Given the sun’s been out, our minds have been turning to summer reads. So we asked the BFS members for their favourite or recommended book for those long days in the sun: Do we prefer a bit of poolside portals? Some sci-fi horror headed for the solar flares? What are you reading this summer?
Some people are very keen on the idea of the summer read—in under one minute of the question being posted, reviewer Rosemarie Cawkwell came back with: “Anything Discworld”—while others don’t distinguish between seasons with their reading choices.
Below is a selection of the chatter from our members-only Discord, presenting both light summer page-turners and more hefty fare for any time of year. Give your own thoughts by leaving a comment at the end of this article, or jump back into Discord to get involved. Are you a member but not yet in the BFS Discord server? Contact us to request your invite.
As for my own recommendations? Summer is starting to feel a lot like romantasy season to me; I spent last week in the sun devouring Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan, and I was accompanied on a recent trip to the Amalfi Coast by Immortal Pleasures by V. Castro. Mind you, the latter is not exactly romantasy – more horroromance!
-Lauren McMenemy, BFS Marketing
Comments are presented as they were in Discord/Facebook, including back-and-forths between multiple members. Where an individual contributor came back with more thoughts separately, those comments have been summarised as one.
“I’m going to be reading through the ten winners of SPFBO (The Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off competition) as part of the championship round celebrating ten years! If you’ve always wanted to read more self-published fantasy, but don’t know where to start, then these ten books are an excellent place to begin – though a few of them have since been re-released through a trad publisher. These books beat 299 other books to become the winner of their round as judged by ten blogging teams.”
-Trudie Skies
“All the books I can’t read during term time 😂 (so… everything I haven’t reread to tatters)”
-Luna Profir
“Traumaland by Josh Silver. His first two books were very strong … a kind of creepy Hunger Games version of a wellness center. Love his writing: smart, funny dialogue, high tension, and neat social commentary that draws on his experience as a mental health nurse and a queer person. This new book feels like a level up: it’s an intriguing concept – a nightclub where people relive other people’s traumatic experiences to feel something. Oh, and the Alice in Wonderland elements and the Joker references would have drawn me in regardless!”
-Andy Hodges
“When I’m not doing my WIP? Clariel as a side story to the Old Kingdom series. It takes a very different PoV, plot direction, and setting to Sabriel and Lirael, with all the usual good points of Garth Nix’s writing. And from our own Andrew Knighton: Executioner’s Hand. His pitch had me when he mentioned Cadfael, dragons and a walled city.”
-Sam Hodges
“I’ve been sitting in my garden soaking up the sun and reading The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo. It’s making me yearn for a trip to Spain but maybe not this particular version!”
“Coming back to add I finished this in four days which is very unlike me! If it had been poolside at a summer resort it would have been only slightly better. This was an amazing read!”
-Donna Morgan
“I’m still trying to reduce my TBR pile, and summer is probably my least favourite season, but Sunbringer by Hannah Kaner is next on my list, so that is at least on theme…”
-Matthew Palmer
“I can’t talk about favourites since I haven’t read them yet, but I’ve got Lost in the Garden by Adam Leslie and The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley lined up next. (Though I also want to read Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky — we’ll see how I go!).”
-Veronika Groke
“So pool or beach there is usually a lot of noisy people around I need to block out. I need something easy to read with a good, fast plot. YA fantasy is very good for this. Gwen & Art Are Not In Love by Lex Croucher – I spent a day reading that on the beach and loved it, was a great day. Once Upon A Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber was very fun too. My next one, I decided I fancy Blood On The Tide by Katee Roberts.”
-Melody Bowles
“I’m listening to ‘The Found and the Lost’, a collection of novellas by Ursula Le Guin, read by Alyssa Bresnahan and Jefferson Mays. They’re mostly set in her Hainish universe, and a few in a row all dealing with the same two planets and a particular period in their history. I’m absolutely loving them, totally absorbing and perfect for long light evenings. Going back to Le Guin always feels like I’m grounding myself, almost the way I feel after a phone call with my little old mum haha.
-Hero Owen
“Intisar Khanani’s Debts of Fire comes out in July. YA fantasy featuring Persian-inspired communities and settings, with added phoenixes, dragons and kraken, sounds like a great place to spend the summer!”
