Summer fiction: Six captivating beach reads

‘Villa Coco’ by Andrew Sean Greer

Personal style that appears effortless often requires much invisible work, said Jacob Brogan in The Atlantic. “I thought about this distinction often while reading Andrew Sean Greer’s witty and, yes, stylish new novel.” The narrator, an American, is looking back on a sojourn in Tuscany when he was hired to work at the home of a scheming 92-year-old baronessa. But he also comes under the sway of other larger-than-life characters, including a male romantic interest, resulting in a “relentlessly charming” coming-of-age tale. Because Greer “has such a light touch,” the book “reads like a grand adventure, not a lesson,” said Chris Hewitt in The Minnesota Star Tribune. Perhaps because the Pulitzer-winning author of 2017’s Less has earned the privilege, Villa Coco “has the summery feel of someone writing whatever he feels like writing.” I have zero complaints—“other than that I wish it were longer.”

‘Rasputin Swims the Potomac’ by Ben Fountain

“Is it even possible to write a satirical novel about American politics anymore?” asked Laura Miller in Slate. If so, Ben Fountain, the author of the Iraq War–era send-up Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, “is a good candidate to try.” This time out, Fountain gives us a U.S. president who could only be Donald Trump plotting to win an unconstitutional third term by tapping as his running mate a wrestler named Rasputin. But a billionaire cabal prefers Rasputin at the top of the ticket, and as the drama levels up, Fountain’s prose “fizzes with a Dickensian color that makes the novel a blast to read.” A novel that also features a likable reality TV star turned White House staffer, a reporter named Clarence Thomas Jr., and a weeping epidemic is “a lot, for sure,” said Michael Schaub in the Los Angeles Times. “But Fountain pulls it off with his gleefully absurd sense of humor.”

‘Dolly All the Time’ by Annabel Monaghan

“Romance readers have found their book of the summer,” said Kimberly Ramirez in Los Angeles magazine. “A radiant and tension-filled love story,” Annabel Monaghan’s latest best seller revolves around a single mom and kindergarten teacher who’s pushing 40 when she returns to her Rhode Island hometown for the warmer months and agrees to a wealthy heir’s suggestion that she pose as his girlfriend. Because Dolly prizes her independence and they both have family burdens, the novel develops into a “gripping” read “packed with passion and doubt.” When the pair strike their deal, “only the truly inattentive will be shocked that complications ensue,” said Joanne Kaufman in The Wall Street Journal. That’s fine, because “the settings—sailboats, lush gardens, elegant townhouses—couldn’t be lovelier,” and resourceful Dolly “deserves every nice thing that seems to be coming her way.”

‘The Children’ by Melissa Albert

“Contemporary fantasy could certainly do with more sophisticated takes on the genre like this one,” said Jessie Lethaby in The Times (U.K.). Melissa Albert’s first foray into adult fiction hooks the reader from the moment it introduces its protagonist, Guinevere, a woman who was made famous as a child by her mother’s fantasy novels and is now releasing a dishonestly rosy memoir about her upbringing. Albert takes too long to bring the story to resolution, but as The Children advances along three timelines, there’s no denying “the sheer pleasure” of the reading experience. All along, you wonder how the fire started that killed Guinevere’s parents, said Lucy Rees in the Chicago Review of Books, and why she and her artist brother have long been estranged. “The answers converge with the meeting of the timelines in a sequence of pages so dazzling I had to take breaks to seep in the complexities.”

‘Pool House’ by Mary H.K. Choi

“Brace for the kind of heartbreak reserved for mothers and daughters who have more in common than they care to admit,” said Elisabeth Egan in The New York Times. When a former TV actor dies by suicide, his beautiful Korean American co-star and Stevie, her 20-year-old daughter, open their L.A. home to another of the show’s co-stars, who, to Stevie, is both a brother figure and a longtime crush. The house is unaffordable. Stevie wants out but can’t escape her mother’s orbit. And the domestic drama that then unfolds feels “unexpectedly perilous.” In reality, Stevie and her mom have been renting out their home and living in its pool house, said P. Claire Dodson in Vogue. As Choi tracks this unusual Hollywood trio, “Choi writes like she’s inviting you inside the joke, to the blood and sweat that make up the fame machine and the lives within it.”

‘The Shampoo Effect’ by Jenny Jackson

In her “deeply satisfying” new rom-com, Jenny Jackson “flips the usual romance novel progression of initial friction-laced attraction that melts into undeniable love,” said Carol Iaciofano Aucoin in WBUR.org. Caroline, a New York City–based writer, and Van, an environmental scientist, hook up shortly after Caroline arrives in a Massachusetts shore town, and the suspense lies in whether the pair will be torn apart, particularly after Van learns that he’s impregnated a member of his tight local friend group. The scandal, the sex, and the coastal setting “make for a perfect summer beach read,” said Julia Vitale in Air Mail. After all the complications, The Shampoo Effect emerges as “a breezy, fun novel whose ending is tied with a neat bow, as all endings of books read between Memorial Day and Labor Day should be.”