2021 Summer Reading List: 10 Women’s Fiction Books You Won’t Want to Miss

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The best part about launching my summer reading list is doing a giveaway! Sending books in the mail to people is like an addiction to me. 

Use the giveaway entry form below to enter the giveaway. Earn extra entries by completing a few simple tasks like visiting me on Instagram and Facebook. 

Three random winners will each win one book of their choice from the list. Winners will be announced July 6, 2021.

That first road trip morphs into a fun tradition–each year, Poppy and Alex take a vacation together and have the time of their lives. Poppy starts a budget travel blog and they have hilarious experiences trying to see the world on a dime.

But when she lands a job at an upscale travel magazine, their trips together change and cause a fissure in their friendship, one that divides them for two years. When Poppy gets one final chance to take Alex on a vacation and return him to his rightful role as her best friend, she pulls out all the stops. 

I loved this book, not only because one of their many vacations took place in my hometown and it thrilled me to read about all the familiar landmarks in a novel (though that helped!), but also because the chemistry between these two is simply delightful and I couldn't get enough of them. 

Like her last two epic historical novels, Hannah's The Four Winds tells the story of a mother who will–and must–do the unthinkable to save her children. The heroine, Elsa, captured me from the first page, as she took the first daring steps outside the prison of a home she'd been raised in. The story evolves quickly and Elsa is soon a mother of two, forced to take even greater risks. 

The Four Winds is an exhilarating emotional rollercoaster that takes you up, and down, and up, then way, way down. Told through the alternating perspectives of Elsa and her fourteen-year-old daughter Loretta, Hannah unveils a historical event largely unfamiliar to me (the Dust Bowl that decimated Southern Plains of the US during the Great Depression), digs into the pain felt by those treated as unwanted outsiders in their own country, and shows the courage necessary to stand up and fight for what you believe in. 

I couldn't put it down. 

But it's Elin Hilderbrand, so I went along with it and I did not regret it. It's rare for her protagonists to not capture my interest immediately and Vivi Howe was no exception. A devoted mother of three young adults, Vivi is awaiting the publication of her thirteenth novel, in which she's hidden a real life secret. 

Though I worried the afterlife scenario would be morbid, it was anything but. Vivi is swept off by 'Her Person', Martha, a guardian angel of sorts who welcomes new entrants into what one assumes is Heaven. Vivi negotiates with Martha, who gives her seventy-five days in a heavenly anteroom modelled after the saved images on Vivi's Instagram account–right down to the Benjamin Moore paint colour. 

It is from here that Vivi watches her family and friends handle the aftermath of her death and learn to find their way in the world without her. 

In her trademark style, Hilderbrand is able to take a serious matter and make it fun and lighthearted, while still making us stop and ponder some of the book's deeper messages. This is a perfect beach read to kick off summer. 

When Birdy's best friend, Heather, ditches her summer job as a sommelier at a little hotel in Scotland, a silly prank leads to Birdy taking her place–even though she knows nothing about wine, other than that you drink it. When she arrives to find the expectations of Heather were much higher than she'd imagined, she's forced to get her act together if she's going to save the hotel from falling victim to its new celebrity chef's upscale rebranding and her terribly botched presentations of the wine list. 

Although deeply flawed, Birdy is a lovable character, as are many of the coworkers she joins forces with in the hotel's restaurant. But more than that, her antics are wickedly funny, and couldn't we all use a good laugh right about now?

This is exactly what she does in The Nature of Fragile Things. It's 1906 and Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant living a difficult life in New York. Life is so hard, in fact, that she responds to an ad in the paper from a widower in San Francisco seeking a wife. She arrives to find a generous but distant husband and a small girl who hasn't spoken since her mother passed away. 

Sophie does her best to build a new life in San Francisco. But when her husband goes away on a business trip, she learns something frightening about him. And then the earthquake hits. 

While this wasn't my absolute favourite Meissner book, I did listen to the audiobook straight through, it was so gripping.

Their emergence into this new life is threatened, however, when Flora finds Julian's wedding ring hidden away in a filing cabinet, the ring he supposedly lost years ago. When she questions him, deeply covered lies are exposed and they have to reevaluate their relationship and future. 

My favourite part of the book is that Good Company stages a massive outdoor production each summer at a large family country home in New York. This tradition is what ties Flora and Julian's friend group together and is the foundation of many of their shared memories. As my family has a similar tradition–though on a slightly smaller scale–I loved reading about how much it meant to them and how it influenced their identities as individuals, couples, and families. 

This is a slower,  gentler read, perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon. 

The novel, filled with quirky, well-meaning but bumbling characters, is masterfully written, each page pulling us deeper into their tangled web. 

I'm completely enraptured by Backman's prose. Somehow he manages to write things that are simultaneously farcical and brilliantly insightful.  

I wish I could quote three-quarters of the book to you, as that's roughly the amount I stopped and marvelled at, but I'll limit myself to a line or two: "The truth of course is that if people really were as happy as they look on the Internet, they wouldn't spend so much damn time on the Internet, because no one who's having a really good day spends half of it taking pictures of themselves. Anyone can nurture a myth about their life if they have enough manure, so if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, that's probably because it's full of s***. Not that that really makes much difference, because now we've learned that every day needs to be special. Every day."

While the story is pretty simple–a would-be bank robber holds up a room full of people at an apartment viewing for an afternoon–the characterizations and depth of insights are anything but. 

In many ways, I didn't relate to Bridget or her story. Though she and Will have been best friends for thirty years, she never married and conceived her children with the help of a donor. She grew up in a wealthy and privileged family and attended Juilliard before launching her career as a professional musician. Though she's struggled in some areas, she's led a relatively comfortable life. 

Despite having little in common with her, I really found myself rooting for her. She is a good-natured protagonist going through a defining stage in her life. She's just received some newfound independence and she's not entirely sure what to do with it, but I loved watching her come into her own and deepen her relationships with Will, her children, and her family.