What to read based on your holiday vibes

The holidays are just around the corner, so the VERVE team and some of our incredible authors have put together a list of books to take with you on your travels. Be they staycation or a trip across the globe, these books will keep you entertained no matter where you are.

I really enjoyed Claire Powell’s debut At the Table and can’t wait to pick up a copy of her new novel All In (out 4 June) to take on summer hols  – the striking cover, brilliant early reader reviews and the tag line pulled me in: ‘A marriage on the rocks. A family in disarray. A weekend in the sun at a luxury, all-inclusive hotel. What could possibly go wrong?’ The novel’s description of a couple struggling with the challenges that life has thrown at them being offered the chance to go on an all-inclusive holiday to the Med with their family sounds like the perfect recipe for a disastrous holiday. As most people who have holidayed with wider family can attest, it’s not usually quite the idyllic break that’s reflected in the Instagram pictures! I am a sucker for a novel that takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions and delves into complicated family relationships and this sounds like it will deliver in spades.

Described by author and art critic Chloë Ashby as ‘a richly detailed read for the salty summer months’ and also set in the Med is the swelteringly unsettling debut The Nude by C. Michelle Lindley, which VERVE first published in the summer of 2024. Set on a sultry Greek island in 1999, The Nude is a seductive and propulsive debut about that centres on art historian Elizabeth Clarke who travels to the island with the intent to acquire a rare female sculpture. But what begins as a quest for a highly valued cultural artifact evolves into a trip that will force Elizabeth to contend with her ambition, her desire, and her troubling history. The Nude combines the moody atmosphere of Katie Kitamura’s A Separation and the gender dynamics of Lisa Taddeo’s Animal with the sensual exploration of female desire of Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk.

I’m kicking off my summer with a book that has been on my TBR for absolutely ages: Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, translated by Ann Goldstein. The first book of four in her series of Neopolitan Novels, is set in a dusty, close-knit, poor village outside Naples. The village is filled with fascinating characters, who Ferrante manages to make both larger than life, and totally believable at once. The book begins with Elena receiving a phone call to let her know that her best friend, Lila, is missing. In an attempt to stop her friend from vanishing completely, Elena endeavours to write down the story of the life they lived together. You can feel the hot, stuffy air of their childhood village, as Elena recounts stories about rock fights, playing dolls and scary older neighbours, while the locals cause chaos around her. All the while, we are wondering, what happened to Lila? I’ll be spending my summer reading this series on Brighton beach, imagining that I’m on a beach in Naples.

One of my favourite things to do when I’m travelling is to read a novel that takes place in that location. Experiencing a place through a story brings out another dimension, another level, for me. Several of my favourite examples of this are set in New York City, including The Interestings (Meg Wolitzer) and Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger). Of course, in both, there are other places that act as foils: namely the summer camp, the private school. The city itself is cast in a sharper relief as a result. 

Place is so important to story: every location has its own smells, plant life, industry, its own experience of seasons, like the harshest winters and most dazzling autumns, new springs, and sweltering summers. When I wrote Stargazer and The Rayburn Affair, it was important that both the urban setting of Toronto and the cottage country of Muskoka play off each other, highlighting their similarities and differences, such as the solitude or loneliness that they each, a bustling city and the remote woods, contain in any given moment.

A book I am so excited to read this coming summer is Whistler, by Ann Patchett. Ann writes with a careful elegance and depth that pulls me through her novels. I have yet to read of a book of hers that I didn’t love. Whistler, her latest, begins at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, which not only gives me another excuse to visit, but is a ticket to fall into the city through a book. 

As I’m writing this the temperature in London is a scorching thirty-three degrees, the air is arid and the sun intense. East London is a beautiful cacophony of music, vendors advertising their goods and excitable conversation; it is because of this it feels fitting to suggest Oyinkan Braithwaite’s Cursed Daughters set in Nigeria. A brilliant second novel and a true departure from My Sister the Serial Killer, but with the same exceptional storytelling, Braithwaite takes us to a Lagos of the past and the present as we witness the women of the Falodun family live with a curse which dictates that none of the women in the family will be able to have a happy relationship with any men. No, this is not a queer story (unfortunately), but it is intriguing to see how the women are effected by this decades-long curse, what it does to their psyche, their bonds. If you’re currently on a big holiday trip, or stuck in a hot house with numerous family members and little privacy, there will be many things in this novel you can relate to. The magical realism within the novel is enjoyable and grounded, making you question whether it is truly a curse, or the self-sabotaging nature of these women, or if men are truly just awful (likely).

Sticking with Nigeria, the short story collection A Kind of Madness by Uche Okonkwo (VERVE Books, 2024) explores similar themes and teases out the tensions between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, and siblings. Read how pent-up emotions come to the boil under the hot sun.

For those of you jetting off for a culture-filled city break this summer, I recommend packing a copy of Christine Coulson’s One Woman Show. This fascinatingly original novel tells the life story of twentieth-century socialite Kitty Whitaker entirely through the gallery wall labels that accompany her as she is passed from collection to collection (aka multiple society marriages) and prized as an object for display. Before turning her curatorial eye to fiction, Coulson spent several years working at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art writing exhibition labels; her knowledge of art history and sharp eye for detail converge here in this playful examination of ownership, objectification and gender. Read One Woman Show while strolling the Met’s expansive galleries for the ultimate metafictional experience!

If you’d prefer to take in the city through a twenty-first-century lens, look no further than Jane Pek’s incisive debut novel about love, technology and murder. The Verifiers follows Claudia Lin as she verifies people’s online lives for a dating detective agency in New York City, until a client with an unusual request goes missing. Equal parts literary mystery, poignant family story and unsettling techno-thriller, this is a thought-provoking examination of how technology shapes our lives. The second instalment, The Rivals, picks up from where book one leaves off and plunges readers straight back into the action as Claudia and her colleagues risk their lives to investigate a deadly AI conspiracy. The perfect series to read while you people watch in a bustling city centre.

If you’re planning a peaceful countryside escape, Tom Lake by Ann Patchett would be a brilliant companion. While spending the spring with her adult daughters at their cherry orchard in Michigan, protagonist Lara finally tells them the story of her summer romance with a famous film star – a story that’s been at the centre of their family lore for as long as they can remember. Warmth bursts through this masterfully told exploration of young and long-term love; it’s nostalgic, wise and heartwarming.

If you’d prefer to head to rural Ireland, you’ll find an equally satisfying slow-burn love story in Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth. Or why not travel to Cornwall in Curtis Garner’s Orange, for a candid portrayal of first love and self-discovery? 

Over twenty years ago, I spent a summer fully absorbed in the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy by Sigrid Undset (translated by Tiina Nunnally). The books follow Kristin from birth to death, and I sank so deeply into her richly textured 14th century Norwegian life that it was hard to re-enter my own life whenever I had to stop reading. The trilogy’s fierce pull comes down to Kristin for the most part: she shines out from the pages as a vividly alive, headstrong female figure who defies many of the norms and mores of her day – while having an ongoing tumultuous romance with her husband through the years. But the books’ lush, dramatic setting is crucially alluring, too; it gave me the bug I’ve never shaken for Nordic countries, culture, and literature. I went on to read Halldor Laxness, Henning Mankell, Knut Hamsun, and more, but Kristin Lavransdatter alone remains one of my touchstones – I can still recall how it felt to be under the spell of those books whenever I spot their mint green spines on my bookshelf.