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Cover of Great Big Beautiful Life. Background is red and orange shapes, with the man sitting cross legged on the bottom of the cover, looking up, and the woman sitting about midway up the cover, looking to the left. Both are holding books.

Summer Reads

Written by alamancelibraries on . Posted in Book Reviews.

SRP Logo - Color Our World. Book pile on bottom, with open book on top. Coming out of the book are the words, as well as graphics - books, ink, flowers, sun, scissors, butterfly, paint brush, pencil, rainbow, hot air balloon, bird, etc.

Our Summer Reading Program began this week, and we wanted to review a few light and enjoyable books to get the summer started. If you’re reading, you should be logging your minutes in our Summer Reading Program through Beanstack. After you’ve logged 90 minutes, Beanstack will let you know you won a prize, and you can come to the library to pick up your free book. Every 90-100 minutes after that, you’ll get a raffle ticket to enter in our end-of-summer basket giveaway.

Beanstack works best on their app, but you also can use a computer to log your minutes on the ACPL Beanstack site.

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

Cover of Great Big Beautiful Life. Background is red and orange shapes, with the man sitting cross legged on the bottom of the cover, looking up, and the woman sitting about midway up the cover, looking to the left. Both are holding books.

My beach read pick for the summer is Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry.  It’s the story of two authors who compete to write the biography of a former tabloid princess who no one has seen in years.  The book is humorous and light, with a romantic storyline and a little bit of spice.  If you’ve enjoyed Henry’s other novels, you will be pleased with this read. 

– Amy K., Branch Manager, May Memorial Library

The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin by Alison Goodman

Cover of The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin. The background is purple, with a couple of women driving a carriage, wearing pink and purple dresses, elaborate hats, and flowers in baskets.

This is the second of a feel-good series featuring two “old maids” in Regency England. Augusta and Julia Colebrook solve mysteries, right wrongs, and rebel against what society thinks mature women (or really, women at all) should do with their time. This book is a cozy mystery/proper romance, and is perfect for sitting outside under a tree with an icy drink.

– Mary Beth A., Community Engagement Librarian

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher

Cover of Swordheart. The cover has a mirror image, split in the center, with the sword, birds, flowers, and towers.

A man trapped in a sword. A woman trapped (literally) in her own bedroom by a scheming aunt who wants her to marry her son. When Hella takes the sword off the wall, and tries to hurt herself with it, Sarkis awakes and pleads with her to NOT use the sword in such a way. Instead, they escape and then work to return her to her rightful inheritance. This is a cozy fantasy with a lovely romance, and enough action (sword fights with an awakened sword) to make the story fly along.

– Mary Beth A., Community Engagement Librarian

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