Read Receipts Issue 86: July 04, 2025
🍑 🎆 🫐☀️🌽🕶️🍉🌭🧨
For many, we imagine, the month of June was a far cry from a quintessential summer kick-off. Whether you were stuck in a heat dome, getting rained on every weekend, or staring at your winter sweaters, willing them out of existence (okay, just for the season), your reading habits may have also felt frayed.
But a new month, especially one that kicks off with a peak-season holiday, is occasion enough to reset our summer mindset. This weekend, we’re getting back to our roots: reading outside in the morning with some fresh fruit, in a towel fresh out of the shower before dinner, and just before falling asleep while the A.C. cools off the room. We’re also picking up Atmosphere. Because the book of the summer is really still anyone’s for the taking. Maybe one of these three new fiction recs will inspire you?
Fire up the grill,
Barb, Kelsey, and Madeline
Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram for more content between sends, including our author interview series, Suggested Texts. Recent features: Zan Romanoff, Priyanka Aribindi, and Clare Moore McDaniel.
Barb
Hazel Says No, the debut novel from Jessica Berger Gross, is such a delight. Uprooting from Brooklyn, New York to Riverburg, Maine before her senior year of high school was more than Hazel Blum had bargained for. Her dad’s tenured position at the prestigious local college in Riverburg might be more than the family has bargained for, too. After spending the summer acclimating to her new home, and schlepping her little brother Wolf back and forth to the town pool, Hazel tentatively settles in. But when she’s called to the principal’s office on her first day of school, the family’s small town welcome becomes permanently jeopardized. The book is told in alternating sections from each family member’s perspective as they become embroiled in scandal and cope with the drama of being thrust into the local spotlight.
I loved the Blum family so much. Hazel is tenacious yet tender. Wolf is protective and passionate but circumspect. Their parents, Gus and Claire, are professionally ambitious but flailing in their respective careers, trying to give their kids space to adjust to Riverburg while telling themselves they made the right decision moving there in the first place. Reading this novel felt like watching Schitt’s Creek or Modern Family. Even the chapter titles, for example “Gus is trying to work” or “Hazel needs to get her shit together” added humor and heart to the fish-out-of-water thematic. Basically, I was smiling from ear to ear the whole way through this book. Thank you to Kathleen Carter and Hanover Press for sending me a copy and introducing me to the Blums!
Read before going on family vacation
Best if you liked: All Adults Here, The Guncle
Kelsey
Every once and a while, a book comes along that is like nothing else I have ever read. In a world of hero’s journeys and will-they-won’t-they (they always do!) romances, a book like Rejection knocked me over like an unexpectedly strong wave. If you have been here for a bit, you know I typically don’t like collections of short stories. The rhyme is too staccato for me (though I can see the business purpose of them for vacation!), and if I am not in the situation to sit down and read the whole story at once, I get confused and forget why I should care about a character I just met and will be gone in twelve pages. One of the cooler parts of Rejection was that all the characters were connected. Picture Love Actually but if each short story’s plot was more like an episode of Black Mirror. Each short story is about, you guessed it, rejection. They incorporate dark humor and satire while exploring identity, inceldom, and sexual failure. While some stories almost felt a little too real, others (especially one) went so off the rails I became fast friends with a colleague when he told me he had also read it and wasn’t afraid to laugh about it with me. It is meta, it’s smart, it’s current; Rejection is like when you see a totally wacky movie and you’re excited about it but do not know who to recommend it to.
Read after spending a little too much time online
Best if you liked: Kinds Of Kindness, Substance, There There
Madeline
I set out to read Maine Characters by Hannah Orenstein for two major reasons. First, the novel takes place in Maine, as you can probably guess by the title. The book I’m writing is set primarily there, so I’ve been looking to read more Maine-centric books (Olive Kitteridge, The Berry Pickers, and something by Stephen King are also on my list, but I’m accepting suggestions!). Then, I was even more intrigued once I saw @tellthebees’ positive Goodreads review.
Pitched as a sort-of modern day Parent Trap, Maine Characters follows two adult half sisters, Lucy and Vivian, who meet for the first time at their father’s lake house after his sudden death. Essentially an enemies-to-friends story, the sisters are at first very skeptical of each other, especially since it quickly becomes clear they had very different relationships with their father (Vivian grew up with him and her mother in New York City, while Lucy grew up with a single mom in Maine and only spent time with him at the lake house each August). Of course, Vivian and Lucy eventually learn they have more in common than they initially thought, and they help each other through the familial chaos that ensues that summer.
The plot felt a tad predictable at times, but I mostly didn’t mind because the writing was lovely and I felt deeply invested in the characters. Orenstein’s descriptions of the lake, local restaurants, and the state’s natural beauty satisfied my Maine book itch. I don’t know how else to describe my reading experience other than that every time I opened the book, it felt like a warm, comforting hug. I may or may not have a reputation for loving atmospheric, sad girl lit, but this book was a reminder to switch it up once in a while — why deny myself a warm hug of a book?
Read after browsing lake houses on Airbnb
Best if you liked: Blue Sisters, Emily Henry
All books can be found at Books Are Magic, McNally Jackson, Greenlight Bookstore, and other independent bookstores, but if you don’t live near one, you can also click the links to support independent bookstores through Bookshop.org.
I’m reading Rejection and love the kinds of kindness comparison!