Summer is the perfect time to get lost in a good book, for many of us it’s one of the few opportunities to properly switch off and immerse ourselves in a story, so every recommendation counts. Which is why we’re thrilled that bestselling author of Pineapple Street, Jenny Jackson has shared with us her top five books for summer. Check out her new novel The Shampoo Effect if you’re in the mood for an originally funny story of late-night parties, early mornings with small children, and old friends finally growing up – despite all their best efforts.
This upstairs-downstairs comedy is the story of a lady’s maid, daughter of a tenant farmer, who falls in love with the valet of a visiting gentleman. But what is a woman with no agency or money to do when the object of affection is out of reach? Well, she hatches a plan to make her employer, a beautiful, vain, hopelessly self-obsessed lady, fall in love with her valet’s employer. And then, just when you think you know what kind of novel it is, the author weaves in the dawn of women’s suffrage and the book becomes even deeper and wiser and more resonant.
Published more than 25 years ago, Melissa Bank’s debut takes its tongue-in-cheek title from a dating manual with dubious advice for landing a man. Following the main character, Jane, from her teenage years to her thirties, the book captures the New York publishing world, the pain of loving someone with an alcohol addition, the exquisite awkwardness of a vacation with a new flame, the funny dynamics at play between a man’s older girlfriend and his mother, and that moment when, in love, you need to throw the rule book out the window.
Is it a psychological thriller? Is it literary fiction? Is it horror? And what on earth does the end mean? The Guest is the story of a beautiful young woman grifting her way through the Hamptons. Thrown out of her boyfriend’s house, Alex is convinced that if she can just make it to Labor Day, she can get her life back. Befriending babysitters at the country club pool, sleeping with the moneyed elite and hired help of Long Island, Alex’s nightmare journey through the wealthy enclaves of elite New York makes for a delicious and horrifying read.
This biting satire centers on a poolside mother-daughter love triangle as a college student comes home to Connecticut for the summer and brings along her professor’s apricot poodle. Soon her mother is in love with the poodle, her professor is in love with her mother, and her father – who recently left them for a flight attendant named Mandy – is spying on everyone. It’s a sharp, delicious send-up of academia, class, sex, and features of a cast of terrible people behaving fabulously terribly.
Yesteryear is the story of Natalie Heller Mills, an Instagram-famous wife and mother, a “tradwife.” Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her kitchen is cold, her children are dirty, and her husband is a stranger. The year is 1855. As Natalie tries to figure out what is happening, the novel moves back and forth in time, painting a portrait of modern womanhood that is as entertaining as it is deeply frightening.
The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson is out now, published by Penguin.
