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Books

31st May 2019

5 books you’ll want to add to your must-read list this June

Keeley Ryan

Summer is finally here.

Or, well, almost.

Over the last few months, we’ve been steadily making our way through the ever-growing ‘to read’ pile beside our bed for the first half to the year.

But with the changing of the season comes plenty of new page-turning reads.

Whether you’re looking for a novel you can dive into while sitting poolside or simply want a brilliant book to curl up with on the weekends, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered.

1. The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez

Kristen Petersen is perfectly fine. She has friends she’d fight to the death for and the very best dog in the world: Stuntman Mike. In fact, everything’s calm in the world of Kristen, until she starts to plan her best friend’s wedding and meets the best man, Josh Copeland.

Josh is funny, sexy, stands up to her sarcasm, and is always one snack ahead of her hangry. Even Stuntman Mike adores him. But he wants a big family, and Kristen knows children are probably not a part of her future.

She’s sure he’d be better off with someone else, someone who can give him everything he wants, so Kristen keeps him at arm’s length: in the Friend Zone. But as their attraction grows, it’s harder and harder to resist falling for the man who seems to be everything she’s not allowed to have…

2. How Could She by Lauren Mechling

After a devastating break-up with her fiancé, Geraldine is struggling to get her life back on track in Toronto. Her two old friends, Sunny and Rachel, left ages ago for New York – and they both seem to have it all (or at least so it appears to Geraldine).

Geraldine decides to force the universe to give her the big break she knows she deserves, and moves to New York City. After she arrives, though, and zigzags her way through the downtown art scene and rooftop party circuit, she discovers how hard it is to find her footing in a world of influencers and media darlings.

The magazine where Sunny and Rachel work is on the brink of folding. Rachel is struggling to juggle her life as a writer, wife, and new mother–how is it that she was more confident and successful at twenty-five than in her mid-thirties? And Sunny’s life as a popular West Village tastemaker is not nearly as charmed as it seemed to Geraldine from Toronto. Perhaps worst of all, why are Sunny and Rachel–who’ve always been suspicious of each other–suddenly hanging out without Geraldine?

3. Recursion by Blake Crouch

“My son has been erased.” Those are the last words the woman tells Barry Sutton before she leaps from the Manhattan rooftop.

Deeply unnerved, he begins to investigate her death only to learn that this wasn’t an isolated case. In fact, all across the country, people are waking up to lives different from the ones they fell asleep to.

Are they suffering from False Memory Syndrome, a mysterious, new disease that afflicts people with vivid memories of a life they never lived? Or is something far more sinister behind the fracturing of reality all around him?

 

4. Girl in the Rearview Mirror by Kelsey Rae Dimberg

Desperate to put her past in the rearview mirror, Finn Hunt leaves the Midwest for Phoenix, Arizona, where no one knows her story.

While she’s working a dead-end job, a chance meeting with Philip Martin, son of a prominent US Senator, leads Finn to a position as nanny for Amabel, his precocious four-year-old daughter. Quickly seduced into the Martins’ privileged world, Finn can almost believe she belongs there, almost forget the dark past that haunts her.

Then, in the stifling heat of a desert summer as the Senator’s re-election looms, a strange woman begins to follow Finn, claiming a connection to Philip and threatening to expose the family to scandal. As Finn tries to protect Amabel, and shield the Martins, she’s inadvertently drawn deeper and deeper into their buried secrets. .

5. I’ll Never Tell by Catherine McKenzie

What happened to Amanda Holmes? Twenty years ago, she was found bludgeoned in a rowboat at the MacAllister family’s Camp Macaw. No one was ever charged with the crime.

Now, after their parents’ sudden deaths, the MacAllister siblings return to camp to read the will and decide what to do with the prime real estate the camp occupies. Ryan needs to sell. Margaux hasn’t made up her mind. Mary believes in leaving well enough alone. Kate and Liddie—the twins—have opposing views. And Sean Booth, the groundskeeper, just hopes he still has a home when all is said and done.

But it’s more complicated than a simple vote. The will stipulates that until they unravel the mystery of what happened to Amanda, they can’t settle the estate. Any one of them could have done it, and each one is holding a piece of the puzzle. Will they work together to finally discover the truth, or will their secrets finally tear the family apart?

A good book can do just about anything; from taking you on a wild and fantastical adventure to making you feel like an all-knowing super sleuth (if you figure out the killer twist).

Every week at #Bookmarked, we will be taking you through some of our all-time favourite books – as well as the newest novels hitting shelves in Ireland.