It is starting to feel like summer, the perfect weather to curl up in an Adirondack chair with a cool beverage and a good book. What are some of your favorite summer reads?

I enjoy shorter books with shorter chapters in the summer. I find these books are easier to put down for a few minutes when I need to refill my drink or move out of the sun.

I am compiling my summer reading list and would love to hear your suggestions.

Here are some books you may want to put on your summer reading list.

I loved this novella for many reasons. It opens with a map of the campground that is difficult to read on the kindle. However, if you click on the link, you can download a free, color, annotated map that looks so authentic, I was picking out a site for my RV this summer.

Since this is a novella, there were a few places where things felt a little rushed, but overall I liked the story. I found the characters very relatable and look forward to reading more about them. The story itself felt well-executed, although the ending may have been a little rushed. I wanted to see more of Nolan addressing his obvious PTSD, but I figure that will come out in a future book.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more in this series.

This book opens with a glossary and pronunciation guide and I was proud of myself for knowing most of the terms and sounds. During the readings, however, the terms were explained in the text, somewhat unnecessarily, either because their meaning was obvious or because they were already explained in the glossary. While I am aware the author spends at least some of her time in Ireland, there were several times where I felt that this book was being narrated by an American rather than an Ireland native. I would have preferred a little less explanation. If I were truly curious what something meant, I would gladly research it to better understand the culture.

This brings me to another point about this story. It felt very heavily narrated. The main character spends a lot of time in the first half of the book pondering how her life would have been different had her parents not died (a year before the story begins) and the second half explaining how she is arriving at her conclusions about why someone would or would not make a good suspect (some of which feel like a big reach). I often felt like things were being spelled out for me instead of letting me try to guess whodunit on my own. There are several instances where these internals interrupt the dialogue and the flow of the story. While the main character usually acknowledges this with something to the effect of She didn't hear what he said, I still found it jarring as a reader.

Along the same lines, I felt like a lot of time passed between the two murders. Combined with the second guessing and excessive internals, the first half of the story felt a little slow.

There were also two small plot holes that bothered me. In chapter 3, the main character decides to take up running. While it is occasionally joked about throughout the book, we only see her running in chapter 3. I assumed she gave it up because she was so involved in her investigation. Yet, in chapter 39, we read that she was glad she had kept up with her running. I feel like this was a missed opportunity to mention when the main character might have noticed things around town or even just to have used this time to clear her head.

The other plot hole came at the end. Without giving too many spoilers, the main character learns that three people are being blackmailed. She determines the motive for two of them, but we never learn the motive for the other. I was disappointed because I felt it was something important about his character.

Because this story was so focused on the main character, I found many of the other characters a little flat. There were many names introduced in the first couple of chapters, along with a lot of backstory, making me a little confused. Despite the fact that her older brother is falsely accused, I felt I knew very little about him. I feel like we should have learned more about him during the course of the investigation. Did being accused of murder scare him away from drinking for good? What had caused him to become sober in first place? Although this story was supposed to be about Siobhán's family, I felt I knew more about the hairdresser across the street than about her siblings.

Despite my nit-picky review, this book was not all bad. My favorite line was: The date was officially ruined. Accusing each other of murder was a definite romance killer. I found Siobhán relatable and look forward to reading about her further adventures.