Here are 98 books that Something Blue fans have personally recommended if you like
Something Blue.
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I have always been drawn to the ocean. When I decided to start writing novels, I knew that I wanted to set them in coastal locations. I live in the Boston suburbs and spend time whenever I can at the beach. I have written books centered in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Cape Cod. I am working on a story set on the north shore of Massachusetts. I am a high school social studies teacher of twenty-four years and a parent of two teenagers. All of my writing includes cooking and the enjoyment of good food as a major focus. I hope my books make you hungry!
Although not coastal, this book’s Palm Springs setting is full of swimming pools and a feeling of escape to somewhere new. I laughed, I cried, and I adored the dynamic between Patrick and his adorable niece and nephew.
Secondary characters, such as the three neighbors and other family members, added depth and emotion to the story. I seriously read this book in 24 hours!
National Bestseller • Wall Street Journal Bestseller • USA Today Bestseller An NPR Book of the Year Semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor Finalist for the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards
From the bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus and The Editor comes a warm and deeply funny novel about a once-famous gay sitcom star whose unexpected family tragedy leaves him with his niece and nephew for the summer.
Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out…
Take one workaholic lawyer with six months to secure her promotion to law firm partner. Add an attractive, fun-loving neighbor next door who makes her laugh and tempts her with a different life. Is this a recipe for love or disaster?
I’m a novelist who was first a reader. For me, books are windows, showing the world through lenses I haven’t experienced before. In difficult moments, they’ve been lifelines, proof that I’m not alone and happy endings (at least happier) are possible. What “feels good” in a book is a quality unique to each reader. Below are stories about imperfect characters who not only survive their pasts but succeed—in unwinding from the wounds, changing aspects of themselves that no longer fit who they choose to be now, and ultimately creating happier lives. That kind of success feels great to me. I hope it might for you, too.
Malibu Rising was the first book I read by Taylor Jenkins Reid. As soon as I finished, I read three more of her novels. All of them made me feel great. Hers are stories you can lose yourself in and come out feeling refreshed and optimistic.
Malibu Rising centers around the adult Riva siblings, children whose parents stopped parenting long before the kids were equipped to care for themselves. Particularly impacted is Nina, the oldest, who has spent her life making choices that prioritize the well-being of everyone except herself.
This is a book about dealing with old wounds, the kind that hide under the surface of successful lives. It’s a story that takes us on multiple journeys of self-discovery and healing. For me, a book doesn’t get more “feel good” than that.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today • From the author of Carrie Soto Is Back, Daisy Jones & The Six, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo . . .
“Irresistible . . . High drama at the beach, starring four sexy, surfing siblings and their deadbeat, famous-crooner dad.”—People
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Time, Marie Claire, PopSugar, Parade, Teen Vogue, Self, She Reads
Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours,…
I’ve been an avid reader since childhood. I read almost all genres, but my favorite type of book has always been the kind that you associate with a beach bag and a lazy day of reading in the sun (and maybe even a beverage nearby with a tiny umbrella). I love books that provide a realistic escape, where I can lose myself in the descriptions of picturesque scenery and flawed but lovable characters. Not surprisingly, these are also the types of books I’ve chosen to write. I want to give readers the same joy of sitting back on a chaise lounge with a piña colada (perhaps metaphorically) and disappearing into the fictional world I’ve created.
The Blue Bistrois one of Hilderbrand’s earlier books, and like almost all of her work, it is set on the island of Nantucket. I thoroughly enjoy reading all of Hilderbrand’s novels because of the incredible imagery she uses to describe the settings. I feel like I know the beaches, restaurants, hotels, and streets of Nantucket from reading her books almost better than I could from vacationing there. The Blue Bistrois especially compelling because it is set in a unique upscale restaurant and weaves distressing personal drama with mouthwatering menu descriptions. If you like good food and good gossip, you’ll love The Blue Bistro.
Elin Hilderbrand, author of the enchanting Summer People and The Beach Club, invites you to experience the perfect getaway with her sparkling novel, The Blue Bistro.
Adrienne Dealey has spent the past six years working for hotels in exotic resort towns. This summer she has decided to make Nantucket home. Left flat broke by her ex-boyfriend, she is desperate to earn some fast money. When the desirable Thatcher Smith, owner of Nantucket's hottest restaurant, is the only one to offer her a job, she wonders if she can get by with no restaurant experience. Thatcher gives Adrienne a crash course…
Part romance/erotica and part family drama, but all heart.
Scarlett loved horses since she was a child, living amidst the chaos of a family ravaged by mental illness. Years later, as she rebuilds a relationship with her often-absent father, she wrangles with needy clients, a manipulative mother, a nosy uncle,…
I’ve been an avid reader since childhood. I read almost all genres, but my favorite type of book has always been the kind that you associate with a beach bag and a lazy day of reading in the sun (and maybe even a beverage nearby with a tiny umbrella). I love books that provide a realistic escape, where I can lose myself in the descriptions of picturesque scenery and flawed but lovable characters. Not surprisingly, these are also the types of books I’ve chosen to write. I want to give readers the same joy of sitting back on a chaise lounge with a piña colada (perhaps metaphorically) and disappearing into the fictional world I’ve created.
