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Writer's pictureKayla Isabel

Summer TBR

Hi guys! Summer has officially begun for me and I have set aside some stories that take place during the summer to read while I am away working at a sleep away camp.

Every summer I bring a few books with me to camp, they are usually ones that take place over the summer and are always contemporaries. I mean, what is better to read by the lake than a cute love story?

So this summer I will be bringing four books with me, two of the books are ARCs and two are ones that I have purchased on my own. I was trying very hard to narrow it down to three or even two books, but I just couldn’t.

The first book I am bringing with me is Be True to Me by Adele Griffin. I purchased a hardcover copy at Bookcon on Sunday, June 4th. The book comes out on June 13th from Algonquin Young Readers. When I went to the booth to purchase the book, the women who worked there were gushing over the book and telling me how much they loved it. It made me really happy to get a copy of the book.

The book is set on Fire Island in 1979, Fire Island is a small island off the South Shore of Long Island in New York, and us about these two girls who fall for the same guy. Jean, is used to always being in the shadow of her older sister so when Gil, the handsome new comer, shows interest in her she is ecstatic. Then there is Fritz. Fritz is a mean girl who made a fool of Jean at a tennis match, and Fritz falls for Gil.

Already before I have even started reading it, I am rooting for Jean which I feel like most people will root for the underdog first. I am excited to see what happens when I read it.

The second book I am brining is City Love by Susane Colasanti. This book is the first of three books in the City Love Trilogy. I have always loved Susane Colasanti’s books, so I am really excited to read this one.

The book takes place in New York City, which is one of my favorite places in the whole world, and follows three girls from different places who are roommates for a program the summer they graduated from high school. The three girls are all incoming freshman at the same college in NYC. Sadie is a native New Yorker who grew up not far from her summer housing, Darcy is from Southern California and Rosanna is from Chicago. It follows the three girls as they fall in love, build friendships and learn how to live on their own.

The story is told in alternating perspectives which is something that is common in Susane’s books. I started reading this book awhile ago but I am planning on finishing the book over the summer. I was reading it during the school year and it just didn’t feel right to be reading a summer book during the winter.

The third book is an ARC I won in a Goodreads giveaway called Keeping The Beat by Marie Powell and Jeff Norton. The book came out on April 4, 2017 but I have been waiting for the summer to read it. Lucy finds her best friend, Harper, shot and dead. In order to put together all the pieces that led up to this moment the book circles back to the beginning. It follows five girls who make up an all girls band up until the moment Harper dies, solving how this could happen.

I’m excited and nervous to read this book, I am not usually a fan of murder books but this one seems to be a lighter book.

And then we have the fourth book, which is the second ARC and the one I am SUPER DUPER EXCITED to read! So as I mentioned before, I attended Bookcon on June 4th and while I was there I received an ARC of Top Ten by Katie Cotugno which comes out in October of 2017. I waited on a line for almost two hours to be able to score the LAST ARC that EpicReads was giving out and I will be eternally grateful for that.

The book is about these two best friends, Ryan and Gabby, who together try to put a list together of their top ten moments of high school. They go through the list during their summer before college and both realize just how much the other person means to them.

Just from reading the synopsis alone, I can tell I am already going to love the book. I love all of the books that Katie Cotugno writes and I have a feeling this is going to be a great one. I finished reading Fireworks not that long ago and it gave me all the feels.

Even though as a counselor I do not have a lot of free time, I do get two consecutive hours off a day and there are times I can read by myself or even to my campers which is something I really enjoy and they do too. Its nice to have story time as a group, its a bonding experience. I will be brining an ARC and one book I purchased to read to my campers each night as they are falling asleep. Last summer my campers and I started reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume and it was a really nice time.


The first one is Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass. It is about three very different characters who meet at a camp ground and their lives are changed for the better.

I started reading this book a few summers ago with my campers but we never finished it. This year I am planning to finish this book with my campers, whether it take us one month or two I really plan on remembering to read to them each night

The second one is an ARC I received at Bookcon called The Real McCoys by Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr. It is a middle grade mystery novel about this girl named Moxie who is on a mission to figure out who stole the schools mascot. She recruits her little brother to join her and the two of them go on an adventure to solve it.

Both of these books look really cute and I am very excited to give my campers the choice of what to read. And I cant wait to start the summer at sleep away camp!

What books are on you summer TBR? What do you do during the summer? I would love to hear from you!

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