TikTok: One of the most-used social media platforms that morphs to your specific niche. Whether you like cooking videos, need advice, or love beauty tips, there’s a “tok” for everything. Specifically, one thing that was trending this summer was “BookTok”, my personal hyper-fixation of the summer. BookTok spotlighted bibliophiles who covered a range of book-related topics and what books were trending. When I say I fell deep into BookTok, I saw almost every video about the trending books of the summer, the authors’ TikTok profiles, and book reviews. After crafting my TBR (to be read) list, the first thing I did was head straight to my Barnes and Noble, grab a drink from Starbs, and started my stack. Booktok covered all different genres, but I mainly stuck to the romance section. I read about 12 books this summer, and these are just a few that stood out to me. Whether you need a book to add to your TBR, want to see what the book is like, or want to see what someone else thought of the book, I’ve got you covered.
1. Icebreaker by Hannah Grace
Icebreaker: a sports romance with a hint of enemies to lovers and forced proximity. Two MC’s Anastasia (Stassie) and Nate are athletes at a big-time college who are forced to share the same practice space after an incident with the hockey team’s ice rink. Throughout the book, you follow Nate and Stassie as their forced closeness causes tensions to become high and see their romance blossom from there. This one is for sure a page turner. This book was by far my favorite read of the summer. The dual POV every other chapter or so flips between Stassie and Nate. Seeing both of their thoughts throughout the book just makes the plot ten times better.
It almost teases the reader to want to know where their relationship will go next. Not to mention, this is a hockey romance and as soon as you’re introduced to the rest of the hockey team, it’s only a matter of time before you hyper-fixate over fictional characters. Book boyfriend of the year also goes to the MC Nate Hawkins. Seriously, the way he treats Anastasia will have you drooling over a man–quite literally written by a woman. I constantly recommend this book to everyone who’s starting their romance journey as it has the perfect amount of softness and spice.
Overall rating: 5/5
2. The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
The summer I turned Pretty: I know this book may have gotten a lot of hype from the TV show from those who have yet to read the book. I, for one, watched the show and then the book (a rarity for me) and was flabbergasted at how different they were. For those who don’t know, The Summer I turned Pretty is about a girl named Belly who stays at a summer house with her mom’s best friend and her two sons Conrad and Jeremiah. You’re quickly introduced to Belly’s puppy obsession with Conrad and the book follows their back-and-forth love spiral. This is a 3-book series with the second book It’s not summer without you and the third We’ll always have summer and I finished all 3 within a week.
The first book specifically was the best in my opinion. During the first few chapters, You’re introduced to Belly’s moms’ best friend, Suzannah. Suzannah is the mom to Conrad whom Belly has been in love with for her entire life. Throughout the book, I HATED belly. She’s very immature for someone who is in her teen years, and Suzannah really got me through the first book even though she was a minor character. The book followed Belly and Conrad as their romance slowly blossomed, but I couldn’t get over Belly’s temper tantrums whenever Conrad didn’t look in her direction. I’m not going to lie, the first book is the best book, though sometimes I wanted to scream at the characters. It is a very short and easy read, especially perfect for the summer. It’s a perfect amount of softness with little-to-no spice.
Overall Rating 3.5/5
3. Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
Every Summer After: This book!!!! Every Summer is a perfect second chance romance with the right person, wrong timing trope. Persephone has a summer home at the lake with her parents that they go to every year. She soon meets her next-door neighbors Sam and Charlie, who become her go-to people for when she’s at the lake for the summer. After years apart, Her and Sam are finally reunited when Persephone comes back to the lake for Sam’s mom’s funeral. From there, you’re left to piece together Persephone and Sam’s complex yet passionate relationship while reading the past and the present at the same time.
At first, this book wasn’t my favorite. As soon as I finally got over the past versus present timeline, I fell head over heels for the characters in the book. Sam’s character is stable, loving, patient and you start to wonder if Persephone deserves him (she really doesn’t). A lot of the book is Persephone’s character trying to right her wrongs she did to Sam, but she has a very woe is me attitude I couldn’t get down with. However, once you reach the last 100 or so pages, everything falls into place so perfectly. It’s satisfying seeing the ending you wanted for the main characters. Not to mention, the epilogue left me absolutely SOBBING (in a good way). The book has just the right amount of spice without overdoing it. If you’re looking to get into YA romance, this is a great starting point. This is also a great vacation/pool read.
Overall: 4.5/5
4. twisted Love by Ana Huang
Twisted Love dives into a Billionaire brother’s best friend romance, where the two main characters, Alex and Ava, can’t resist each other. The story line follows a grumpy x sunshine character development and eventually you see Alex’s twisted secrets and ulterior motives when he begins dating Ava. I originally picked up this book because I was looking for something with spice but could not get into this story. The MC Alex is just downright mean to Ava for the first half of the book, and she still fell for him. To make matters worse, further into the book, Alex kidnaps and almost kills her yet she still loves him anyways?! Not to mention half the book is them just having Fifty Shades times 10 type of sex.
Twisted in the title definitely should have warned me, but I went in naïve, and this book almost landed on my DNF, but I persevered. The author wrote an entire Twisted Series containing 4 interlinking books including Twisted Love. I didn’t want to read the second book because I thought it would be like the first one, but boy was I wrong. I quickly fell in love with the second book Twisted Games, and it might be my favorite book to date, but Twisted Love got posted all over Booktok and her others just got left in the dark. If you like the idea of Stockholm syndrome romance, then this book is for you, but other than that, It wasn’t my cup of tea. If you can, I recommend persevering to her second book as it gets much, much better.
Overall: 2.5/5
Booktok this summer did have a lot of good recommendations and overall, I was pleasantly surprised with my readings. I’ve now crafted an even bigger list of books to be read just in time for Christmas. Here’s just a sneak peak of what’s on my TBR:
–Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
–Verity by Colleen Hoover
–Twisted Lies by Ana Huang (finishing the series)
–If He Had Been With Me by Laura Nowlin
–Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas
-The Bridgerton series, starting with the Duke and I by Julia Quinn
-The book with the highest priority on my list: Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton
What will you read next?