You Think Summer is for Thrillers

Want a belated Memorial Day read or are heading to the forest

Hi friends,

We’re officially in the Summer Reading season — and that means BINGO.

How To Play

• Get a copy of your card here.

• Fill it in with books you read between now and Labor Day.

• We’ll run on the honor system, but I’m asking everyone to use each book for a single category (i.e. if you listen to an audiobook by a new-to-you author, you can only use it for one square).

• Submit your final card here by Friday, September 6th (Don’t worry. I’ll remind you.) for the chance to win prizes.

• If you get Bingo, you’ll get one entry to the raffle. If you fill out your entire card, you’ll get two!

The Prize
Everyone who submits their card and is subscribed to What To Read If will be entered into a raffle for a $75 gift card to either Bookshop.org or Libro.FM.

As always, let me know if you have questions. If you’re looking for recommendations to get you started, Lily Herman rounded up a list of new books that includes a number of reads I’m excited for, and my pals

Mel Joulwan & Dave Humphreys

launched the sixth season (!) of their podcast last week.

Quick programming note: I’m taking next week off to attend my college reunion. I’ll be back in your inboxes on June 10^th.

And, now, what to read if…

You Think Summer is Thriller Season

The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean

Kathleen Schmidt

hosted a great discussion a few weeks back with the prompt, “What does summer reading mean to you?” I loved reading the responses that included everything from the classics to romance. For me, peak summer reads are 1) fun and frothy or; 2) something I can pick up and pick down (a holdover from my lifeguarding days I think) or; 3) a thriller. Something about the heat and sunshine makes me want fast-paced twists and turns. If that’s you too, put The Return of Ellie Black in your beach bag.

Since her sister disappeared two decades earlier, Detective Chelsey Calhoun has spent her days looking for other missing girls and hunting their abductors. Bringing girls home to their families, though, doesn’t happen often. Then, Ellie Black, a local woman who vanished two years earlier, reappears as suddenly as she disappeared. Chelsey doesn’t expect Ellie to be exactly the same as she was before, but something about her story doesn’t sit right. She becomes convinced Ellie is protecting someone and sets out to find her kidnapper, even as Ellie says to leave it alone.

As you’ve probably noticed, I read a lot of mysteries and thrillers, and The Return of Ellie Black is one of the best I’ve read in a while. I can typically guess where a book’s going, but Emiko Jean shocked me with this one — and it was such a great feeling. This is Jean’s first thriller — she’s veteran YA author — and I hope it’s not her last.

You Spent the Weekend Reflecting on the Cost of War

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

When I saw my book club was reading In Memoriam, a World War I saga, for our May meeting, I was hesitant. I don’t typically read war books, and nearly 400 pages on the horrors of trench warfare sounded like a lot. Yet, I ended up captivated by it, finishing it days sooner than I expected, and found reading it in the days leading up to Memorial Day surprisingly moving. It was a stark reminder that the holiday isn’t just the unofficial start of the summer season or an excuse for a three-day weekend, but a day to honor military members who died while serving.

As In Memoriam opens in 1914, Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood are safely ensconced at their posh British boarding schools, each focused on hiding their feelings for the other one, not the violence at the front. That changes when the half-German Gaunt enlists, after his mother and sister say it will protect them from rising anti-German sentiment. He hopes the time away from Ellwood will help him to move on, but his friend — and their classmates — follow him to the front, where death is a daily occurrence.

In Memoriam is a stunning debut. I cannot believe it’s Alice Winn’s first book. She does not shy away from depicting the horrors of trench warfare, yet the love story and some genuinely funny scenes give it a “certain lightness,” as Elizabeth Harris wrote in the New York Times. I’ll be thinking about this book and Gaunt and Ellwood for a long time.

You’re Planning a National Forest Trip this Summer

Tree Thieves by Lyndsie Bourgon

If you’re heading to the woods this summer, you’ll want to make sure to pack Lyndsie Bourgon’s Tree Thieves, a non-fiction tale of tree poachers and park rangers in the Pacific Northwest.

Timber, it turns out, has a billion-dollar black market and in Tree Thieves, Bourgon walks readers through three cases of tree poaching, as well as the history of forestry and logging in the area. While it would have been easy to write the poachers as cartoon villains, Bourgon instead takes a more complex approach, showing how decades of economic change and overzealous environmental regulation left the thieves feeling like they had no other options. She writes, “I have begun to see the act of timber poaching as not simply a dramatic environmental crime, but something deeper — an act to reclaim one’s place in a rapidly changing world.”

Tree Thieves, similar to The Oyster War by Summer Brennan, explores what happens when well-intentioned environmental protections come into contact with real-world situations. Bourgon is clearly an environmentalist (her descriptions of the forest are beautiful), but she’s also clear-eyed about the trade-offs that sometimes come between economic growth and environmental regulation. A must-read for fans of Kirk Wallace’s The Feather Thief or anyone who likes nuanced non-fiction.

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