Beach-read recommendations (that aren't all romance...)
Summer is filled with the classic “beach-read-recommendations”, most of which tend to be heavy on the romance, and light on anything else. In a bit of a twist to the trope, I’m bringing you a list of my favourite beachy-reads, from across different genre’s and age-ranges. With 36 options to pick from, I hope you’ll find some fresh inspiration to take on your next beach-trip. All books are linked to their respective Goodreads pages, where you can find full synopsis, as well as reviews from other readers.
My personal favourites: Grief and the Ocean
- Our Wives Under the Sea – Julia Armfield
- The Last True Poets of the Sea – Julia Drake
- The Gracekeepers – Kirsty Logan
- Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea – Ashley Herring Blake
Adult Contemporary:
- The Island of Forgetting – Jasmine Sealy
- Remarkably Bright Creatures – Shelby van Pelt
- Lattitudes of Longing – Shubhangi Swarup
- Castle of Water – Dane Hucklebridge
Young Adult Contemporary
- Breathe and Count Back from 10 – Natalia Sylvester
- Coming Up for Air – Lou Abercrombie
- Breathing Underwater – Sarah Allen
- Challenger Deep – Neal Shusterman
- The House in the Cerulean Sea - T J Klune
Mermaids:
- Black Sun – Rebecca Roanhorse
Magical Realism and Fantasy:
- This One Sky Day – Leone Ross
- These Rebel Waves – Sara Raasch
- The Vanishing Deep – Astrid Scholte
- The Summer of Salt – Katrina Leno
Middle-Grade
- Rise of the Jumbies – Tracey Baptiste
- Julia and the Shark – Kiran Millwood Hargrave
- Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep – Philip Reeve
Thrillers and horror
- Forget the Sleepless Shores - Sonya Taaffe
- The Sound at the End – Kirsty Logan
- Deeplight - Frances Hardinge
Sci-fi and Dystopian
- The Ones We’re Meant to Find - Joan He
- The Light at the Bottom of the World – London Shah
- The Abyss – Orson Scott Card
Non-fiction:
- Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid - Thor Hanson
- Why Fish Don’t Exist - Lulu Miller
