I’ll give almost any genre or author a try normally, but when I’m on vacation (beach or otherwise) I’m less adventurous in my reading. I think it’s because vacation time is so precious I don’t want to risk wasting it on something I won’t enjoy enough to finish. And since many of my vacations are outdoorsy, chances are there might not be a bookstore nearby to supply a more satisfying read.
So I usually stick to favorite authors.
For my next vacation, I’ll make an effort to catch up on Amanda’s and Diane’s backlists, though these ladies are so prolific it’s a challenge (albeit a worthy one!) to keep up. The pile will also include books by some of the following authors: Jo Beverley, Judith Ivory, Laura Kinsale, Mary Jo Putney, Jean Ross Ewing aka Julia Ross.
But I have a confession to make. While the pile (constrained only by luggage space) may have some weightier stories, there also have to be what I think of as quintessential beach reads: pageturners with plenty of humor.
That’s why I almost always vacation with something by Loretta Chase. In recent years, I’ve romped through a few of her two-in-one Regency reissues. Her long historicals are also fantastic, of course. But I guess most of you know that already!
Here are a few other books I’ve read recently that are great beach reads.
BET ME by Jennifer Crusie–great characters, dialogue and what the hero does with a chocolate Krispy Kreme is just…well, believe me when I say it’s good. Very good.
DISAPPEARING NIGHTLY by Laura Resnick. It’s not a romance though it has a romantic thread that ends in a kiss. Really, it’s Chick Lit meets Ghostbusters. Kooky stuff, but I devoured pages as if they were potato chips. If I were allowing myself to eat potato chips during swimsuit season, that is. Which I don’t. Mostly.
So anyway, here are just a few more authors and titles you might want to consider trying this summer. Along with, of course, anything by the Riskies. 🙂
Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, RT Reviewers’ Choice for Best Regency of 2005
www.elenagreene.com
You know, there are a few themes that crop up frequently in Jennifer Crusie books. Or, well, perhaps they’re more motifs than themes. Or something.
Ahem. Anyway, I mean food! Dove bars, Chinese take-out (including pot stickers)…. Also dogs. Hmm… Now we just need a dog who cooks pot stickers.
Cara
(who just baked a chocolate cake and only burned it a little. Okay, she didn’t actually burn it at all, it was the OVEN that did that)
Food as a theme always works for me. 🙂
Sorry about what that wretched oven did to your nice cake, Cara. Hopefully a little whittling and frosting can hide the sins. I’m a big fan of fixing things with frosting. Or candy when necessary. Once when a cake didn’t come out of the pan neatly and had a crater in the middle, I stuffed that area with M&Ms and put the next layer over it. The only people that complained were those who got the edge pieces.
Elena
The M&Ms idea sounds great!
I did manage to fix it, with whittling and frosting! Sounds like you’ve been there before. 🙂 And actually, it turned out to be quite a tasty cake!
Cara
Just want to say that the cake was delicious! But things are always better with M&Ms. They are the perfect fruit.
Thanks for the reading recommendations, Elena! I read the Crusie and liked it, though (as I may have mentioned in the past) I was shocked by the amount of explicit food in the book; the bit where hero feeds the heroine Krispy Kreme donuts shook me to my puritanical core.
Todd-who-likes-chocolate-anyway