Whether your summer plans include gallivanting around the globe, interning in the big city, relaxing on the beach or catching up on lost sleep at home, summer is the perfect time to crack open a book (or a Kindle, really) and get lost in another world for a few hours! Wondering what exactly you could be reading in all this free time? Her Campus JMU is here with 2012’s hottest summer reads!
“How To Be Single” By Liz Tuccillo
Manhattan chick Julie Jenson is fed up with the dating scene stateside so she says buh-bye to her posse and travels the world to discover how women in other countries survive the single life. Each city brings new lessons, and soon she finds what she least expected — love.
“The Language of Flowers” By Vanessa Diffenbaugh
The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen and emancipated from the system with nowhere to go, Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But an unexpected encounter with a mysterious stranger has her questioning what’s been missing in her life. And when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness.
“The Hunger Games” By Suzanne Collins
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, “The Hunger Games,” a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed.
“The Lucky One” By Nicholas Sparks
After U.S. Marine Logan Thibault finds a photograph of a smiling young woman buried in the dirt during his tour of duty in Iraq, he experiences a sudden streak of luck — winning poker games and even surviving deadly combat. Only his best friend, Victor, seems to have an explanation for his good fortune: the photograph — his lucky charm.
Back home in Colorado, Thibault can’t seem to get the woman in the photograph out of his mind and he sets out on a journey across the country to find her. But Thibault is caught off guard by the strong attraction he feels for the woman he encounters in North Carolina – Elizabeth, a divorced mother — and he keeps the story of the photo, and his luck, a secret. As he and Elizabeth embark upon a passionate love affair, his secret soon threatens to tear them apart — destroying not only their love, but also their lives.
“Secrets of a Shoe Addict” By Beth Harbison
Abbey, Tiffany, and Loreen are each in need of thousands of dollars and fast. Tiffany’s sister, Sandra, has the perfect idea. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s legal, and it’s the secret that kept her shoe addiction alive. In this deliciously sassy novel, three very different women bond when they find themselves in more than one kind of trouble. It’s the story of how sometimes you have a secret that can get you in—and out—of dire straits. It’s about romance, friendship, kids, revenge, affairs, and, most of all, a love of the well-heeled things in life.