July's Recommended Reads

All books mentioned in this edition of the Great Reads Newsletter are available on the Ocean County Library's OverDrive Collection and/or in our catalog.

 

On mobile devices you can download the Libby App from the device's app store to browse the OverDrive Collection.

 

For help and support visit the library's help page and click on the Libby/OverDrive tab.

Adult Fiction

The Shark Club

by Ann Kidd Taylor


One summer day on the beach in Florida, two extraordinary things happen to Maeve Donnelly. First, she is kissed by Daniel, the boy of her dreams. Then, she is bitten by a blacktip shark.

 

Eighteen years later, Maeve has thrown herself into her work as a world-traveling marine biologist discovering more about the minds of misunderstood sharks. But when Maeve returns home to the legendarily charming and eccentric Hotel of the Muses where she was raised by her grandmother, she finds more than just the blood orange sunsets and key lime pies she’s missed waiting for her.

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Stranger in the Lake

by Kimberly Belle


When Charlotte married the wealthy widower Paul, it caused a ripple of gossip in their small lakeside town. They have a charmed life together, despite the cruel whispers about her humble past and his first marriage. But everything starts to unravel when she discovers a young woman's body floating in the exact same spot where Paul's first wife tragically drowned.

At first, it seems like a horrific coincidence, but the stranger in the lake is no stranger. Charlotte saw Paul talking to her the day before, even though Paul tells the police he's never met the woman. His lie exposes cracks in their fragile new marriage, cracks Charlotte is determined to keep from breaking them in two.

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Young Adult Fiction

Tweet Cute

by Emma Lord


Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming — mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger's massive Twitter account.

Enter Jack, class clown and constant thorn in Pepper's side. When he isn't trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin's shadow, he's busy working in his family's deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma's iconic grilled cheese recipe, he'll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time.

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The Summer of Impossibilities

by Rachael Allen


Skyler, Ellie, Scarlett, and Amelia Grace are forced to spend the summer at the lake house where their moms became best friends.

One can't wait.

One would rather gnaw off her own arm than hang out with a bunch of strangers just so their moms can drink too much wine and sing Journey at two o'clock in the morning.

Two are sisters.

Three are currently feuding with their mothers.

One is hiding how bad her joint pain has gotten.

All of them are hiding something.

One falls in love with a boy she thought she despised.

One almost sets her crush on fire with a flaming marshmallow.

One has a crush that could change everything.

None of them are the same at the end of the summer. 

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Middle Grade Fiction

Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea

by Ashley Herring Blake


Hazel Bly used to live in the perfect house with the perfect family in sunny California. But when a kayaking trip goes horribly wrong, Mum is suddenly gone forever and Hazel is left with crippling anxiety and a jagged scar on her face. After Mum's death, Hazel, her other mother, Mama, and her little sister, Peach, needed a fresh start. So for the last two years, the Bly girls have lived all over the country, never settling anywhere for more than a few months.

When the family arrives in Rose Harbor, Maine, there's a wildness to the small town that feels like magic. But when Mama runs into an old childhood friend—Claire—suddenly Hazel's tight-knit world is infiltrated. To make it worse, she has a daughter Hazel's age, Lemon, who can't stop rambling on and on about the Rose Maid, a local 150-year-old mermaid myth.

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The Thing about Jellyfish

by Ali Benjamin


After her best friend dies in a drowning accident, Suzy is convinced that the true cause of the tragedy must have been a rare jellyfish sting—things don't just happen for no reason. Retreating into a silent world of imagination, she crafts a plan to prove her theory—even if it means traveling the globe, alone. Suzy's achingly heartfelt journey explores life, death, the astonishing wonder of the universe...and the potential for love and hope right next door.

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Picture Books

Mel Fell 

by Corey R. Tabor


Readers will delight in turning their book sideways and upside down to follow Mel on her journey from downward fall to triumphant flight in this tale of self-confidence and taking a leap of faith. 


Sometimes, you might fall

down,

down,

down,

before you learn to fly

up,

up,

up...

Borrow a Copy

Give Me Back My Bones!

Written by Kim Norman

Illustrated by Bob Kolar


A stormy night at sea has uncovered some long-buried secrets and surprises. Is that the mast of a shipwreck? A faded pirate hat? And what's that hiding in the sand? A mandible and a clavicle, phalanges and femurs, a tibia and a fibula — could there be a set of bones scattered across the ocean floor? And who might they belong to? A jaunty rhyme takes readers on an underwater scavenger hunt as a comical skeleton tries to put itself back together piece by piece.

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One Book OCL: Online Book Discussion

Resistance Women

by Jennifer Chiaverini


August 5 - October 7


After Wisconsin graduate student Mildred Fish marries brilliant German economist Arvid Harnack, she accompanies him to his German homeland, where a promising future awaits. In the thriving intellectual culture of 1930s Berlin, the newlyweds create a rich new life filled with love, friendships, and rewarding work—but the rise of a malevolent new political faction inexorably changes their fate.

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