Run by Daisy Whitney at daisywhitney.com

After reading Sarah Ockler’s “Twenty Boy Summer,” I feel like I’m 16 again, sunning on the beach, about to embark on an epic summer romance. OK, I’m definitely not 16, not even close, but my point is Ockler’s writing is so transportive I dare anyone to read her debut novel and not think they’re on a beach. I could literally smell coconut oil and pineapple shakes and salty sea air while reading. Summer and its attendant romances are infused in every single page of this simultaneously heartbreaking and joyful book about Anna and the secret she keeps from her best friend — Anna and her friend’s brother Matt were falling in love right before Matt died in a car accident. Fast forward a year later when the two girls arrive in Zanzibar Bay, Calif. for a summer vacation far away from upstate New York. They go in search of boys and summer lovin’  – hence the twenty boys in the title - but stop far short of that goal when Anna meets someone who takes her mind off Matt and what might have been. Whether the secret finally does come out, well, I’ll let you read and discover that for yourself. Along the way you’ll be treated to some lovely metaphors as Ockler likens the ocean at night to “licorice soup” and a lost notebook to a “banished mermaid.”