5 Books That Got Me Back Into Reading

I didn’t enjoy reading in adulthood until I discovered these.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

When I was a kid, I was a huge bookworm.

I would secretly stay up past my bedtime with a flashlight under the covers, telling myself “Just one more chapter”. My favorite gift cards to get were for Barnes & Noble. But as I got older, and more screens were added to my lifestyle from the rapid growth of technology, reading slowly disappeared from my life.

The nail in the coffin was high school. I had always been a strong writer and words came easy to me, but the curriculum of reading twice as many books as the other students (most of which I didn’t enjoy) killed any desire I had to read in my free time.

But, after a year out of college, I missed the structure of reading a good story or for knowledge. The extent of my reading was shallow social media posts and Reddit threads. I missed reading a good story and the escapism of it all.

After digging through my friends’ GoodReads profiles to get some recommendations, I picked up reading again and found some books I liked and wanted to share them. These are books I have thoroughly enjoyed leisurely for the first time in well over a decade.

1. “People We Meet On Vacation” by Emily Henry

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart — she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown — but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

Emily Henry is a master act when it comes to the romantic comedy genre. “People…