Second Quarter Round Up
Hello Hungry Readers,
It is for real pool weather where I am. People always talk about beach reads, but of course beach reads are whatever you want. A librarian I know always likes to mention Lin Manuel Miranda took the biography Hamilton to the beach. I sometimes save the scariest stories for reading near a bunch of other people in the hot sun.
I definitely get pickier about my reads this time of year. More fun reads, whatever fun means to my brain at the moment. Less patience for slogs or anything that doesn’t tickle my brain right away.
Bookshop Links included.
Guavas and Grudges by Alexis Castellanos is the my crush is my sworn enemy but help he’s still hot story you may have been craving. Ana Maria runs into the hot guy she met on a college tour and discovers he’s in town for the summer to hang with his cousins, who run the rival Cuban bakery in town. Oh no.
Ben and Beatriz by Katalina Gamarra - Okay but what if Much Ado About Nothing was set in a present day college, and Beatriz was the Mexican girl who would get up and rage about capitalism in class. And goes with her cousin to her cousin’s boyfriend’s friend Ben’s house for spring break. And Ben is everything Beatriz hates, but like also soooooo hot. And so they start hooking up, but of course, they don’t like each other. Nope.
Can’t Help Faking in Love by Swati Hegde - Harsha’s family is not very warm fuzzy, and they think she’s being silly trying to make it one her own. The only thing they approve of is her rich boyfriend. Except, they broke up. But her cousin sees her with a different guy and invites him to the wedding. And now she just has to convince that guy, her barista, to be her fake date. What could go wrong?
Detective Aunty by Uzma Jalaluddin is a cozy mystery reminiscent of the Vera Wong series and yet also opposite it. Similar in that an older Asian women discovers that she has let her self get a bit isolated, and by reconnecting she can help find things the police can’t or won’t. And yet very different too. Kausar is much quieter, even if she will stand up to things like police hassling a young girl. If you love a book where the character invites all the suspects to dinner, this will make you happy.
One in a Million by Beverley Kendall - I am not always the target audience for books that feature IVF shenanigans, but having read Beverly Kendall’s Token where she tackled several sensitive subjects, I went in. Two strangers discover they are parents, one who had planned on being a parent and one who had planned on it eventually. Oh also, one of them is a super famous singer.
A Gentleman’s Gentleman by TJ Alexander is so much pining. I mean what if you needed to go wife shopping for inheritance reasons. And in order to appear fancy, you get a valet, and the valet is like maybe so hot, and so your type, and oh dear.
I Got Abducted By Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming is a delightfully odd as the title. Our heroine gets abducted by aliens, along with a lion, and sent to another planet where she discovers some hot alien dudes. Dorothy is a wildlife biologist, and I loved her nerdy outrage and curiosity about this new environment she had been tossed into.
Gay the Pray Away by Natalie Naudus - Loosely inspired by the author’s own upbringing, what if the secret fantasy books you kept reading, along with the very hot new girl at church helped you realize that, yeah, you were super gay, and also in a cult that you might need to leave. Definitely not an easy read, but it and the author have a happy ending. Also, if you recognize the author’s name from her narration work, she narrates the audio version, and it is a well-crafted listen.
And since it's July, I should probably mention this is when my Hawaiian Christmas reality show being filmed in a Vegas hotel story Presented with Love takes place.
Okay, I should probably be editing or something. Hope you are staying the temperature of your choice with good books.