My Best Summer Reading in 2022

I read constantly all year, of course, but here are some of my favorite reads from summer 2022. Most of these are new for summer 2022, although I included a couple older titles (one much older release) that just came to my attention this summer.

 

Most of my summer reads were thrillers. I really enjoyed the upcoming novel, You’re Invited, by Amanda Jayatissa. In this twisty thriller, maya feels strange about receiving her invitation to her ex-bestie Kaavi’s wedding. First, the former friends haven’t spoken in years, and second, Kaavi’s engaged to Amaya’s ex. But, after a personal invitation from Kaavi’s family and encouragement from her new bestie, Beth, Amaya decides to return to Sri Lanka for the massive wedding celebration, and find a way to stop the wedding. This is a twisty thriller with fascinating social media influencer themes. 

Things We Do In The Dark, by Jennifer Hillier, is a twisty story where almost everyone’s got a dark secret they need to keep hidden at all costs. This is a fast-paced suspense story, with complicated, well-developed characters. The story opens when Paris Peralta comes home to find her wealthy, famous, much-older husband dead and covered in blood in his bathroom. Paris didn’t have anything to do with it, but — in my very favorite kind of thriller set-up — she doesn’t have a good alibi because she was off dealing with complications from an entirely different set of dark secrets.

Finally, my last summer thriller was The It Girl. I was supposed to read Ruth Ware’s new thriller, The It Girl, as part of a readalong, but it was impossible to put down.  I always love Ruth Ware thrillers for twisty, not-gory, page-turning suspense stories. The interesting part of this thriller isn’t figuring out the murderer (it’s the character who had the opportunity) but in trying to figure out why.

 In YA fiction, If You Could See The Sun, by Ann Liang, uses a supernatural invisibility power to tell a moving, realistic story about class, money, and adolescence in Beijing. When high school Alice Sun discovers her invisibility power, she immediately uses it to earn money to pay her exorbitant private school school fees. As the Beijing Ghost, Alice will do the secret tasks and favors, all anonymously.  Once Alice started getting secrets from her classmates, I thought this was going to turn Gossip Girl, but there’s a uniquely Beijing flavor. No mean girls or gossipy backstabbing here, as much as ambitious high-school students willing to do anything for success. If You Could See The Sun tells a distinctly Beijing coming-of-age story.

For retro pulpy fun, I read Valley of the Dolls. In this old show business melodrama, a 30-year-old woman is basically a withered old hag, but fortunately there are endless pills to sleep more, to lose weight and to just take the edge off the glamorous dramas. I was glad to finally read something that’s referenced in pop culture, and I enjoyed Jennifer and Neely’s stories, but don’t forget that a lot of the drama was pretty dated. 

You’ll need to be in the right mood for my last summer recommendation: Honor, by Thrity Umrigar. Honor tells the story of an an Indian-American journalist, returning to India after many years to help a friend cover the disturbing story of an honor killing and maiming in a remote village. Investigating the attack, the love story, and the local village life leads her to reexamine and reconsider her own life and history. It’s a moving story, with complex characters. Definitely one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I did technically read it this summer, but don’t mistake this novel for a relaxing beach read. 

How about you? What did you read this summer? What have you read recently that I should read next?