The Coffee Order Summer Reading List™️
This is something that I believe I can give good advice on.
Something I pride myself in is the ability to read.
I got back into the swing of reading during COVID, and read like 25 books during 2020. I definitely don’t read as much now because of school, but with summer next week, you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be placing a big order of what #BookTok tells me to.
Here are the top ten books I recommend for you to read by the pool, beach, in your bed, on the plane, wherever.
Ranked in no particular order. (📕 = Hard 📙 = Medium 📗= Easy)
1. Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
Genre: Fiction, Romance???
Themes: Friendship, being British/Irish, being a writer, being in College, affairs, being a woman
Pages: 336
Difficulty: 📙
I’m a Sally Rooney stan, and everything she writes makes me want to move to Dublin, write poetry, and get into a complicated relationship with an attractive, emotionally dead man. Now a subpar Hulu series, Conversations With Friends was one of my favorite books I read last year.
In this novel, Frances, a collegiate poet, and her best friend Bobbi, are living in Dublin. They meet Melissa, an older writer, who invites them to her house. Frances and Bobbi then embark on a journey with Melissa and her husband, Nick, navigating their own friendship, feelings, and perhaps pretending to be a bit more mature than they actually are.
2. Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
Genre: Fiction, (again) Romance (I don’t know anyone who wants this type of romance)????
Themes: Marriage, young adulthood, being an artist, New York City, age gaps
Pages: 384
Difficulty: 📙
This was a novel recommended to me by #BookTok, and while it looks pretty on my nightstand/bookshelf, it’s also pretty great!
Coco Mellors is another fantastic British writer, and I perhaps enjoyed reading this so much because of how envious I am of her style.
Cleo is a 20-something artist from the U.K. who marries Frank, a 40-something-year-old advertising executive, for what seems to be love, but also may be for a green card. This story follows the two of them, along with their gaggle of creative, insane friends, navigating life in New York City.
Warnings: mental illness, age gaps, suicide, an entitled bitch, narcissistic artists.
3. Nobody Asked For This by Cazzie David
Genre: Essays
Themes: Being a nepotism baby, young adulthood, humor, womanhood
Pages: 352
Difficulty: 📗
This is my most favorite book I’ve ever read.
I’ve been really into books of essays recently, just because if you get bored or the plot isn’t going anywhere, a sharp left turn is just a few pages away. I also really like to hear about personal stories, especially if they’re hilarious.
Cazzie David, the daughter of Larry David, is in her late 20s. She’s a writer, former PA (who everyone apparently hated), one of two daughters to divorced parents, and Pete Davidson’s first famous ex girlfriend, who Ariana Grande wrote “break up with ur girlfriend, i’m bored” about. If that doesn’t sell you, I don’t know what will. But it’s actually the funniest book I’ve ever read, and you will laugh out loud.
4. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
Genre: Mystery, thriller
Themes: Murder, mental illness, psychological thriller
Pages: 328
Difficulty: 📕
This is kind of funny, because it has a little bit of if Cleopatra and Frankenstein was a murder-mystery.
But, as a complete 180 from the previous three novels, The Silent Patient is a gripping, extremely bone-chilling, and thrilling page turner.
Alicia is a painter, married to a fashion photographer. She lives in Hampstead Heath with her husband, painting and living a fabulous life that everyone envies (can you tell I dream to be a young wife in London?). Suddenly, one evening, her husband comes home from work, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face. She’s then admitted to a mental hospital and refuses to speak, where psychologist Theo attempts to breakthrough to her, understanding what made her do it.
Warnings: murder (duh), mental illness, being scared sh*tless.
5. My Body by Emily Ratajkowski
Genre: Memoir
Themes: womanhood, celebrity memoir
Pages: 256
Difficulty: 📗
Please, save your judgement.
I was an Emily Ratajkowski hater…kind of…until I read this. I never really understood her, I was put off by the way she was holding her baby like a football (even though I’m not a mother and have no legs to stand on), and I felt like she was to pretty to ever complain.
After reading this memoir, despite being an incredible writer, Emily is retrospective, curious, dedicated to making a change, and just a really cool girlboss. Of course, there were times where I was like, hmmm, should you be saying this? But, she’s incredibly candid about struggles and past traumas she’s faced, and, I just love to hear about her fab life.
