July Reading List

These series might change your summer

• The Boyfriend Project series by Farrah Rochon

  • The Boyfriend Project

  • The Dating Playbook

  • The Hookup Plan

• The Broken Earth Trilogy by NK Jemisin

  • The Fifth Season

  • The Obelisk Gate

  • The Stone Sky

• Sunshine Vicram series by Darynda Jones

  • A Bad Day for Sunshine

  • A Good Day for Chardonnay

  • A Hard Day for a Hangover

• The Brown Sisters series by Talia Hibbert

  • Get a Life Chloe Brown

  • Take a Hint Dani Brown

  • Act Your Age Eve Brown

• This Poison Heart duology by Kalynn Bayron

  • This Poison Heart

  • This Wicked Fate

• Themis Files Trilogy by Sylvain Neuvel

  • Sleeping Giants

  • Waking Gods

  • Only Human

Find the complete list at Bookshop or on Amazon.

Summer is here, and I’m offering you something different for your summer reading delight: a few series to take you through a month, or a week, or a weekend, or the whole summer. They vary in genre from science fiction, to romance, to fantasy, to YA, but the basic criteria for these picks were there were at least two books, but no more than four; and all the books in the series have already been released. So here we go!

Most of these are light, delightful reads, with some substance underneath. Our two romance series - The Boyfriend Project and the Brown sisters center around a trio of friends and one of sisters respectively, and were a wonderful representation of the amazing things happening in romance today. Rochon tackles the uniquely complicated balance of professional and personal lives that Black women work with, and Hibbert explores what it’s like to date when your body and/or brain don’t function the way other people think it normal.

The hilarious mystery series following the life of Sheriff Sunshine Vicram also has romantic elements. While the writing is funny and the banter is amazing, the mysteries themselves are quite serious (TW for harm to children - but no deaths of kids). My favorite thing about this is the amazing sense of community portrayed throughout the series. Similarly YA fantasy duology This Poison Heart follows how Briseis navigates building and relying on her own community to figure out an ages-old challenge in her family.

Both of our science fiction series, The Broken Earth trilogy and The Themis Files trilogy challenge our view of what it means to be human, and how humanity reacts to earth-shifting challenges. What does our fear of the unknown cost us? What does it even mean to be human?

Let me know if you pick up any series this summer!

Happy reading!