Annabel Monaghan Picks Her Favorite 2024 Summer Beach Reads
The following is by author Annabel Monaghan. The best-selling romance novelist shares her love of summer and eight of the beach reads she enjoyed the most this year. All rights reserved; copyright 2024.
When I was a teenager, summer was the time to sink your toes in the sand and read the books that were never going to be on the school reading list. Danielle SteeI, Sidney Sheldon, Jackie Collins–these were my people, and my friends and I would pass them around like candy. In 1985, I read a copy of The Thorn Birds that was so well read by so many people that it was missing chapters.
It is the great joy of my life that I grew up to be a writer of summer romances. I love writing about people falling in love in the summertime when all of the senses are heightened and the days are so long. I love writing about the feel of hot sand underfoot and the white noise of the rolling waves. Summer music, salt-dried skin–there’s something about the sensations of summer that put me right back in those favorite books.
Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan ($19; G.P. Putnam’s Sons) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
My latest novel, aptly named Summer Romance, is the story of Ali Morris, a professional organizer whose life and home are a total mess. She’s a recently separated mother of three who is grieving her mom. She’s epically stuck, and she decides she’s going to get unstuck by having a summer romance with an adorable guy who’s just in town for a little while.
This was an exciting summer to release a book and an amazing summer for reading, mainly because of how many great books came out. If books were wine, we would look back at 2024 as a great vintage. I started with the latest books by the Big Four–Carley Fortune, Emily Henry, Abby Jimenez, and Elin Hilderbrand. I devoured them, and I bet you already did too. Here are some of the others that I read that I absolutely loved and that I’m still thinking about.
Annabel Monaghan Picks Her Favorite 2024 Summer Beach Reads
Courtesy of Berkley
Seven Summer Weekends by Jane L. Rosen
Addison Irwin blows up her career faster than you can say “Zoom disaster” but then discovers she’s inherited a Fire Island beach house from a distant aunt. That beach house comes with a string of houseguests and a moody but super-handsome neighbor. Need I say more? It’s just what you’ve come to expect from Rosen–a compulsively readable, totally satisfying, heart-tugging romance.
Seven Summer Weekends by Jane L. Rosen ($19; Berkley) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Related: Bestselling Author T.J. Newman Shares Her Favorite Books
Seven Summers by Paige Toon
This is not a book I recommend reading in public. The gasping and ugly crying will invite a lot of unwanted attention. Liv and Finn come together again and again for seven summers on the Cornish coastline, bound by love and lust and tragedy. It is unbearably romantic, and the writing is so beautiful and emotionally resonant that you will gladly let her reach into your heart and pull it right out.
Seven Summers by Paige Toon ($18; G.P. Putnam’s Sons) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Rules for Second Chances by Maggie North
This is the book I’ve been talking about all summer. It’s North’s debut, a love story between a married couple–a second chance romance with the person who’s already there. After being mistaken as a server at her own birthday party, Liz needs to step up as a main character in her life to reclaim her marriage, and she does so by joining an improv comedy class. It’s brilliant and unexpected and I loved it. I can’t say this enough times.
Rules for Second Chances by Maggie North ($18; St. Martin’s Griffin) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Summer Fridays by Suzanne Rindell
This one really took me by surprise. It’s the story of an engaged twentysomething woman who’s rethinking everything about the life she’s planned for herself. In doing so, she forms a connection with someone new and a friendship develops over a string of Friday afternoons in New York. The writing is atmospheric and the budding romance feels so authentic that I felt it deep in my heart. It’s a twisty bit of storytelling perfection.
Summer Fridays by Suzanne Rindell ($18; Dutton) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Cole and Laila are Just Friends by Bethany Turner
Friends to lovers? Sign me up. Anything written by Bethany Turner? Sign me up every day. This one is her latest, the story of Cole and Laila, lifelong best friends in a crisis who spend a week in New York together before they have to part ways. Part love story to New York City, part homage to the genre, it’s laugh out loud funny and deeply romantic.
Cole and Laila are Just Friends by Bethany Turner ($17.99; Thomas Nelson) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Just One Taste by Lizzy Dent
I’m a Lizzy Dent superfan, so when I heard her latest was going to take us on a food tour of Italy, I almost passed out. This one follows Olive, who inherits her father’s failing restaurant and Leo, her father’s sous-chef, on a journey from Sicily to Tuscany to Liguria to gather recipes and fall in love. It’s packed with funny, foody wonderfulness.
Just One Taste by Lizzy Dent ($19; G.P. Putnam’s Sons) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Morbidly Yours by Ivy Fairbanks
Talk about a romance you haven’t read before–a shy, demisexual Irish mortician has to marry in order to keep his family business. Lucky for him, a Texan widow has just relocated to Ireland for work and moves in next door. The development of the relationship is emotionally perfect, and the chemistry is off the charts. It’s a funny, sexy, and completely heartwarming story.
Morbidly Yours by Ivy Fairbanks ($19; G.P. Putnam’s Sons) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Related: The 32 Best Romance Books of 2024...So Far
Anna Bright is Hiding Something by Susie Orman Schnall
I swear I don’t read romance exclusively, and to prove it, here’s a deliciously suspenseful novel about high tech corporate fraud and the woman who will stop at nothing for success. The IPO is imminent and a savvy journalist is about to expose a billion dollar lie. It’s timely, gripping and meticulously researched–a total winner.
Anna Bright is Hiding Something by Susie Orman Schnall ($17.95; Spark Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan ($19; G.P. Putnam’s Sons) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org