Welcome back to Book Break! This is your summer reads video. Depending on where you are in the
world it hasn't been the sunniest of summers so far. I am out in the sun now which is really
nice. Even if you're still stuck in the rain, or if you're just a bit miserable that your travel
plans have been scuppered again, luckily for us books can take us anywhere we want to go.
So in this video I'm going to tell you about five amazing books by women out this year that you
need to read this summer. So let's start with Black Water Sister by Zen Cho. In this book
we can travel to Malaysia with the main character Jess who is described by the author as a stressed
zillenial lesbian. Zillenial if you didn't know is the word for the people who are kind of
in between millennials and Gen Z. So Jess is returning to Malaysia for the first time since she
was a toddler to reunite with her family there. And then she starts hearing a voice in her head,
and it's a very bossy one at that. It turns out the voice in her head is the ghost of her late
grandmother, who is on a mission to avenge her local deity, the Black Water Sister. And
Jess is going to help her on this mission, whether she likes it or not. So it's got magic,
ghosts and goddesses, it's got heat, we get to explore Malaysia, and it's got family secrets
that will keep you turning the pages. So I'll just wait here while you add that one to your basket.
The next book you need to read this summer is Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia. So in this one
you get to travel to Miami and to Cuba and do a little bit of traveling through time as well.
So we follow five generations of a Cuban family jumping around through time to meet these
different really strong Latina women main characters. We start all the way back in
1866 and come up to present day following these women leading really different lives,
and each of their personal tragedies and triumphs. It's really moving, and crucially for a summer
read it's really transportative. You really get to go on this journey following the stories that link
these women together. And it's very sad at times, but ultimately it's a really empowering read.
Okay now we're leaving the warmer climates for a chilling psychological thriller. Fragile by Sarah
Hilary is a modern gothic psychological thriller. It's a twist on Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier,
and you will not be able to put it down. This book follows Nell, a runaway former foster child with,
of course, a dark secret. And she gets a job working at Starling Villas for the enigmatic
Robin Wilder, but she soon learns that Robin lives by a very strict set of rules, put there to hide
secrets of his own. So this was really twisty turny. You will soon start to question whether
or not Nell's arrival at Starling Villas was quite as coincidental as it seemed. And you're
going to need to buy this one for all of your friends because you will need other people to
talk about this with. A book that we raved about when it came out in hardback that is now newly
out in paperback is The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, now with a gorgeous new summery cover.
But here we're going to an even colder climate. This one takes us to a Norwegian island in 1617,
in the middle of a brutal winter storm. So this is based on real events about a storm
that killed almost the entire male population of this island who were out fishing at the time,
so the island becomes a place of women, a place of strength and endurance, and in the eyes of men,
a place of suspicion. So 18 months later, a commissioner arrives, having been sent to get
the island back under the control of men, and on discovering this incredible place of women, cries
of witchcraft soon ring through the air. So it's a very dark, quite bleak setting, maybe wouldn't
be your first choice for a summer holiday, but hey we're just excited to be traveling at this point.
And it's also a love story, forbidden love between two women from very different worlds,
and finally a non-fiction book that's really really empowering is Stronger by Poorna Bell.
This is a book all about women's strength that totally subverts all of the messages we've got
our whole lives about strength. This is not a book about changing the way you look, it is not a book
about self-improvement, it's a book about tapping into the inner strength, emotional and physical,
that we as women already have but are often never introduced to. Poorna Bell began powerlifting as
a means of coping with grief after the loss of her husband, and she was amazed at the inner reservoir
of strength that she found within herself, and how much confidence this gave her. And
crucially this is also a very intersectional book, so it contains Poorna Bell's story but
also lots of other stories of women of different races, ages, abilities, and social backgrounds.
So this is a book that will completely change the way you think about strength, and the way
you think about yourself. It's a really empowering read, so if you just read five books this summer,
those are the five books I think you should read. I will also link here to a video we recently made
on our favourites of the year so far, so you can go back and see the books that we have just been
loving, and raving about on Book Break so far in 2021. Do let me know your favourite books,
or the books that you're most excited to read this summer below, and I'll see you next time.