Looking for a light and fluffy read to stash in the beach bag? CeeCee has some suggestions! Here are some of hits and misses from our summer reading list.

Lost Coast Literary by Ellie Alexander

This book is a little odd. It looks like a cozy mystery, yet it’s not a whodunnit. I’m not quite sure what it is, really. It’s tagged as “magical realism,” which is probably the best description. In a nutshell, it’s about a career woman named Emily who’s about to embark on her “dream job” as a book editor, yet her plans get derailed when her estranged grandmother dies and leaves her a multimillion-dollar Victorian mansion on the Lost Coast! The catch? She has to edit her grandmother’s dusty manuscripts, which leads to big trouble when the stories she’s editing magically come to life! Oh, and her estranged family members are slightly bitter and rude. But, hey, can you blame them?

This all sounds very interesting, yet I’m struggling to decipher a plot. With no murder to investigate, what’s the endgame here? I guess it’s all about uncovering her family secrets that were so carefully hidden by Emily’s enigmatic father. Will she return to big city life and take on this editing “dream job” that she can’t stop talking about? Or will she make a new life for herself in California’s beautiful Lost Coast? Seriously, how is this even a question? Why would you want to leave all this behind to return to the nine-to-five drudgery of big city life? Maybe that’s what bothers me the most about this character. How does she not see what I’m seeing? This is every book lover’s dream come true! Sheesh!

Anyhoo, I’m not too impressed with this one. If it continues into a series, I think I’ll give it a pass and read more of Ellie’s fantastic bakery shop and microbrewery mysteries.

Love and Other Great Expectations by Becky Dean

Ever since reading 13 Little Blue Envelopes, I’ve been really into summer stories that involve mixed up teenage girls finding themselves overseas escapades. When I saw this at BookPeople, I had to buy the hardback because look at that cover! Although not quite as magical as 13 Little Blue Envelopes, this book really sparked my wanderlust. Could you imagine being handpicked by a teacher to go on a free literary-themed scavenger hunt across the UK with a whopping cash price no less?! True, this does require a huge stretch of the imagination, but it’s nice to dream, isn’t it?

So, the story revolves around a small group of high schoolers who scored this trip of a lifetime. Our main character, Britt, is hoping to win the grand prize so she can pay for UCLA after suffering a catastrophic knee injury and losing her soccer scholarship. We hear about this soccer issue A LOT throughout the book, which kind of makes her a bit of a pill. I think this story would’ve been better told through different narrators because Britt is kind of a broken record. But she’s a teenager, and everything is super dramatic at that age, so I must give her a little slack.

Minor gripes aside, I enjoyed the kiddos’ chaperoned scavenger hunt journey to various touristy destinations that inspired seminal classics by Sherlock Holmes, Jane Austen, King Arthur, Shakespeare and Chaucer. When I win the lotto, I’m going to follow their footsteps and visit all of these magical places and more!

There’s a buddling love story thrown in, of course, between Britt and local British boy named Luke. He accompanies her on the journey, which teeters on the verge of cheating, but whatevs. They both have a lot of issues to unpack along the way, but I’ll save you from any spoilers. I will say that this was a very sweet little romance about two people who helped each other see the best in themselves. Ah, young love!

Overall, this is a fun European adventure that is worth the price of a hardback. I highly recommend to fans of Jenna Evans and Maureen Johnson!

Killer Cruise by Laura Levine

I admit it! I knew nothing about this author, yet bought this book based on the cover alone! Put a cat and a cruise ship on a cover, and I’m sold! My gamble paid off because this book had me laughing out loud…which can be problematic when I’m listening to it on my swimming headphones while doing my evening laps.

I’m not really one for slapstick comedy, but the characters were over-the-top ridiculous in the best way. The main character, Jaine Austen (no relation) is a hot mess express who, quite honestly, should not own any animals. Yet, she charmed me nonetheless with all her many bumbling mishaps…like getting caught stealing sand for her cat’s makeshift litterbox while wearing Tweety Bird pajamas. Somehow her cat Prozac stowed away in her luggage (how does that even happen?), and she had to keep it a secret to avoid putting him in quarantine.

The cat mom in me wants to judge, but then I must realize that this is slapstick humor at its slappiest. All of the characters are so cartoonish and over-the-top, so you really can’t take anything seriously. As a paid member of the cruise staff, Jaine must teach a course in memoir writing and gets stuck with a hodgepodge of bored passengers who have zero interest in writing. Poor Jaine just can’t win anybody over except for her new crush who happens to be a murder suspect when a gold-digging Cassanova gets killed with an ice pick! It’s up to Jaine to investigate a very suspicious group of passengers before the wrong person–the ship’s lounge singer–gets locked in the slammer.

Shenanigans and buffoonery ensue as she follows the clues. Oh, and did I mention the zany subplot involving her parents? OMG! Through a series of emails, she learns that her father is slowly ripping her place apart with home improvement projects, and her mother is planning her sham wedding! It’s just ridiculous, I tell you. If you enjoy slapstick humor and very light mystery plots, this one’s for you!

Fifteenth Summer by Michelle Dalton

I scored this hardback for two buckeroos the Austin Library’s bookshop just before I had to jump on a plane to Seattle. Sweet! I don’t know about y’all, but flying is stressful and uncomfortable, so I need a SUPER light book that doesn’t require too much thinking. This book did the job! It’s just a very simple and sweet story about a teenage girl who’s spending her summer in a quint Michigan beach town.

There’s some sadness sprinkled in as she and her family are coming to terms with the recent loss of their grandmother while they’re staying at her little beach cottage. I feel like the author did a really great job describing the jumble of emotions a teenager endures while reconciling a big loss. But have no fear! The heaviness is balanced out with all sorts of summer fun shenanigans—from kite flying parties to first-love butterflies with the boy next-door! Ah, young love.

Our protagonist, Chelsea, falls big time for a little cutie who’s helping his mom run a bookshop called the Dog Ear, which houses a resident Labrador Retriever of course! She soon lands a summer job at the local cafe (conveniently next to her crush at the bookshop) to afford a new e-reader and makes a bunch of new friends along the way.

Needless to say, this little bookworm is relatable and a character to root for. This is the kind of book that leaves you a little heartsick when the story’s all over, but yet there are quite a few more summery romance books by this author that can help fill the void. Sarah Dessen fans are sure to love this book.

Summer of a Thousand Pies by Margaret Dilloway 

The title and the cover lured me in–and then I discovered the story takes places at an apple pie shop in Julian! Needless to say, I hit the purchase button faster than you could say alamode! All of my fondest summer memories took place at Camp Marston, a YMCA sleepaway camp in the mountains surrounded by looming pine trees. Oh, how I miss those days of food fights and boating on Lake Jessop!

Set somewhere near main street, the story revolves around a flailing pie shop ran by a couple of nice women who do good deeds for others. They take in a deeply troubled pre-teen, Cady, and provide a safe haven, far removed from her homeless lifestyle. The story is told by Cady, which can be uncomfortable at times because she’s so mixed up, but she slowly comes around. With the looming threat of her drug addict father showing up at the doorstep to take her back to the mean streets of San Diego, it’s quite clear that her sweet life (see what I did there?) could be gone in an instant, but there’s always hope! That’s what this book is all about: hope, resilience and self-discovery. This was a super fun read, and the subplot of saving the pie shop moved the story along at a nice pace. There’s some politics involved here that have to do with immigration, which has caused a bit of a commotion with some reviewers who slap a “PC” label on anything that doesn’t align with what they’re watching on Fox News. Either way, I found this to be a most enjoyable summer read that took me back to my favorite summer memories in the Julian mountains!