Books I'm Reading on Vacation

Call it a marathon.

One of my favorite parts of going on vacation? Planning the books I’m going to bring along with me.

First, a quick reading update. I just finished Black Cake, which turned out to be one of the best books I’ve read all year. Love! Love! Love. I cannot say enough about this debut novel from the journalist Charmaine Wilkerson. Have you read it? I want to hear what you thought. Wilkerson did everything pitch perfect in that novel. I also finished Asha Lemmie’s The Wildest Sun, and I absolutely ADORED this book, too. Such a fascinating tale, and Lemmie’s writing is so beautiful. Between her first novel Fifty Words for Rain and this one, Asha has become one of my must-read authors.

I’m halfway through Kristin Hannah’s The Women, and apparently so is everyone else in the nation, since it immediately hit number one on the NYT bestseller list! Like every other Hannah novel, it’s incredible, insanely human and I love the characters. But it’s also gruesome and really tough to read at times. I’ve had to take breaks from the carnage.

While it’s hard to predict which books will actually appeal to me once I’m sitting on a tropical beach, here’s what I’m bringing:

1. Mother Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon. I just keep hearing about this Reese pick. Someone said it’s charming. Another said you can’t put it down. I decided it might be a fun pick for the beach.

2. The Bee Sting by Paul McMurray. A New Yorker Essential Read and a NYT Top Book of 2023, I can’t wait to dive into this very complicated family story. It’s a heartbreaker.

3. Such a Bad Influence by Olivia Muenter. Olivia and I just met because we are publishing books on June 4th together; this thriller/suspense novel about a former social media star who goes missing sounds fantastic.

Have you read any of these? If so, which one should I start with? Love hearing your opinions on all of the ones you read.

xo