The Vacation Reads Edit: 6 Beach Reads for Your Next Coastal Escape

I LOVED IT! To amplify the experience, I started curating my reading experience, so I would have music that matched the book vibe in the background and tried to be in settings that aligned with the book. Here are a few curated recommendations, starting with the intended feeling and followed by the book, the music, the setting to achieve it (summer edition). 

When my husband and I decided on Italy for our summer holiday last year, I immediately searched for books in the cities we were visiting, and I landed on the perfect Amalfi coast book! One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle . This book transported me to Amalfi before getting on the airplane and landing which is the exact assignment. It’s about Katy, a 30 year old woman engaged and living her life but then loses her mother and truly her best friend right before their long awaited summer vacation just the two of them in Positano, Italy, where Carole, Katy’s mother, spend a life changing summer in her 30s. Katy decides to go anyway and is all consumed by the crystal water, stunning cliffside and soul reviving food (I can vouch for that), she starts finding her joy again and then meets someone that shifts her perspective on her whole life. This book is magical, raw and beautifully immersive. 

Couple it with Italian instrumental music and enjoy!

Another summer escape I thoroughly enjoyed on a girl’s trip to Bali (Post to come shortly) was The Wedding People by Alison Espach. The story follows a depressed divorcee names Phoebe that decides to end her life in a hotel she has always wanted to visit but when she arrived she found that the whole place has been booked for seemingly the wedding of the decade. The story follows Phoebe’s observation of the wedding people, her encounters with them, and especially the bride, who can’t be more opposite. The writing is immersive, darkly humorous and heart warming. It coupled perfectly with the Balinese experience, being in a luxury resort hotel and have spiritual exploits with my best friends. 

I love a heart melting, hot romance book in a bubble bath or at the spa lounge in a resort while my husband and son are at the pool and Just For The Summer by Abby Jimenez ticked all the boxes for me. It’s the third book in the Part of your world series, an interconnected series, so you don’t have to read the books in order but I recommend it because it adds to the experience. The story follows Emma and Justin, two strangers that find each other through reddit because they are both cursed, every person they have ever dated, finds their soulmate right after they breakup. Emma and Justin decide to break the curse by dating and then breaking up with each other during the summer since Emma is a traveling nurse and moves around from city to city with her best friend, it’s the perfect plan, what could go wrong? 

Abby Jimenez is great at adding depth to her characters and story, which amplified my experience since they felt like real people. 

I am so glad I picked up Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan right before heading to the airport
for our flight to Thailand while 5 months pregnant because it was short and sweet. I read most of it on the flight and finished it by the pool. Nora is a screen writer for the hallmark style movies that pays the bills but is nothing major. Until the script she writes about her divorce gets picked up by a major production company, and she meets the main male character playing her big mistake of an ex-husband. 

This book is for the girlies that want something quick and easy to read on holiday in between activities and sight seeing that will not call for too much brain power.

The best book genera to read either on a night flight while everyone is asleep or pool side under the sun in my opinion is a fast, twisted thriller and Lisa Jewell did not disappoint! None of This is True by Lisa Jewell is like one of those short thriller series Netflix comes up with every once in a while that is so twisted a few episodes is all it calls for. The book starts with a popular podcaster, Alex, celebrating her 40th birthday at a new pub with her husband and friends, when she runs into Josie in the bathroom, another woman there celebrating her 40th birthday just her and her husband. There is something off about Josie and she offers her story for Alex’s podcast. Things get interesting from there and when I tell you this book is twisted, it’s TWISTED. 

Another plus with this one is that the podcast element makes it perfect on audio, which I like to listen to when getting ready for outings on a holiday. 

Anti-Brain Rot