Seaside Reads 2022

Pausing my vacation posts for a day to share some seaside read picks. I have a lot of books I want to get through this summer and I made sure to read through a bunch of the ones I thought would be good seaside reads during the first half of the summer. Did I lug a tote bag of books to Cape Cod in early July to take these photos and make a Reel? You bet I did.

I love each of the 5 books I picked out that I think are perfect seaside reads or you can read not at the beach or lake and get the seaside feels.

I chose:

Beach Read by Emily Henry. I wrote a review recently for the book. January Andrews is a romance writer and she decides to spend the summer at her late father’s lakeside cottage. She is having writer’s block and feeling the pressure from her publisher’s to write a book by the end of the summer. Her next door neighbor ends up being her college rival, Augustus Everett, who also happens to be having writer’s block. They make a deal to try writing a book in the other’s genre and end up getting to know each other beyond what they remembered about each other in college. This is an enemies to friends to lovers book and made me more emotional than I anticipated!
The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren. I wrote a review for this book earlier in the summer. Olive’s twin sister marries Ethan’s younger brother and at the wedding everyone except for Olive and Ethan get food poisoning. Rather than let the honeymoon to Maui go to waste, Olive and Ethan are talked into taking the trip together. The problem is they have to pretend to be the newlyweds and they hate each other. This is a hilarious enemies to lovers book.
It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey. Click here for my review. One of my favorite books of the whole year. Piper, a socialite from LA, is sent to live in Westport, Washington, where her late biological father was a fisherman. While there she meets grumpy sea captain, Brendan, and despite being total opposites they cannot fight the attraction or feelings that develop between them. A perfect grumpy sunshine book.
Hook, Line, & Sinker by Tessa Bailey. My review for this spinoff to It Happened One Summer can be found here. This novel picks up a few months after It Happened One Summer. Piper’s younger sister, Hannah, convinces the director for the movie she is working on to film his short film in Westport. She feels like it fits the movie, makes a good impression on the director who she’s crushing on, and she can visit Piper. She also became friends with Brendan’s best friend, Fox, when she was staying there with Piper and they’ve been talking daily for the last few months. But are they just friends? This is a great friends to lovers book.
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry. I still have to review this one, but I really enjoyed it. Poppy is a travel writer who gets to go all over the world and stay in luxurious hotels all expensed by the fancy magazine she works for. But she’s been feeling unfulfilled lately despite having her dream job. When her friend asks her when the last time she was truly happy was, she remembers. It was her last vacation with Alex, her best friend, two years ago. The novel goes back and forth in time from present day to Poppy and Alex’s yearly summer vacations starting back in college. For years these unlikely best friends would go on a trip together every summer. That is until two years ago when something happened on their trip and they didn’t really talk or see each other again. Poppy decides she needs to make things right with Alex again because she misses him and he’s who makes her happy. She tries to get him to agree to one more summer vacation for old time’s sake and hopes to win his friendship back. This is a great friends to lovers/slow burn romance.