Guest Post: Jen Ryland/ YA Romantics

Today we have the awesome Jen from YA Romantics here on the blog!

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Happy Blogoversary, YA Bookmark!

I was thrilled when Audris asked me to write a guest post on summer reading. To me, summer and reading go together like cookies and milk. When I was a kid, I spent my summers either reading or swimming. So to me, summer means the smell of chlorine, my wet hair dripping down my back as I walked home from the pool in my flip-flops, and spending lots of long, lazy afternoons lying in the sun with a book.

Here's a list of some YA books that really capture the carefree spirit of summer:

The Summer I Turned Pretty series by Jenny Han

Yes, the love triangle in this series caused me a lot of angst. But this book does such a wonderful job of evoking the magic of spending the summer at a beach house. I loved Belly's evolution over three books from awkward young girl to confident woman.

Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson

This poignant book is about a teenage girl spending a last summer with her family at their lake house after her father is diagnosed with a terminal illness. I wrote in my review that "Second Chance Summer beautifully captures the way that some summers are perfect little worlds all their own, with beautiful moments and sad moments and the realization that, as another summer draws to an end, time is passing."

Along For the Ride and This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen

A lot of Sarah Dessen's books take place in the summer. For kids and teens, summer is that transitional time between school years when so much can happen: huge growth spurts, friends made or lost, and surprising summer romances. 

In Along For the Ride, the main character spends the summer before college with her father, her stepmother, and their new baby in a small seaside town. There's a disastrous hook-up, mean girls who might not be so mean, and a boy with a mysterious secret.

In This Lullaby, the main character is also about to head off to college in the fall. So she's decided that she doesn't want any messy romantic entanglements, especially not with an endearingly quirky boy who is absolutely and completely wrong for her. Or is he?

My Life Next Door  by Huntley Fitzpatrick

This book takes place one summer in a coastal Connecticut town. Sam is used to being the perfect politician's daughter, so she knows that she'll have to keep her scandalous summer romance under wraps. But scandal has a way of surfacing during political campaigns, and Sam will be forced to choose between love and family.

Thanks so much for inviting me over to your blog!  I hope you and your readers will share some favorite summer reads with me in comments!

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These all sound like great summer books. I have both the Sarah Dessen ones and The Summer I Turned Pretty. Although I have yet to read any of them. Guess I better get reading! :) Thank you for being here!