When I wrote my sophomore novel, Rise to the Sun, I’d never felt further away from the subject matter at the center of the book. Knee-deep in a pandemic that didn’t seem to have an ending in sight, I disappeared into a story about music festivals, and maskless meet-cutes, and a summer spent standing next to strangers and screaming lyrics at the stars. As our world shut down, and each of us were expected to disappear into the isolation of our homes, it was the type of escape I needed more than ever. Now, as we face down yet another wave of Covid-19, and the yearly woes of darkness that comes too early and a holiday season that can be just as stressful as it is joyous, I find myself ready to fall into the escapist power of fiction again.
These diverse books cover everything from first loves to chaotic bisexual filmmaking to the terrifying adventure that is your freshman year of college, but each of them are the perfectly-summery, warm-weather novels that I’ll be returning to this winter when I need to feel like the sun is kissing my skin (instead of the biting Midwestern cold threatening to freeze my face off).