Memorial Day weekend is almost here, which means summer reading season is officially about to kick off. (May is also Get Caught Reading Month, by the way, so consider yourselves warned. I’m watching you in public, waiting to catch you in the act.) If you’re anything like me, you’ve already started triaging your TBR for beach season.

Here’s the thing about a true beach read. You can spot one from forty feet away. The cover is usually pastel, or cerulean, or that specific shade of coral that doesn’t exist anywhere except on beach read covers. There’s probably a woman facing away from the camera. There’s probably a cursive title. There’s a very high chance the word “summer” appears somewhere, even if the book takes place in January.

I love this. I love that we have collectively decided a beach read has a visual grammar. A beach read makes promises: the stakes will be emotional but not devastating, the heroine will have at least one excellent friend, someone will get their heart broken, and everything will work out by page 300. You get to exhale. That’s the whole point.

Summer is the season that makes reading feel, briefly, like a legal obligation. Pool. Book. Lounge chair. Iced tea. We’ve all been conditioned. I start planning my summer TBR in May and overbuy every single year. (The stack on my nightstand is taller than the lamp. I will read twenty percent of it. I know this about myself.)

This summer my unsolicited advice is to lean into the small-town coastal romance. Anything with a beach, a boat, or a character who owns an unreasonable number of flannel shirts.

My Port Promise series delivers on all three. Start with Heart’s Haven here. Small town. Coastal setting. A whole village full of people you want to move next door to.

Where’s your reading happening this summer? Beach? Porch? The floor of your kitchen because the kids won’t leave you alone? (Guilty, on occasion.)

Happy reading.