like it’s his job to find out what it is.
Unless, that is, Mia finds out first. And, in her effort to prove herself to him, she makes a decision that will change things for the town, for the bird, for Cayman, and even for herself. Can Mia stop what she’s put into motion?
Acclaimed author Cynthia Lord, with her trademark sensitivity, weaves her love of nature with a profound reflection on what it means to be at home in a changing world.
3. Happy Place by Emily Henry
This girl is the master of slow-burn romance with hunky nerdy boys, and after reading People We Meet on Vacation, I must have more.
A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author 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 six months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends.
Which is how they find themselves sharing the largest bedroom at the Maine cottage that has been their friend group’s yearly getaway for the last decade. Their annual respite from the world, where for one vibrant, blue week they leave behind their daily lives; have copious amounts of cheese, wine, and seafood; and soak up the salty coastal air with the people who understand them most.
Only this year, Harriet and Wyn are lying through their teeth while trying not to notice how desperately they still want each other. Because the cottage is for sale and this is the last week they’ll all have together in this place. They can’t stand to break their friends’ hearts, and so they’ll play their parts. Harriet will be the driven surgical resident who never starts a fight, and Wyn will be the laid-back charmer who never lets the cracks show. It’s a flawless plan (if you look at it from a great distance and through a pair of sunscreen-smeared sunglasses). 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?
Do you want to read anything on my list? Let me know in the comments.
Heather Dowell 