Busy Bee Speech posted her summer reading list last week (you can find her post here).  As you all know I am a BIG fan of reading and LOVE summer because of all the reading I usually get to enjoy.  I loved Lauren’s post so much that I decided to share my own summer reading list!

Keep in mind all of these books on my list are for pure enjoyment!!!  I do have a few professional books I am reading but this post is about the fun books I am looking forward to reading this summer.  So…here goes nothing:

1.  What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty:  My book club is reading this book this month and will be discussing it the beginning of July so its my number one book on my list!

Synopsis from Amazon.com:  Alice Love is twenty-nine, crazy about her husband, and pregnant with her first child.

Synopsis from Amazon.com: A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs.

It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

4.  Divergent by Veronica Roth:  This is the first book in Roth’s trilogy and I’m hoping that if I like book #1 I’ll read all three.  It has the same feel as Hunger Games but I haven’t read it yet so the jury is still out.

Synopsis from Amazon.com:  In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she’s chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she’s kept hidden from everyone because she’s been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

8.  Miles to Go by Richard Paul Evans:  I love all of Richard Paul Evans books and this series is no exception!  This is book number 2 of the series but I am looking forward to continuing the journey with Alan.

Synopsis from Amazon.com: Alan Christoffersen, a once-successful advertising executive, wakes one morning to find himself injured, alone, and confined to a hospital bed in Spokane, Washington. Sixteen days earlier, reeling from the sudden loss of his wife, his home, and his business, Alan left everything he knew behind and set off on an extraordinary cross-country journey. Carrying only a backpack, he planned to walk to Key West, the farthest destination on his map. But a vicious roadside stabbing has interrupted Alan’s trek and robbed him of his one source of solace: the ability to walk. Homeless and facing months of difficult recovery, Alan has nowhere to turn ‘until a mysterious woman enters his life and invites him into her home. Generous and kind, Angel seems almost too good to be true, but all is not as it appears. Alan soon realizes that before he can return to his own journey, he must first help Angel with hers. From one of America’s most beloved and bestselling storytellers comes an astonishing tale of life and death, love and second chances, and why sometimes the best way to heal your own suffering is by helping to heal someone else’s. Inspiring, moving, and full of wisdom, Miles to Go picks up where the bestseller The Walk left off, continuing the unforgettable series about one man’s unrelenting search for hope.

9.  Dark Places by Gillian Flynn:  I have read Flynn’s Sharp Objects and Gone Girl novels and they are fantastic psychological thriller/mysteries.  They are dark at times but I very much love the twists and turns in her books.  And yes, her books are the kind of books that stick with you for days after reading them.

Synopsis from Amazon.com:    I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ.

Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived–and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who’ve long forgotten her. 

The Kill Club is a macabre secret society obsessed with notorious crimes. When they locate Libby and pump her for details–proof they hope may free Ben–Libby hatches a plan to profit off her tragic history. For a fee, she’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club . . . and maybe she’ll admit her testimony wasn’t so solid after all.

As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the narrative flashes back to January 2, 1985. The events of that day are relayed through the eyes of Libby’s doomed family members–including Ben, a loner whose rage over his shiftless father and their failing farm have driven him into a disturbing friendship with the new girl in town. Piece by piece, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started–on the run from a killer.

10.  Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen:  I know it’s cliche’ but I don’t care…Pride and Preducide is my favorite book of all time!  I have it on book format, on my kindle and on my kindle app on my phone and guess what?  I’ve started reading it all over again!  I can’t help it.  I just love it so much!!!  In fact, I love anything by Jane Austen but NOTHING beats Pride and Prejudice in my opinion! 🙂

Synopsis from Amazon.com:  In one of the most universally loved and admired English novels, a country squire of no great means must marry off his five vivacious daughters. Jane Austen’s art transformed this effervescent tale of rural romance into a witty, shrewdly observed satire of English country life. A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

A few more classics I have on my Kindle already that I have yet to read but are on my list….(I know what you are thinking…how have I gone all my life without reading these classics?  I know, I know…no judgments please.  At least they are on my list, right?!):

  

   

Ok so that is my list! Maybe a bit ambitious but I like to have tons of options!  And all of these books look so so so good!!!!  As I said, I love me some summer reading 🙂

So what are some of the books on your summer reading list?  Please share!  I’m always looking for good books to read!!!

Enjoy and happy talking…and of course, reading!