Wanted: Easy Summer Reads

Elin Hilderbrand writes the best summer beach reads. All of her books are set in Nantucket with a little bit of romance and characters that are dealing with a personal struggle. Love them!

I agree with Boz. I just started reading Elin Hilderbrand's books this summer, and her books are the perfect books for the beach! I'm an English teacher, so I read everything, but Hilderbrand's books can't be beat for beach reading. :)

You've got great taste! Especially since I was going to suggest some of those. ;)

Water for Elephants since the movie is coming out.
The Women by TC Boyle about Frank Lloyd Wright's many loves.
Then along those lines, "Loving Frank".
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Blue Tattoo by Margot Mifflin
The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society
The Center of Everything
The Alchemist
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister.
Life List by Olivia Gentile. *Surprisingly interesting true story about a bird watcher who sacrifices almost everything in her life to see all 9000 bird species.
Pillars of the Earth and World Without End by Ken Follett. *I would have never picked up the first one on my own, but it was a book club read. I thoroughly enjoyed Pillars and couldn't wait to read the next one. Even though they are both about 1000 pages, they are good!

I just picked up Forgotten by Jonathan Franzen to read on our vacation next week.

Try the Big Stone Gap series by Adrianna Trigiani. It sounds by your list that we have pretty similar taste in books & those were some of my faves!

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams ... absolutely HYSTERICAL.

Anything by the following authors:

Sherrilyn Kenyon (also writes as Kinley MacGregor)
Catherine Coulter (especially her FBI Thriller series ... LOVE them)
Jayne Ann Krentz (also writes as Jayne Castle and Amanda Quick ... all great works, but my faves are actually what she writes under the Jayne Castle name).
Katie MacAlister
Christine Feehan
Gena Showalter
J.R. Ward
Johanna Lindsey
Marcus Pelegrimas (find him in the horror section ... but I don't really classify him as such ... he writes paranormal stuff that is really gripping)
L.A. Banks
Lydia Dare

Ok I think that's a long enough list for now LOL Hope that helps.

I can't recommend Shanna Swendson's Katie Chandler series enough, although you may have to order them online. It starts with Enchanted, Inc. and there are 4 of them. It's about a girl who moves to New York from Texas and then starts seeing weird things, and finds out she's a rare person who's completely immune to magic, so she's seeing the things glamour usually hides. It's a cute, light fantasy series.

If you like zombie stuff, World War Z was really good. It's about a reporter who is interviewing people all over the world about the zombie apocolypse, which they have just come back from. It shows how different countries reacted and how they're rebuilding. Very interesting read from a fantasy point of view, but also a socio-political one.

The Hunger Games trilogy looks like it would be up your alley. :) The Game of Thrones series is good too, but I wouldn't consider it 'light'. And how about Pillars of the Earth? You can follow that up with the sequels.

It's a little out there, but for some reason, Geek Love is my "go to" vacay read.

Good suggestions. I would add
Lillian Jackson Braun - The Cat Who.... series
Jim Butcher - The Dresdin Files (it was a short lived TV series, but the books are better)
Rick Riordan - the Percy Jackson series (forget the movie, they messsed it up)
Anything by Tamora Pierce

.

I love Janet Evanovich! Since you read those, you might like Diane Mott Davidson. She has a series featuring "Goldie the caterer". Another entertaining female "detective" of sorts. Easy to get at the library and her newest one just came out. There are already 15 books in this series.

If you liked the Twilight series you might like J.R. Ward's Blackdagger Brotherhood series. It is more intense and not as pg13! I didn't think I'd like another vampire series and a friend pestered me to just read the 1st one ~ I was hooked.

Firefly Lane or any of Kristin Hannah's books!

The Glass Castle and/or Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls.

oh darn!! I was going to recommend the Stephanie Plum series - you have read up to 16?

You might want to try "Dies the Fire" by SM Sterling
and the Series by Terry Goodkind..there are several and I personally didn't think i would like it - but my husband gave it to me when I NEEDED something to read - couldn't put it down!!

Have a wonderful vacation!

The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins or the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris!

Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series . . . love those! (BTW . . . the Stephane Plum series is my favorite summer read . . . we're going on vaca next week and the new books is coming with me!)