1. Paper Towns by John Green

John Green is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. His young adult novels are fun and easy to read with an interesting plot and amazing complex characters. Although they seem like your classic light YA novel John Green is able to create stories that take readers on a journey with the characters and leaves you with questions and new ideas that you just can’t shake off. This story follows a semi-awkward teenage boy on his odyssey to find the mysterious girl of his dreams after she disappears and leaves a trail of random and confusing clues to her whereabouts.

You have probably heard of this book or the movie. But even if you have seen the movie pick up the book this summer because books really are always better than the movies.

2. The Girl on the Train by Paul Hawkins

I read this book last summer when it became popular and made many of the bestseller lists. Although I thought it had a slow start you will soon be wrapped up in a complex mystery seen through the eyes of different characters. "The Girl on the Train" became a page turner as I read by the lake, frantically trying to figure out exactly what was going on in the story. If you are looking for a little bit of a heart-racing and complex mystery with great characters check out this book.

Love Does by Bob Goff

Bob’s memoir is exciting and funny and incredibly uplifting. Told in a series of short anecdotes Bob’s adventure filled life is presented in a way that reminds readers that there is a bigger presence working in the worlds for our sake at all times. And as the title suggests this book is all about love as a verb, love doing.

This is a book to read any time of the year over and over again but be sure to pick it up this summer and start looking at the way your living your life and begin to ask yourself if you are living love as a verb as Bob does everyday.

4. Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

In the midst of these lighter books I wanted to include Kite Runner. Although fiction this book it told with the accuracy of a biography as it describes the life of one young boy growing up in Afghanistan, the struggles he had, and the unlikely friends he made. So much of what we hear on the news today about the middle east shows exclusively those who are bombing, fighting, and committing terrorist and other vicious acts. This book reminds us about those we often don’t hear about, the children and the victims of a terrible war. An important read this book will leave you most likely in tears, as it did multiple times with me, and thinking about the world we live in.

Happy reading and happy summer!