Summer Reads

Hey readers,

Summer is here, and so is the melting hot weather (at least where I live). So how do we deal with the hotness? We dive into the escapist worlds, which are sure to delude us into thinking everything is chill. Or at the very least, read about other people’s dramatic lives, so ours seem less exhausting. Escapism! A necessary hobby, especially right now.

Here are some summer reads to take you away!

^{Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse}

| Saga Press/Gallery Books | Adult Fantasy |

This book belongs to the summer goths, and by summer goths, I mean the gay summer goths. It’s about a soft goth boi and his bisexy girlfriend. There are corrupt priests, oceanic travels, Indigenous societies, and god the clothing descriptions alone! If you read this for anything, read it for the honey scene. You will know it when you get to it. Someday this earth will give me someone that maps the stars on my hand like Serapio, and then I’ll believe in god.

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^{City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty}

| Harper Voyager | Adult Fantasy |

Books that give me ancient civilization vibes automatically give summer vibes. Ruins, old rumors of the past, cities so old that most can barely remember the truth of its story. That’s what Daevabad feels like. This book simmers with the type of anger and passion laying wait for thousands of years, suddenly brought into an ancient city of mythological beings. Chakraborty is so gifted at making a place feel real that absolutely everything simmers, especially between Dara and Nahri.

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^{Lobizona by Romina Garber}

| Wednesday Books | YA contemporary fantasy |

Lobizona has that hot summer magic feel to it. Set near the everglades, there’s a magical academy for Argentinian teens, all of them brujas and werewolves (Lobizona if you prefer). This book is so much fun. There are feminist werewolf boys, delicious drinks, and witch magic. I loved every little bitty bit of it.

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^{We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal}

| Farrar, Straus, and Giroux | YA fantasy |

Hafsah Faizal single-handedly destroyed all other YA fiction for me with this book. It is one of those books I could read over and over. Set in a world inspired by ancient Arabia, it is full of mythological beings, beautiful landscapes full of warmth, and gorgeous prose. Read this if you need more road trip fantasy with the found family trope.

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^{Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade}

| Avon | Contemporary Romance |

In my mind, this book would be the perfect date for the beach (pre-pandemic, obviously). If you’re a fantasy fan and want something cathartic to fill that ending to Game Thrones, this is the perfect read to soothe those wounds. It has those contemporary summery rom-com vibes, but Olivia Dade gives you a plus-size heroine and a hero not so very far off from Nikolai Coster-Waldau. What if the Game of Thrones actors wrote fanfic behind the scenes and ended up falling for a confident plus-size girl?

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^{Hang the Moon by Alexandria Bellefleur}

| Avon | Contemporary Romance |

I hardly ever see publishers promoting an m/f bisexual romance as queer, and this gay girl is just so ecstatic about that. Like the great romcoms of Nora Ephron, this one is set in Seattle during the summer. The heroine is saying goodbye to her best friend just before starting her new life in London, but her friend’s brother shows her around trying to prove that romance isn’t dead. From karaoke to horribly embarrassing (and yet eerily real) scenes on a Ferris wheel begin to make this is a book ripe for the summer picking.

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^{Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison}

| Harper Voyager | Urban Fantasy |

Everybody loves a good messy witch in the summer. This is an oldie but a goodie.

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^{Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia}

| Del Rey | Gothic Horror |

Should I also mention that horror is for the summer as well? I don’t know about you, but I love to not only binge-watch horror flicks in the summer, but I also love to read horror in all this sweltering heat (sob). Because if we’re gonna be in pain, we might as well experience horror scarier than this heat.

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^{The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid}

| Harper Voyager | Adult Fantasy |

This will chill you down, especially that ice lake scene. The dusting of snow, the woodsy folklore, and aching romance weaved into a book tackling nationalism will make any vacation extra worth it.