6 Binge-Worthy Fiction Books To Add To Your Summer Reading List

Affiliate links // Despite having a life-long love of books, I’m a pretty slow reader. And even the books which end up becoming my absolutely favourites sometimes take me a while to fully get in to. So for a book to be binge-worthy for me, it has to be pretty special. And the 6 recommendations I have for you in this post are exactly that!

Summer is a great time to get a shit ton of reading done. Especially Summer when everyone is stuck in their houses because there’s a freaking pandemic raging outside your door. Regardless of how this Summer will end up looking, I’m still very much looking forward to spending long, slow, sunny days in my garden with a good book.

I literally just got excitement tingles in my feet just thinking about it!

If you’re looking for some new fiction reads to add to your TBR list for this Summer then you’re in the right place. And if I could find them binge-worthy, then so will you!

Here are 6 binge-worthy books worth adding to your TBR list for some Summer reading in 2021!

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The Chalk Man by C.J Tudor

In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand.

But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.

In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he’s put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank… until one of them turns up dead.

That’s when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.

The Chalk Man gripped me straight away and I’ve since become a huge fan of C.J Tudor’s work (and Facebook friends, which is cool!) She’s an incredible writer who leaves you really feeling for the characters, despite how f***ed up they might be. The Chalk Man was her debut but it definitely doesn’t read like it. Creepy, chilling and an absolutely must-read Thriller.

The Prestige by Christopher Priest

In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in the dark during the course of a fraudulent séance. From this moment on, their lives become webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose one another.

Their rivalry will take them to the peaks of their careers, but with terrible consequences. In the course of pursuing each other’s ruin, they will deploy all the deception their magicians’ craft can command–the highest misdirection and the darkest science.

Blood will be spilled, but it will not be enough. In the end, their legacy will pass on for generations…to descendants who must, for their sanity’s sake, untangle the puzzle left to them.

If you’ve seen the movie The Prestige with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman then you’ll already be familiar with this story. The film is one of my absolute favourites, so I was keen to see how the book compares. Although this was quite a hard read in terms of the writing style and the sates in which it was set, it was hypnotic. And so much eerier than the film portrays!

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life?

It’s 1969 in New York City’s Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.

The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in ’80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.

A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.

This was one of the final books I reviewed before I stopped reviewing books on my blog. And this story has stuck with me ever since. The Immortalists was highly anticipated in my opinion and it didn’t disappoint. This book was magic. Actual magic. One of those books that only come around every once in a while and one that you’ll wish you didn’t actually read so quickly!

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker

In an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a freshman girl stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up.

She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics who carry her away, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. Then a second girl falls asleep, and then another, and panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. As the number of cases multiplies, classes are canceled, and stores begin to run out of supplies. A quarantine is established. The National Guard is summoned.

Mei, an outsider in the cliquish hierarchy of dorm life, finds herself thrust together with an eccentric, idealistic classmate. Two visiting professors try to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. A father succumbs to the illness, leaving his daughters to fend for themselves.

And at the hospital, a new life grows within a college girl, unbeknownst to her—even as she sleeps. A psychiatrist, summoned from Los Angeles, attempts to make sense of the illness as it spreads through the town. Those infected are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, more than has ever been recorded. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what?

Karen Thompson-Walker is the author of my favourite EVER book, The Age of Miracles. So I don’t think I’ve ever clicked order so quickly when I realised The Dreamers was out. Like TAoM, it’s an effortless and captivating read, always leaving you wanting more and more. The intriguing nature of her stories which comb the veil between Sci-Fi and reality so delicately will have you hooked.

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing

A couple’s fifteen-year marriage has finally gotten too interesting…

Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams, and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored.

We look like a normal couple. We’re your neighbors, the parents of your kid’s friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with.

We all have secrets to keeping a marriage alive.

Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.

My Lovely Wife really took me by surprise because it was a random book I had picked up from the library and I went in with no expectations at all. Then I found myself just drowning in it because I couldn’t put it down. It’s such an amazing concept for a Thriller – unlike anything you’ll have read before. Bit disturbing but yeah, really bloody good.

The Kingdom by Jess Rothenberg

Welcome to the Kingdom… where ‘Happily Ever After’ isn’t just a promise, but a rule.

Glimmering like a jewel behind its gateway, The Kingdom is an immersive fantasy theme park where guests soar on virtual dragons, castles loom like giants, and bioengineered species–formerly extinct–roam free.

Ana is one of seven Fantasists, beautiful “princesses” engineered to make dreams come true. When she meets park employee Owen, Ana begins to experience emotions beyond her programming including, for the first time… love.

But the fairytale becomes a nightmare when Ana is accused of murdering Owen, igniting the trial of the century. Through courtroom testimony, interviews, and Ana’s memories of Owen, emerges a tale of love, lies, and cruelty–and what it truly means to be human.

The Kingdom featured in my top books of 2020 and it’s a book I still think about. I’d probably put it in my top 10 books EVER. Think Orphan Black combined with Humans combined with Disney Princesses and you’ve got The Kingdom. There was nothing I didn’t like about this book and I could have stayed in that world forever.

Do you have your eye on any of these books? Have you read any yourself? Which binge-wrothy reads would you recommend?

Liked this post? Check out more of my latest book content:

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