Pool Day Reads You Need to Check Out this Summer

Pool Day Reads: Books to Check Out while Waterside this Summer

Welcome back to the third installment of Ashley’s Corner! This is a series all about BOOKS on the blog, written by my favorite guest writer Ashley Diogaurdi. Today on the blog, she is going to be covering some of her fav pool day reads you need to check out this summer!

Click here to see all of Ashley’s recommendations, and don’t forget to follow her on Instagram!

Need some more suggestions? Check out Ashley’s post: 5 Romcoms to Read this Summer

Grab These Books for your Next Pool Day

With temperatures topping 100 degrees (or more) every single week, all I want is a cold drink, a big pool, and an easy read to get me through the UV rays. If you are planning your next beach vacation, or you just like to lounge by the pool occasionally but want to step up your tanning time, try bringing a book along with you! Here are my recommended pool day reads you need to check out this summer.

Want to see all of Ashley’s book recommendations to date? Check out her Amazon list here!

1 – How to Fake it in Hollywood

Book Quick Summary:

This recent read of mine has quickly become my favorite contemporary romance/ romcom of 2022! It has everything you would want in a book: steam, banter, humor, dynamic characters, LGBTQ representation, etc. It happens to be this author’s debut novel, which you would NEVER guess based on how well it’s written. I guarantee you that you can finish this one in a single sitting, which makes it perfect for your upcoming trip to the pool or beach vacay. Crack open that seltzer, reapply the SPF, and get to reading!

Click here to read more about / buy the book!

Check out these vibrant vacation outfits to wear to look as good as your book is written.

Goodread Synopsis:

Grey Brooks is on a mission to keep her career afloat now that the end of her long-running teen soap has her (unsuccessfully) pounding the pavement again. With a life-changing role on the line, she’s finally desperate enough to agree to her publicist’s scheme… faking a love affair with a disgraced Hollywood heartthrob who needs the publicity, but for very different reasons.

Ethan Atkins just wants to be left alone. Between his high-profile divorce, his struggles with drinking, and his grief over the death of his longtime creative partner and best friend, he’s slowly let himself fade into the background. But if he ever wants to produce the last movie he and his partner wrote together, Ethan needs to clean up his reputation and step back into the spotlight. A gossip-inducing affair with a gorgeous actress might be just the ticket, even if it’s the last thing he wants to do.

Though their juicy public relationship is less than perfect behind the scenes, it doesn’t take long before Grey and Ethan’s sizzling chemistry starts to feel like more than just an act. But after decades in a ruthless industry that requires bulletproof emotional armor to survive, are they too used to faking it to open themselves up to the real thing?

2 – Beach Read

Book Quick Summary:

In my humble opinion, this is a romcom classic. This is one of the books, if not THE book, that launched author Emily Henry into stardom. It is the OG of witty banter and beach-vibes, and the story had me wanting to move into a beach bungalow all alone and write a best-selling novel. If you are a fan of books about books, then I highly recommend you pick this one up. Who knows? You may be inspired to write your own contemporary romance after reading this one!

Click here to read more / buy the book!

Goodread Synopsis:

A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.

3 – Ugly Love

Book Quick Summary:

Ugly Love is one of Colleen Hoover’s popular reads. At the start of booktok in 2020, it really took off! But aside from the popularity on social media, this is one of my favorite books of CoHo’s because the story is amazing. It will pull on your heartstrings, make you swoon, frustrate you, and have you turning the pages faster and faster after each chapter – somehow all at the same time. There are no tropes here that you don’t already love. Think: forced proximity, friends with benefits, dual POV, brother’s best friend… just to name a few. I loved this one and if you read it, it may just become your new Colleen Hoover fav!

Click here to read more / buy the book!

Goodread Synopsis:

When Tate Collins meets airline pilot Miles Archer, she knows it isn’t love at first sight. They wouldn’t even go so far as to consider themselves friends. The only thing Tate and Miles have in common is an undeniable mutual attraction. Once their desires are out in the open, they realize they have the perfect set-up. He doesn’t want love, she doesn’t have time for love, so that just leaves the sex. Their arrangement could be surprisingly seamless, as long as Tate can stick to the only two rules Miles has for her.

Never ask about the past.

Don’t expect a future.

They think they can handle it, but realize almost immediately they can’t handle it at all.

Hearts get infiltrated.

Promises get broken.

Rules get shattered.

Love gets ugly.

4 – The Spanish Love Deception

Book Quick Summary:

Fun fact about this one. The author – Elena Armas – actually was a super popular bookstagrammer. She wrote and self-published this book all on her own. It also won the Goodreads Choice Award of 2021… which is huge!

Elena Armas is a genius when it comes to writing. This book is dense in terms of length, but to me, every detail matters. Especially when you meet Aaron, our male main character heartthrob. He is everything you want in a MC… broody, stubborn, slightly rude and off-putting. Sounds like a dream, right?! I promise…this book is! It’s a fun one, and reminds me of a steamy yet sweet romcom that we would watch with our mom that was maybe a little too mature for us… but we (secretly) loved it anyway. Definitely spicy! If you are a fan of fake dating, loud families, the single bed trope, amazing character development, and intertwining storylines, this book is the one for you!

Click here to read more / buy the book!

Goodread Synopsis:

Catalina Martín desperately needs a date for her sister’s wedding. Especially since her little white lie about her American boyfriend has spiraled out of control. Now everyone she knows—including her ex and his fiancée—will be there and eager to meet him.

She only has four weeks to find someone willing to cross the Atlantic and aid in her deception. New York to Spain is no short flight and her raucous family won’t be easy to fool.

Enter Aaron Blackford—her tall, handsome, condescending colleague—who surprisingly offers to step in. She’d rather refuse; never has there been a more aggravating, blood-boiling, and insufferable man.

But Catalina is desperate, and as the wedding draws nearer, Aaron looks like her best option. And she begins to realize he might not be as terrible in the real world as he is at the office.

5 – Love & Other Words

Book Quick Summary:

Last but CERTAINLY not least, this book is my favorite of the bunch. Like, I am talking one of my top 5 favorite books of all time.This is just a sweet, sweet book. It is a friends-to-lovers story where the center of the relationship is not only their ever-growing friendship, but also their love of reading and wordplay. Sound nerdy? It is, but it’s nerdy in a cute way!

The best part about this book is that each chapter is a dual timeline, with the story coming together somewhat towards the last third of the book. The pacing is genius, the emotions are real, the twist/shock at the end is gut-wrenching, and the author brings a story alive in such a way that you feel like it’s real. You really do feel like Macy and Elliot are your friends who you have been cheering for since middle school. If you pick up one book from this list, let it be this one!

Click here to read more / buy the book!

Goodread Synopsis:

Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.

But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother…only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.

Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.