Six Recommendations for Summer Reading–Totally “Worth Your While”

Clare Ravizza, Staff Writer, Advanced Journalism

Summer is quickly approaching, and the warmer it gets outside, the harder it becomes to think about anything else. Our summer vacation is a time of relaxation and luxury, and many students are counting the days until May 21. And while summer vacation is for the most part school-free, there is the small ordeal of the summer reading requirement.

For avid readers like myself, finishing two or three books during the three months of vacation is simple. Others, however, find it difficult to find the time, the motivation and the right book. I can only help you with one of those, though, so here are six summer reads I believe are worth your while.

  1. I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson

Noah and Jude have been inseparable since conception, literally. At thirteen, the twins each consider themselves one half of a whole. At sixteen, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Noah is thirteen and falling in love for the first time. He paints in his mind and dreams of attending a prestigious art high school in a few years. He is discovering himself, all the while feeling Jude drift further and further away. Three years later, Jude is talking more to her dead grandmother than her twin brother or her classmates. Not to mention, her mother’s ghost is destroying her every attempt at art, and Noah, once her only confidant, has become someone she doesn’t recognize. When an opportunity to create something unbreakable presents itself, Jude can’t help herself. She’ll do anything she can to make it happen, even if that includes watching a tortured genius through his windows or being thrown in the path of a British boy who’s doing an excellent job of disrupting her boycott of the male species.

  1. The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Seventeen-year-old Mara Dyer wakes up in the hospital with no memory of the last few days. She learns that she survived a freak accident that killed her best friend, her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s sister. Diagnosed with PTSD and trying to remember why she was in an old abandoned insane asylum that collapsed around her, Mara’s family moves to Florida for a fresh start. But when Mara begins to see things that can’t possibly be true, she starts to wonder if her crazy stems beyond her PTSD.

  1. Paper Towns by John Green

Quentin Jacobsen, or Q, has been crushing on the adventurous girl next door, Margo, for most of his life. Margo is beautiful, intriguing, and when she enlists Q’s help an a revenge vendetta in the middle of the night, he graciously accepts. They spend the entire night together, but upon returning to school the next day, he discovers that Margo has disappeared. After discovering a clue seemingly meant for him, Q and his friends begin a hunt throughout Florida to follow the clues and find the girl of his dreams.   READ IT BEFORE THE MOVIE COMES OUT THIS SUMMER!

  1. The Diviners by Libba Bray

Evie O’Neill, young and alive in the middle of the Roaring 20s, is shipped off to New York City after performing a risky party trick to live with her uncle Will, who manages the local museum dedicated to the occult. With her uncle’s obsession with the supernatural, Evie worries that he’ll discover her secret: a gift that allows her to discover a person’s deepest secrets just by touching an object that belongs to them. But then Will is called to investigate the murder of a girl that appears to be an occult offering, and Evie discovers her gift might help find the killer. However, Evie isn’t the only one with secrets and powers, and soon something dark and dangerous is occurring in the city that never sleeps.

  1.  We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Cadence, Cady, is a Sinclair, part of a distinguished, beautiful, high-society family. She’s lived a blissful, enchanted life thus far, spending summers on the private family island, Beechwood, but she’s been in an accident that she can’t remember that’s left her with crippling migraines. Cady is one of four Liars: Johnny and Mirren, her cousins, and Gat, Johnny’s friend who has been coming to the island with them since they were children. The story travels from summer to summer to tell Cady and the Liars’ story, and the end will leave you just as unravelled as Cadence.

  1. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Identical twins Cath and Wren are starting their first semester of college, and while Wren could not be more ready, Cath is more content spending her days writing Simon Snow fanfiction in her dorm room. However, she keeps being interrupted by her hostile roommate and her goofy-smiling, intrusive, ever-present boyfriend. Trying to balance Wren’s increasingly wild habits, a professor who is disgusted with fanfiction, a mentally unstable father, and a cute classmate who has charmed himself into becoming her writing partner, Cath is unsure if she can manage moving on with her life, especially if that means leaving Simon Snow behind.