Warnings: sexual assault, trauma
Genre: Fiction
Themes: Womanhood, I literally don’t know what else
Pages: 336
Difficulty: 📕
This is definitely the most intense novel I could recommend, second to Silent Patient, but this, for some reason, is more intense than a woman shooting her husband in cold blood.
Lisa Taddeo, if you’re familiar with her previous work with Three Women, you’ll know is one of the best current writers male, female, anyone. Her style is so incredibly raw that you’ll feel sick to your stomach, want to cry your eyes out, and completely change your perspective on life for the foreseeable future after reading. So, a super fun beach read for your weekend trip to the Hamptons!
Joan, the protagonist, flees NYC due to a man in her life committing a horrendous act of violence in front of her eyes. She ends up in Los Angeles, in search of Alice, someone who can inexplicably explain her past for her. Joan faces her trauma head on, and finally fights back against the men who have ruined her life.
Warnings: boy, where do we begin. Trauma, sexual assault, the patriarchy…
7. Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton
Genre: Memoir
Themes: Friendship, romance, womanhood
Pages: 368
Difficulty: 📗
One of my dearest friends, to whom I recommended this book to, described it as a handbook. I simply couldn’t agree more.
If anyone’s keeping a tally of how many books I love that include a young woman in the U.K., navigating love and friendship, you may have lost count by now. The same goes for memoirs by female writers. However, I promise, it’s worth it.
Dolly Alderton reflects on her young adulthood, navigating love, friends, parties, school, the workplace, and more. She’s hysterical, candid, extremely well spoken, and the amount of things she has taught me is endless. If you’re a young woman in your 20s, buy this book. If you’re the mother of a young woman in her 20s, buy them this book. If you have a best friend, buy them this book. Buy the book.
8. Tell Me Lies by Carla Lovering
Genre: Fiction, romance, young adult, kind of a thriller
Themes: Young adulthood, college, romance, toxic relationships
Pages: 384
Difficulty: 📗
This has successfully made it’s way around my friend group, as well as to my friends at SCAD, which means it’s truly a gem.
I would say that this is the ‘beachiest’ read out of all of these, by Reese Witherspoon standards. Despite being nearly 400 pages, I finished this in one day during the summer of 2020, and it’s just the type of book you want to be reading with a glass of rosé with no interruptions.
Lucy is a college freshman native to Long Island, who meets Stephen, an older frat brother who’s entranced by Lucy, successfully seducing her and leading her onto a ride she simply cannot get off. This novel sees betrayal, friendship navigation, going to college for the first time, and meeting someone who causes amnesia to everything important in one’s life.
If you’ve ever had a toxic ex boyfriend, a hard relationship with your mother, grown up in the East Coast, gone to college, or all four and everything in between, this will rock you. Otherwise, it’s a novel that’ll have you flipping pages like it’s nobody’s business.
9. Supper Club by Lara Williams
Genre: Fiction
Themes: Friendship, cooking, womanhood, coming of age
Pages: 320
Difficulty: 📙
This is probably the most avant-garde book that I could recommend, but if you like weird stuff like that, then you’ll be down.
Fun fact, I thought that people started supper clubs after reading this book, but in fact, it was already a concept.
Roberta is almost thirty, displeased with her life, and feels like she needs to seek out a greater purpose. She meets Stevie, an artist, who inspires her to live more freely and embrace what she’s passionate about: food. Thus, the two embark on starting a supper club, an experimental group where women join from different walks of life and come together to relinquish their fears and embrace their hunger. It proves to be a transformative experience, especially Steve and Roberta, for better, and for worse.
Warning: Eating disorders
Genre: Fiction
Themes: Humor, travel, family, friendship, romance, tradition
Pages: 464
Difficulty: 📙
I haven’t actually read this yet, but I thought I would finish this roundup with the book I’m kicking off the summer with. It’s listed as #1 in Turkish Travel Guides on Amazon, but this is fully a novel that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, so I don’t know. Maybe Jeff Bezos should sort that out.
Synopsis from Jeff himself: “The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings.“ Juicy!
While writing this, I had a fantasy of the Coffee Order stickers going on these books as picks, just like Oprah or Reese Witherspoon. Until then, tell a friend what they should read this summer.
just added multiple to my list
10/10 content right here thank you for fueling my book addiction