The Melrose Messenger

Summer Reading: From the Local Literary Experts

By Ellen Putnam

Looking for a good book to get lost in this summer - for yourself or for your kids? We asked our local (entirely human, non-AI) literary experts at Molly’s Bookstore and the Melrose Public Library to give us a few recommendations.

Andrea Iriarte Dent, the owner of Molly’s Bookstore, shared that she has recently enjoyed or is looking forward to these books:

• The Devil Three Times by Ricky Fayne (a debut novel about “eight generations of a Black family in West Tennessee as they are repeatedly visited by the Devil”)
• Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab (the author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue returns with a “genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger”)
• A Family Matter by Claire Lynch (a debut novel about family secrets and queer women in the 1980s)
• The Names by Florence Knapp (a debut novel asks: “Can a name change the course of a life?”)
• The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (the author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous returns with “a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul”)
• Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson (the author of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder returns with “a twisty thriller about a young woman trying to solve her own murder”)

Molly’s Bookstore also offered a few ideas for beach reads:

• Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid (the new novel by the author of Daisy Jones and The Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo about the 1980’s space shuttle program)
• It’s a Love Story by Annabel Monaghan
• Hotter in the Hamptons by Tinx
• Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood
• The Love Haters by Katherine Center
• One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune
• With a Vengeance by Riley Sager
• The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (“an eerie multigenerational horror saga” by the author of Mexican Gothic)

The Melrose Public Library will be offering staff recommendations for adults in July and August, so check back for their suggestions then!

Here at The Melrose Messenger, we’ve recently loved Nathan Hill’s Wellness and Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - just be sure to have a tissue handy! Right now, we’re loving Melrose author Jane Roper’s The Society of Shame, and we can’t wait for Jane Healey’s new book, The Women of Arlington Hall, which comes out in August.

Children and Teens

If your kids and teens want to go beyond the Melrose Public Schools reading lists, check out the curated lists of books on particular topics, recommended by the Children’s and Teen librarians.

Our friends at the Melrose Public Library also point out that kids can already start reading the books that have been nominated for the 2026 Massachusetts Children’s Book Award. Teens can start voting for their favorites for the 2025 Massachusetts Teen Choice Book Award in September.

And a few suggestions for kids from Molly’s Bookstore:

• Montgomery Bonbon: Mystery at the Manor by Alasdair Beckett-King
• National Archive Hunters by Matthew Landis
• The Swifts: A Gallery of Rogues by Beth Lincoln
• The Library of Unruly Treasures by Jeanne Birdsall
• The Last Hope School for Magical Delinquents by Nicki Pau Preto
• Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell
• Rebellion 1776 by Laurie Halse Anderson
• The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon by Grace Lin
• Candle Island by Lauren Wolk
• The Liars Society by Alyson Gerber
• A Wolf Called Fire (Voice of the Wilderness #4) by Rosanne Parry
• The Dragon's Apprentice by James Riley
• The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
• Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo
• The Unteacheables and Restart by Gordon Korman
• The Midwatch Institute for Wayward Girls by Judith Rossell

And you don’t have to go to Amazon to find your summer reading picks: head down to Molly’s Bookstore or visit the beautiful, new Melrose Public Library building for all of your reading needs, right here in Melrose. (Don't forget that you can use both Molly's and the library to find almost any book you want: you can easily order books from other NOBLE network libraries if the Melrose library doesn't have the book you're looking for; and Molly's is happy to order a book for you if they don't have it in stock!)

And if you prefer e-books or audiobooks, the Melrose Public Library offers a variety of formats for your device, and Molly’s Bookstore offers audiobooks through Libro.fm!

Posted June 5th, 2025