High SPF Reads for Your Summer Getaway

I love the beach. I love it when it’s full-on sunny or even partly cloudy; I have been known to visit a shore or two even in fall weather, just because...I live for that salty, sea air! Hot sand doesn’t bother me at all and no matter the season, the people-watching can’t be beat. So just imagine my joy at discovering a way to marry my love for the shore with my love for exploring new worlds between the covers of a good book.

Part of the attraction of picking up any new read is the very real possibility of being transported to another place, time or dimension. Though I’ve never been to Little Tall Island (or any town in Maine, fictional or otherwise, for that matter), thanks to Stephen King I can almost feel my fingers crack in the blistering cold alongside the narrator of Dolores Claiborne. And while I’ve never set foot on the sands of the Virgin Islands, the stories in Tiphanie Yanique’s How to Escape from a Leper Colony left me wondering more than once if I should reapply my sunscreen. Books seriously are magic.

With our own, local beaches filling up with vacationers and locals alike, what better time to escape to a different shore, if only via literature? So, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full, upright position, because we are about to take off on a few seaside adventures!

First Stop: Turtle Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia
A Drop in the Ocean by Jenni Ogden stars Anna Fergusson—a neuroscientist from Boston who travels to the Great Barrier Reef for a year-long stay after a career disappointment at home. She loves her new temporary digs, the turtles, and an unexpected romance she brews while there, but Anna soon finds out that no matter where you run to, troubles can also follow!

Next Up: Ville Rose, Haiti
Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat is the story of a little girl (the titular Claire) who goes missing on the night her father, Nozias, decides to give her away to another family so that she may have a ‘better life.’ What ensues during the fictitious island-town’s search for Claire is an uncovering of secrets and painful memories for which none of the characters were prepared.

Keep Practicing Your French, We’re Headed to the Riviera
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan introduces us to seventeen-year-old Cécile, her widowed father and his mistress, and Cécile’s new lover. It’s all fun and games in a small villa on the French Riviera, until her late mother’s best friend shows up, and Cécile sees her as a threat to be squashed.

A Quick Stop on the Liberian Coast
The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper, the only non-fiction book on my list, is a memoir that explores Liberia’s violent past through the eyes of the very rich and privileged Cooper, who lived in a mansion by the sea until her home country’s turmoil forced her family to flee to America. I know, it sounds heavy, and it is, but a dose of reality never hurt anyone (much)!

Buona Sera: Ladies & Gentlemen, Welcome to Syracuse, Italy. The local time is…
Siracusa by Delia Ephron (Syracuse, Sicily) is a great place to end our trip because let me tell you: it’s juicy! Two couples (Michael +Lizzie; Finn +Taylor) vacation together on the coast of the Ionian Sea, and what you think will be a picturesque romp through Sicily’s Syracuse, turns into drama, betrayal, and an ending you won’t believe.