Summer Reading 2024

We’re sharing some of your reviews of your Summer Reading 2023 books here–you may find ideas for your next read. Looking for more ideas? Take a look at reviews from 2023, too.

Log your own reviews here!

Updated June 7, 2024
Libraries of Middlesex Automation ConsortiumScotch Plains Public Library
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Burnout : the secret to unlocking the stress cycle
Nagoski, Emily
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "This book is a gift! I've been practicing their strategies, and it's a total game changer."--Brené Brown, PhD, author of Dare to Lead "A primer on how to stop letting the world dictate how you live and what we think of ourselves,...

3 STARS

-Anonymous

Blacktop wasteland : a novel
Cosby, S. A.
Paper Book
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner * New York Times Notable Book * NPR's Best Books of the Year * BookPage's #1 Mystery and Suspense of the Year * Sun Sentinel's #1 Best Mystery of the Year "I loved Blacktop Wasteland...[A] fast-paced,...

3 STARS

A fast paced plot set in rural Virginia where a man tries to outlive his father’s felonious legacy.

-Anonymous

The teacher
McFadden, Freida
Paper Book
INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Superb...[The Teacher] rivets." Publishers Weekly, starred review A mind-bending, psychological thriller from Freida McFadden, the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Housemaid! Lesson #1: trust no one Eve has a...

4 STARS

A fast paced plot of a very charismatic pedophile.

-Anonymous

Sipsworth : a novel
Van Booy, Simon
Paper Book
"Beautiful and enchanting"--Washington Post Sometimes a second chance comes in the most unexpected way.... Following the loss of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish...

5 STARS

After the death of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright moved back to her childhood home. She is an elderly woman and very lonely. Her days are very repetitive. This continues until she meets and helps a creature. As the story continues, you learn more about Helen’s past life. This book is about second chances and how a person’s life can take an unexpected turn. -Anonymous

Mr. Monk is miserable
Goldberg, Lee
Paper Book
Adrian Monk and Natalie are in Paris, touring the shadowy catacombs lined with millions of centuries-old bones. Of course, Monk notices one particular skull, declaring that the person had been killed very recently. Now Monk must catch a cunning killer.

5 STARS

I was pleasantly surprised to read this book. Having just returned from Paris I wanted to ease back into the New World by reading a book that still gave me a whiff of this magical city. I had never read any Monk books or seen the TV show. "Monk is Miserable" is one in a series of murder mysteries, written in the voice of his loyal assistant, Natalie Teeger. Monk is a compulsive, quirky detective, but he has unbelievable powers of observation. On their prior caper in Germany, Natalie inveigles Monk into taking a vacation in Paris with her. On their plane trip, a passenger is murdered, and Monk manages to determine the culprit before the police even get on the scene. Once they are in Paris, and visit the remarkable Paris sewer system as well as the Catacombs – a repository for the bones of millions of bodies from Paris cemeteries, Monk notices a skull which is much newer than the 200-year old skulls around it. It has dental fillings only invented in the last decade. This leads Monk and Natalie to discover a subculture of “freegans”, people who reject the wasteful contemporary lifestyle and instead dumpster dive to retrieve discarded items and wasted food in order to give them a second life. Many live in the underground tunnels of the Catacombs. Monk was miserable because one of his many anxieties was the fact of being on vacation. But solving two mysteries and riding in a “motocrotte” appease him.

-Vivian H.

Burnout : the secret to unlocking the stress cycle
Nagoski, Emily
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "This book is a gift! I've been practicing their strategies, and it's a total game changer."--Brené Brown, PhD, author of Dare to Lead "A primer on how to stop letting the world dictate how you live and what we think of ourselves,...
The women
Hannah, Kristin
Paper Book
A #1 bestseller on The New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times! From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women--at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a...

Excellent story of women who volunteered for armed forces during Vietnam War & their lack of recognition & demeaning treatment even by the government & Veteran's Association.

-Anonymous


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