It may already be 2013, but 2012 was a year we shouldn't be quick to forget. Especially when it comes to the many fabulous books that were published. Because there were so many, you may have just missed a few...
Anna Emerson is a thirty-year-old English teacher desperately in need of adventure. Worn down by the cold Chicago winters and a relationship that’s going nowhere, she jumps at the chance to spend the summer on a tropical island tutoring sixteen-year-old T.J.
T.J. Callahan has no desire to go anywhere. His cancer is in remission and he wants to get back to his normal life. But his parents are insisting he spend the summer in the Maldives catching up on all the school he missed last year.
Anna and T.J. board a private plane headed to the Callahan’s summer home, and as they fly over the Maldives’ twelve hundred islands, the unthinkable happens. Their plane crashes in shark-infested waters. They make it to shore, but soon discover that they’re stranded on an uninhabited island.
From the beloved bestselling author of Must Love Dogs comes a winning and witty novel about a woman who emerges from the shadow of her overbearing family and finds herself “dancing with the stars.”
Deirdre Griffin has a great life; it’s just not her own. She’s the round-the-clock personal assistant to her charismatic, high-maintenance, New Age guru brother, Tag. As the family wallflower, her only worth seems to be as Tag’s gatekeeper at his New England seaside compound.
Then Deirdre’s sometime boyfriend informs her that he is marrying another woman, who just happens to be having the baby he told Deirdre he never wanted. While drowning her sorrows in expensive vodka, Deirdre decides to use her brother’s massive online following to get herself voted on as a last-minute Dancing with the Stars replacement. It’ll get her back in shape, mentally and physically. It might even get her a life of her own. Deirdre’s fifteen minutes of fame have begun.
The Rock Star in Seat 3A by Jill KargmanHazel's turning thirty and she has everything she's ever wanted: a kickass job, a dream apartment in New York City, and the perfect boyfriend—who's just days away from proposing. She should be happy . . . so why doesn't she feel ready to settle down?
The morning after her birthday, Hazel boards a flight to L.A. only to get the surprise of her life: she's sitting next to her all-time biggest celebrity crush, rock star Finn Schiller! Only the night before, Hazel had confessed her infatuation with the gorgeous musician, and her boyfriend joked that she had a free pass if she ever met him. Even more unbelievable is that during the flight they genuinely connect.
What started as a far-fetched fantasy quickly becomes a real attraction, and after a dream date and taste of the rock-star life with Finn in L.A., Hazel is forced to reevaluate everything. Hazel couldn't forgive herself if she just walked away from her wildest dream come true. But is her wildest dream the stuff that happiness is made of?
Still living at home despite a good career and financial independence, beautiful and sophisticated Rasika has always been the dutiful daughter. With her twenty-sixth birthday fast approaching, she agrees to an arranged marriage, all while trying to hide from her family her occasional dalliances with other men.
Abhay is everything an Indian-American son shouldn't be. Having spent his postcollege years living in a commune, he now hops from one dead-end job to another, brooding over what he really wants to do with his life.
Old family friends, Rasika and Abhay seem to have nothing in common, yet when the two reconnect by chance, sparks immediately fly. Abhay loves Rasika, but he knows her family would never approve. Rasika reluctantly accepts she has feelings for Abhay, but can she turn her back on the family rules she has always tried so hard to live by? The search to find answers takes Abhay and Rasika out of their native Ohio to Oregon and India, where they find that what they have together might just be something worth fighting for.
Saving Ruth by Zoe Fishman
When Ruth returns home to the South for the summer after her freshman year at college, a near tragedy pushes her to uncover family truths and take a good look at the woman she wants to become.
Growing up in Alabama, all Ruth Wasserman wanted was to be a blond Baptist cheerleader. But as a curly-haired Jew with a rampant sweet tooth and a smart mouth, this was an impossible dream. Not helping the situation was her older brother, David—a soccer star whose good looks, smarts, and popularity reigned at school and at home. College provided an escape route and Ruth took it.
Now home for the summer, she's back lifeguarding and coaching alongside David, and although the job is the same, nothing else is. She's a prisoner of her low self-esteem and unhealthy relationship with food, David is closed off and distant in a way he's never been before, and their parents are struggling with the reality of an empty nest. When a near drowning happens on their watch, a storm of repercussions forces Ruth and David to confront long-ignored truths about their town, their family, and themselves.
What books did you want to read last year but didn't get the chance?
