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:

- The Gloaming – Kirsty Logan

- Black Sun – Rebecca Roanhorse

- The Seawomen – Chloe Timms

- The Seas – Samantha Hunt

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

- August Isle – Ali Standish

- 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

- Black Tide – K C Jones

- The Survivors – Jane Harper

- 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 Stranding – Kate Sawyer

- The Light at the Bottom of the World – London Shah

- The Abyss – Orson Scott Card

Non-fiction:

- Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid - Thor Hanson

- The Salt Path – Raynor Winn

- Spring Tides – Fiona Gell

- Why Fish Don’t Exist - Lulu Miller