The two main characters in Who Do You Love stayed with me long after I read this book, and I’ve found them popping into my thoughts again and again over the years – a sure sign of well-written characters. It’s the story of two people who come in and out of each other’s lives and how their love changes and evolves over time. Full of joy, heartbreak, hope, and loss, this love story will draw you in and stick with you.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner delivers "a tale of love against the odds" (People).
Rachel Blum and Andy Landis are just eight years old when they meet one night in an ER waiting room. Born with a congenial heart defect, Rachel is a veteran of hospitals, and she's intrigued by the boy who shows up alone with a broken arm. He tells her his name. She tells him a story. After Andy's taken back to a doctor and Rachel's sent back to her bed, they think they'll never see each other again.
I’m a lecturer in medical humanities at the University of Leeds in England and I’m currently writing a book about the portrayal of traumatic pregnancy in fantastic literature (science fiction, horror, fantasy…). ‘Medical humanities’ is a field of study that looks at medical issues using the tools of the humanities, so it encompasses things like history of medicine, bioethics, and (my specialty) literature and medicine. Thinking about literature through the lens of traumatic pregnancy has led me to some fascinating, gory, and philosophical books, some of which I’m including on this list.
In this book, Doris Lessing tells the story of the Lovatts, a perfectly normal middle-class English family with four children and a seemingly idyllic life. The idyll is spoiled when the wife, Harriet, becomes pregnant with her fifth child.
The novel tells the story of the child's (Ben’s) life until he is in his teenage years, but the early scenes that describe Harriet’s difficult pregnancy and her foreboding that something is deeply wrong with her unborn child are the ones that I find particularly sinister.
Here, Lessing shows how pregnancy can be an experience that wreaks unpredictable consequences on the smooth functioning of life.
Doris Lessing's contemporary gothic horror story—centered on the birth of a baby who seems less than human—probes society's unwillingness to recognize its own brutality.Harriet and David Lovatt, parents of four children, have created an idyll of domestic bliss in defiance of the social trends of late 1960s England. While around them crime and unrest surge, the Lovatts are certain that their old-fashioned contentment can protect them from the world outside—until the birth of their fifth baby. Gruesomely goblin-like in appearance, insatiably hungry, abnormally strong and violent, Ben has nothing innocent or infant-like about him. As he grows older and more…
Like many women my age, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the possibly discordant relationship between the things I love doing—writing, reading, spending time in solitude with stories and ideas—and the expectation of motherhood. For many of us, the prospect of parenthood can feel less like a choice than a cultural imperative, and it can be difficult to reconcile brain and body, self and society. The novels on this list feature razor-sharp, highly educated female protagonists who experience, recall, or imagine pregnancy and motherhood in complicated ways. Their minds and bodies are sometimes in sync, sometimes painfully at odds, but always fascinating to behold.
This 1965 novel by English author Margaret Drabble follows protagonist and PhD student Rosamund as she becomes a single mother.
Educated, upper-middle-class Rosamund narrates with a quintessentially British and—for me—highly enjoyable blend of primness and humor. Fascinatingly and somewhat frustratingly, Rosamund keeps her pregnancy a secret from her daughter Octavia’s father, even after Octavia is born. She’s like a strange English Virgin Mary who studies Elizabethan sonnets and really doesn’t want to “put anyone out”.
Her story also offers an interesting glimpse into class issues in 1960s London and the way that experiences of pregnancy and motherhood can both transcend and accentuate class divisions.
A celebration of the drama and intensity of the mother-child relationship, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.
It is the Swinging Sixties, and Rosamund Stacey is young and inexperienced at a time when sexual liberation is well on its way. She conceals her ignorance beneath a show of independence, and becomes pregnant as a result of a one night stand. Although single parenthood is still not socially acceptable, she chooses to have the baby rather than to seek an illegal abortion, and finds her life transformed by motherhood.
'Rosamund is marvellous, a true Drabble heroine . .…
Secrets, lies, and second chances are served up beneath the stars in this moving novel by the bestselling author of This Is Not How It Ends. Think White Lotus meets Virgin River set at a picturesque mountain inn.
Seven days in summer. Eight lives forever changed. The stage is…
I’ve been completing Dry Januarys (and other sober months) since 2017! In turn, I’ve felt more energized, more positive, have experienced better sleep and better skin, among other benefits. I think giving up alcohol for any amount of time is beneficial and I encourage people to try it.
