Our summer reads, from one-star books to underrated gems.

Summer is winding down, and the Rewire staff has had a full season of beach reads, plane reads, staycation reads—you name it. 

But not all books are written equal. 

In our quest to find the best reads, we’ve suffered through some truly terrible novels. We wanted to give you a peek into our Goodreads and StoryGraph accounts, from our one-star reads to underrated gems we’ve uncovered. 

Here’s what we think you should read before the leaves turn—and what you can safely put back on your local bookstore’s shelves. 

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang 

BookTok elevated a bad teen novel inspired by the Nanjing Massacre—with no trigger warnings or any other context. R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War is a story about a wandering young apprentice who halfway through the book stumbles upon genocide—which motivates her to become a vengeful phoenix who… condones more genocide? I could barely stomach the first book in the trilogy. I read Poppy over five years ago and still hate it. –Diana Fraser, Head of Operations

It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey

As a romance novel connoisseur, I can put up with a lot of silliness in a book. But It Happened One Summer’s two-dimensional characters, flimsy tropes, and stale clichés zap the fun out of this rom-com. I wish I could recommend it as a breezy beach read, but I can’t do that to you, dear reader. -Natasha Roy, Staff Editor

Murder on Sex Island by Jo Firestone

I described this in my Goodreads review as “funny (complimentary) and goofy (derogatory).” Murder on Sex Island follows down-on-her-luck personal investigator Luella van Horn—whose main claim to fame is finding Staten Island’s lost dogs—as she gets hired to solve the disappearance of a cast member on the fictional dating show Sex Island (a thinly veiled play on ITV America’s Love Island). I really wanted to like this book more than I did. The setting offers plenty of entertaining comedic relief throughout, but it’s not quite enough to make up for the slow start and clumsy ending. -N.R.

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

A trusted local bookseller recommended this mystery to me as a spring break read earlier this year. My criteria for him: Easy, plot-driven, and compelling enough to keep me engaged even if I have to put it down for weeks at a time. It also needed to be well-written—I’m an editor and a former English major; my prose expectations are high. The Thursday Murder Club checked off all those boxes, and was good enough that I watched........

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