The Tulipped Girl

Summer Reading, a dreaded task for me during my kindergarten through 12th grade public school experience. Now, it’s oddly something I have so much fun partaking in and even challenging myself to do. All I seem to find myself doing now in the summer is reading and often times it’s my excuse to stay inside of air conditioned places instead of outside getting sweaty lol.

So, here are some of my favorite summer reads, some old and some new, ranging in categories some cutesy romances, a few with realism influence, and of course who doesn’t love a good book to cry late at night to? And so, while they may not all be set in the summer season here are my top 5 summer reads. 

(I also reserve the right to update this list if my opinions change at any point, you don’t know what the future holds!)

Call Me By Your Name

Written by André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name tells the story of a first love experience between an Italian adolescent and his fathers college-aged summer guest. Exploring all of the beautiful, giddy, and anxious feelings that come with it. Elio, a young teenage boy is in fact all too relatable in the sense that he expresses all the internal turmoil that we tend to go through and the anxiety of embarking upon a new experience. Relatable in how we tend to prepare ourselves for the other shoe to drop when things get good, that we convince ourselves that good things can’t come without a catch. 

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

One of the last conversations in the book: one shared between Elio and his father made me cry like a baby. I can’t lie. It made me think about how in loving someone we have to be willing to eventually in some way let them go and grieve them when they’re gone, whether things end amicably or not. And when Elio shows how unprepared he was for this even with all his overthinking and ruminations it reminds me of just how young he really is. How when we are young we are often so ready to blame everyone else or the world when things don’t go our way. How upset he is for his summer coming to an end and dwelling on how much time he and Oliver wasted, he comes to realize that he himself has played a part in his own unhappiness which sadly as we have all experienced in one way or another is inevitably, a part of growing up.

RIPE

Written by Sarah Rose Etter, RIPE tells the story of a woman trapped in the new age tech world of Silicon Valley. Similar to a pressure cooker there is this black hole that has been following Cassie her whole life. From her earliest memories of when she was young till now, in her new life in the tech capital of the world. She battles the never ending demands of her work and not being able to fit in and play chameleon as one of the “Believers” (those who are or those pretending to be built for the monstrous late-capitalist tech industry) It’s a pressure cooker, and this black hole represents her fears, anxieties and depression that grow deep within her. It is hidden from the outside yet deep within her being. 

A hole so dark and black that it’s still just a few shades deeper than the night sky and carries hues darker then total darkness in a room. The question is can it be disarmed or changed or made smaller, less scary or less dangerous? It consumes her every thought as it follows her to work, to dinner and drinks with friends, during sex, and to the clinic. It is a pressure cooker that is particularly special, in that as it grows instead of exploding and taking its surroundings down with it, that it may come to consume her being entirely.

The Summer of Broken Rules

Written by K.L. Walther The Summer of Broken Rules is everything you could think of when it comes to a true summer romance. Our main character Meredith and her parents are on their way to join her extended family in Martha’s Vineyard, the mecca of summer fun in Massachusetts, to begin the summer celebrations for her cousin’s wedding. After losing her sister a year and a half ago she has lost touch and closed herself off from the world but this summer she is determined to reconnect and open her heart, little does she know a groomsman of the wedding party might sneak his way up there too. 

As per family tradition on the island the game of assassin begins and Meredith’s friends and family form a web of alliances, and  Meredith’s goal this year is to win the game in the name of her sister Claire. But in an unexpected alliance with Wit Witry, stepbrother of the groom she finds herself unexpectedly drawn to him. From late night talks to wedding party activities she begins to share more and more of herself with him and faces her grief and (understandable) hesitancy towards new connections in ways that she never thought she would. Her time on the island is limited and that introduces another set of troubles when it comes to letting herself be open to connections and love. But with the end of the season while it’s the closing of a chapter it can also become the beginning of something new.

Blue Sisters

Written by Coco Mellors, Blue Sisters follows siblings Bonnie, Avery and Lucky grappling with the tragic loss of their middle sister. 

It’s been said that our grief for loved ones gone away is just all of our love summed with nowhere on this plane to go. These three sisters are dealing with the grieving process a year after losing their beloved glue-like sister Nicky Blue. While dealing with their own real-world problems they come to the mutual understanding that beyond their personal struggles, beyond the past, beyond their own blood that they are united in their grief. 

The 3rd person writing style of this novel captures the sonder amidst even a connection as strong as sisterhood. That while their nature and upbringings may have been the same that their feelings and emotions can be so completely different. Which does cause some issues amongst the three along the way but may ultimately bring these estranged sisters back together. Knowing that dead or alive, speaking or not they will forever remain united in grief.

New Animal

Written by Ella Baxter, New Animal is what I can only be accurately described as a dark comedy and I mean I truly laughed. Amelia is a tightrope artist walking the line between grief and eroticism. She’s a woman approaching her thirties whose closest relationships (other than that of her now dead mother) can be found on her phone, on Tinder. Swiping left and right almost every night she prefers to substitute her sadness with sex as she defends it’s a “salve” for her injury. 

Overwhelmed with the unexpected death of her mother Amelia flees to live with her birth father and gets involved in the BDSM community there. She’s shockingly unprepared as a woman who runs through men on a daily basis for the extensive rules and consent conversations between those in who participate the community. It’s an interesting parallel to the naivety of Amelia, the cosmetic mortician to the morality of those around her. As she navigates a version of herself without her mother she works to find her place in the world with the help of her family and the unexpectedly family she forms, the members at the kink club.