Unlike many non-alcoholic recipe books, this one's for women who are trying to conceive, are already pregnant or are breastfeeding, or individuals who are looking for a little bit more nutrition in their sips. This collection of more than 40 nutritious mocktail recipes are unique and the book also includes tips for sustainable mixology
Selected as one of Food Network's "Best Healthy Cookbooks of 2019" and as a "favorite must-read" by The Bump, Drinking for Two is the perfect gift for pregnant women, the health conscious new mom, or any woman just trying to stay healthy! This book features 45+ delicious, plant-based mocktail recipes carefully crafted to deliver essential nutrients and antioxidants, and target common pregnancy symptoms, all leading to a healthy pregnancy.
With recipes for flat, bubbly, apres-dinner, and warm comfort drinks, registered dietitians Diana Licalzi and Kerry Criss carefully developed and tested each mocktail to include whole foods and all-natural sweeteners. Quick-to-prepare…
I've been a passionate lover of all things horror. I strive to take my readers on an unforgettable journey, one that often places them well out of their comfort zone. I believe that horror should make readers uncomfortable, whether through a mounting sense of unease or full-blown exposure to gore and depravity. I do my best to pull readers into my stories so that they can almost personally experience the horrors. If I don’t make them cringe and wince, then I have failed. As outrageous as my books may be, they're not full of violence and gore for the sake of mere shock value. I do my best to create well-developed characters with thought-provoking and immersive storylines.
Some
might say that this is a really crappy story. I will agree only to the extent
that this book does, in fact, center on feces. Sara Todd is pregnant and she’s
not craving pickles and ice cream!
This
book is brilliantly written. McCluskey presents a most vile and disgusting
story—one that is ripe with imagery and depravity. There’s not much that shocks
and disturbs me, to be honest, but this book had me muttering, “No, oh no, no,
no” in anticipation of the nasty deeds. Each one seemed progressively worse. It
will likely turn your stomach and surely disgust you!
Sarah Todd doesn’t believe in cravings. She’s pregnant and determined to live the next seven months giving the baby all they nutrients it needs to grow into a healthy baby boy, or girl. The baby, however, has other plans. How far is she willing to go to succumb to her… CRAVINGS?From the dark mind of D E McCluskey, author of CRACK and The Twelve, comes this disturbing novelette. The baby must have what the baby needs…
I am fascinated by how gender and sex, characteristics of our beings that we take to be the most intimate and personal, are just as subject to external forces as anything else in history. I have written about the cultivation of masculinity in college fraternities, the history of young people and the age of consent to marriage, and about a same-sex couple who lived publicly as “father and son” in order to be together. My most recent book is a biography of an abortion provider in nineteenth-century America who became the symbol that doctors and lawyers demonized as they worked to make abortion a crime. I am a professor at the University of Kansas.
The word “abortionist” usually conjures up images of dangerous back alleys where untrained men take advantage of women.
In the case of Rickie Solinger’s book, instead, we meet Ruth Barnett, who performed approximately 40,000 abortions in the mid-twentieth century (1918-1968) in Portland, Oregon, without losing a single patient.
What I loved about this book is how Solinger takes us behind the scenes of a thoroughly illegal abortion clinic that still managed to provide expert care to all its patients, even as it sought to evade the law and its enforcers at every turn.
Prior to Roe v. Wade, hundreds of thousands of illegal abortions occurred in the United States every year. Rickie Solinger uses the story of Ruth Barnett, an abortionist in Portland, Oregon, between 1918 and 1968 to demonstrate that it was the law, not so-called back-alley practitioners, that most endangered women's lives in the years before abortion was legal. Women from all walks of life came to Ruth Barnett to seek abortions. For most of her career she worked in a proper suite of offices, undisturbed by legal authorities. In her years of practice she performed forty thousand abortions and never…
Born in the Philippines and raised in the US from the age of 4, Renee didn't see the stories of her culture reflected in books until she was a freshman in college at UC Berkeley. Renee wrote her first novel, The Hour of Daydreams, which was inspired by the ghost stories her family told. It received the inaugural Institute for Immigration Research New American Voices Finalist award. Her children’s book One Hundred Percent Me is the book she wishes she could’ve read to her own daughters.With her latest book, The ABCs of Asian American History, Renee hopes young readers will celebrate the vast contributions of Asian Americans to US culture, politics, arts, and society.
This book reveals a fascinating picture of mothers from China traveling to the US to give birth on American soil.
Factory worker Scarlett is one such mother, and her journey to safety, friendship, motherhood, and love, told with Hua’s impeccable gift for storytelling, is an adventure you will cheer for.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In a powerful debut about modern-day motherhood, immigration, and identity, a pregnant Chinese woman stakes a claim to the American dream in California.
“Utterly absorbing.”—Celeste Ng • “A marvel of a first novel.”—O: The Oprah Magazine • “The most eye-opening literary adventure of the year.”—Entertainment Weekly
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • Real Simple
Holed up with other mothers-to-be in a secret maternity home in Los Angeles, Scarlett Chen is far from her native China, where she worked in a factory and fell in love with the…