-Katie Bruce
“I’m not sure I have a particular sort of book I like to read in the summer or when I’m on holiday… I once read a very interesting book about trilobites in Fuertaventura, does that count?”
-Oli Arditi
“I’m basically the same. I just keep reading throughout, picking whatever takes my fancy at the time.”
-Richard Hussey
“Last year I was in Fuertaventura and read a book about people living in space whales, carving up bits from the inside to build their homes. That was a strange balcony read… It was a decent book, but I don’t think it fits in the summer reads section particularly well. There’s only so many mentions of ‘bile’ you need before your buffet lunch.”
-John McCloy
“The Priory of the Orange Tree felt very summery when I read it during the first lockdown, stuck in my AirBnB in Milan when Covid hit it, and then on the plane home and isolating in the UK. I read Godkiller by Hannah Kaner on a summer trip to Penzance a couple of years ago and it fitted like a glove. Wonderful little book, and felt summery too.”
-John Berkeley
“I read The Priory of the Orange Tree one summer while on holiday so I’m planning to read The Day of Fallen Night while on holiday this summer, to be ready for the third book coming out in September.”
-Rai Furniss-Greasley
“Would recommend Winterstrike by Liz Williams if you like something very well written and immersive.”
-Alan Nash
I try and read Dune at least once during the year, so doing so in the summer months seems appropriate, I can only recommend those who haven’t give it a go, it’s always a great read in my opinion. In the current climate too you can really feel like you’re on Arrakis!”
-Aaron McKie
“Highly recommend With Friends Like These by V.S. Lawrence for anyone who fancies a camp (in both senses of the word) slasher-inspired horror story!”
-Lucy A McLaren
(Photo by Mickael Ben David on Unsplash)
“I read whatever is next on my stack or for a blog tour. I don’t really have specific ‘summer reads’. I have so many books on my currently reading piles that I don’t reread books often. Except Discworld books. If I’m going away, I just grab a fiction and a non-fiction book (or more than 1 of each if I’m away for more than a couple of days) and take those. I even bring books to FantasyCon, even though I’ll buy or otherwise acquire lots of books. I need train reading!”
-Rosemarie Cawkwell
“The last thing I read on holiday was Glitterati by Oliver K Langmead. I read it in 2 days. Not exactly a languorous read but I was hooked and we were on a cruise so we spent a lot of time onboard the first couple of days. Such a brilliantly funny book.”
-Cheryl Sonnier
“I recently started Dreadful by Caitlyn Rozakis and highly recommend it as a funny, fast-paced summer read.”
-Janet Forbes
“If you’d like something lighthearted and relaxing, I recommend losing yourself in the magical worlds of Dallergut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee (you can buy dreams in a store!), The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki (talking cats read astrology charts!), or Tea and Sympathetic Magic by Tansy Roberts (a rollicking romp of a romantasy novella).”
-Melanie Bell
“I’d highly recommend Hank Green’s first-contact-but-with-social-media duology, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and A Beautifully Foolish Endeavour; they’re light, fun, and ultimately uplifting despite a detour into the dark minds of cryptobros (with some very accurate predictions considering the second book came out in summer 2020). Read them both in ’23 and found them perfectly breezy.”
-Kat Kourbeti
“The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty – it’s a great fantasy read set in Arabia, but very much from a point of view of the Arabian world and specifically a female pirate coming out of retirement. I read it last summer in the build-up to Worldcon as it was on the Hugos list, and it was probably my favourite book I read last year. It is a book that is at times episodic, but there’s a strong story arc running through it, making it perfect for dipping in and out of between activities. Plus, it touches on some deep themes.
“Honourable mention to the Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, which is a brilliant episodic science fiction perfect for reading in between sets at music festivals. (I may have done this once, just as I did this with World War Z once, prompting some interesting conversations…)”
-Chris Hawton
“I’m in my Summer Smut era: Ali Hazelwood, Talia Hibbert, Katee Robert. If you want fantasy smut and haven’t read it yet, Morning Glory Milking Farm by C.M. Nascosta is infamous. Sci fi romance? There’s this dipstick called Helen Rose Thwaite…”
-Helen Rose Thwaite
What are you reading this summer? Let us know in the comments below ⬇️
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