Book Recs from Friends 📖

As much as I love to read, I never want to waste my limited leisure time reading books that are not my cup of tea. I want to be sure I’m going to enjoy a new title before committing to spend time on it. The question is how to find books that I will love without losing precious minutes on the duds.

One of the most reliable ways I’ve found to discover books that I enjoy reading is to get honest assessments from friends who also love to read. Even if we don’t have the same taste, I have found recommendations from people I know and trust to be far more reliable than scrolling through online reviews.

I’ve written before about the joy of being in my bookgroup, where we regularly met and took turns picking books we had heard about. The Covid-19 pandemic slowed us down and we haven’t been able to meet regularly since, even though we keep in touch about what we’re reading.

I’ll take recommendations from my bookgroup friends anytime, and I’ve been asking around and coming up with some interesting recommendations. I highly recommend this method of uncovering your next great read.

With the summer reading season upon us, I’ve compiled a list of books that were recommended to me by friends. And we’d love to see some of your recs in the comments!

1. Shark Heart: A Love Story by Emily Habeck: Although I admittedly rolled my eyes when I read the premise and the first few pages, I have come to love this sweet and magical story of a young woman whose husband contracts a rare disease that has him morphing into a shark. Once my logical side let go, I opened myself up to a range of emotions in this unique and poetic novel.
2. North Woods by Daniel Mason: This book may not be for everyone but I was absolutely mesmerized by the concept of the woods as the main character, following several generations of human activity in its sphere. The human and nonhuman actors involved in the story became more interesting to me as the novel unfolded.
3. The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue: I enjoyed this book as a lighter but not silly look at the jam-packed early years of learning how to be an adult. Vacillating between funny and serious, the author integrates the city of Cork, Ireland, as the vivid backdrop for a pivotal friendship forged by the title character as she transitions from university student to adult with a career.
4. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray: Another book that touches on university life in Ireland, this time in Dublin, as part of the sweeping story of a family caught up in hard times. Alternating perspectives between each of the four family members, the isolation and repressed emotions feel tangible and somehow also a bit funny despite the seriousness of it all.
5. Happiness Falls by Angie Kim: This recommendation from Julia is now on my to-read list. It is about a Korean-American family in the Virginia area whose father goes missing and the suspenseful investigation that follows.