2015 Summer Reading Guide: Chick Lit

Let’s be honest, these are the books I most love reading in the summer. Summer is for fluffy (but not dumb) reading.

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
The movie version comes out in the spring (and the sequel is being released this fall), so now is the time to read this worldwide best seller. Will and Louisa couldn’t be a more unlikely pair. Will’s successful, handsome and adventurous until he becomes a quadriplegic in a freak car accident. Louisa lives at home with her parents, never leaves her tiny village, and has no desire to expand her world. When she gets a temporary job as Will’s caretaker, she realizes she needs to prove to him that life is worth living. But is her life going to convince him at all?

The Little Women Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly
If you’re a Little Women fan, there’s basically no way you won’t love this book. The book follows three modern-day sisters who discover a stash of old letters from their great-great-grandmother, Jo March (yes, this book works under the assumption that Jo was a real person, rather than a fictionalized version of Louisa May Alcott) and the book alternates charmingly between the letters and the current lives of the three sisters. And when you’re finished with this book, you’ll probably need to reread Little Women, or at least watch the Christian Bale movie version.

I’ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella
This might possibly be my favorite of all of Sophie Kinsella books (and I’ve read them all). When Poppy’s engagement ring goes missing – and of course it’s a family heirloom – she’s desperate to find it, passing out her number to all the hotel staff. And then her phone gets stolen. In a complete panic, she’s relieved to find a phone in a trashcan which turns out to be the phone of an administrative assistant who just quit. Two pages later, (as only a Sohpie Kinsella heroine can), she’s performing a singing telegram delivery of “All the Single Ladies” for a businessman in the hotel lobby. Prepare to snort with laughter all the way through.

 

The Life Intended by Kristin Harmel
When Kate’s first husband dies unexpectedly just months after they are married, she spends more than a decade mourning him. But by the time the book opens, twelve years after his death, she’s just become engaged to a new man and is ready to move on with her life. Until she begins having ridiculously vivid dreams of her first husband and the life they might have had if he had lived. And when some of the details of those dreams begin appearing in her real life, she can’t help but wonder if there is a message behind the dreams. I blazed through this in about two days. It’s the best kind of chick-lit – light reading that isn’t pointless or poorly written.

 

Landline by Rainbow Rowell
Like pretty much everyone else, I love Rainbow Rowell, and her newest book from last summer wasn’t a disappointment. When Georgie gets the opportunity of a lifetime to pitch her dream television show to a major network, she knows she can’t turn it down, but it means staying behind in California while her husband and children go home for Christmas. With her marriage seriously on the rocks, Georgie is shocked to discover that her old phone at her mom’s house mysteriously connects to her husband as a college student, when they first began dating. Can she make things between them right? And does she even want to?