July fiction: Summers to remember

'The Bombshell' by Darrow Farr

(Pamela Dorman, $30)

"If a book could possess 'French-girl style,' The Bombshell would have it," said Violet Kupersmith in The New York Times. In this "effortlessly cool" debut novel, Séverine Guimard, the brash 17-year-old daughter of a French politician, is kidnapped in Corsica by young nationalist militants as summer begins, and before long persuades her captors that she wishes to join their cause. Séverine's motives remain murky even as she becomes the face of the increasingly daring group, and "the reader spends much of the novel's gripping second half bracing for the moment when it all blows up." In this "Hollywood-ready" tale of political and sexual awakening, said Taylor Antrim in Vogue, "plausibility is less important than pace and action." But Séverine's remorselessness "becomes an object of narrative fascination," and "the final pages provide a touching answer you don't quite expect."

'The Slip' by Lucas Schaefer

(Simon & Schuster, $30)

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"If you like your fiction neat and ruminative, stay away from this sweaty, outrageous book," said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. But Lucas Schaefer has taken a big swing with his first novel, and though the results are admittedly messy, "I haven't felt quite like this about a book since I was dazzled by Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections almost 25 years ago." The action swirls around Nathaniel Rothstein, a gawky 16-year-old who in 1998 was summering in Austin and trying to reinvent himself at a multi-racial local boxing gym when he vanished. Schaefer picks up the story 10 years later, leaping across time and throwing in side trips to Kenya and Haiti, a second teen mulling a gender change, and migrants crossing the border in clown makeup. "If this all sounds bonkers, it is," said Dina Gachman in Texas Monthly. "It's also at turns hilarious, touching, and profound."

'Bug Hollow' by Michelle Huneven

(Penguin, $29)

Everything changes one summer for the California family at the heart of Michelle Huneven's sixth novel, said Marc Weingarten in the Los Angeles Times. By page 21, the golden boy has run off to a commune, gotten a girl pregnant, and died in a swimming accident. But while the rest concerns the long aftermath, "Bug Hollow is not another novel about family dysfunction." It's about two parents and three daughters "negotiating the vicissitudes of life across decades with hard-won grace" as the narrative "jumps across time and space in short, sharp chapters stripped of sentiment." The mother is a handful, said Allison Arieff in the San Francisco Chronicle. "Stingy with her affection, profligate with her critique," she unwittingly destabilizes her daughters. An actress "could really eat the scenery if given the part," and that could happen. Bug Hollow has "the feel of a television drama."

'Problematic Summer Romance' by Ali Hazelwood

(Berkley, $30)

If you're a romance fan, said Jenna Rosenstein in Harper's Bazaar, Ali Hazelwood's latest best-seller is "the only book you need to pack for a summer vacation." The second of three novels the Love Hypothesis author will publish this year, it's a rom-com that dares to plumb an age-gap relationship. Maya is 23. Her older brother's wealthy best friend, Hark, is 38. But Maya is great, and the pair's relationship isn't actually problematic. "What is problematic is the fact that the age gap is brought up constantly." Like other Hazelwood tales, this one's "fun, full of passion and yearning, and has several laugh-out-loud moments," said Garri Chaverst in The Everygirl. "It also features an important message: Women, no matter their age, should be taken seriously." Aside from the beautifully conjured Sicilian summer setting, "that's where the real magic of this book lies."

'The House on Buzzards Bay' by Dwyer Murphy

(Viking, $30)

"Gothic chill wafts like ocean mist" in this tale about college friends reuniting at a grand old beach house, said Maureen Corrigan in NPR.org. The group's get-together begins going sideways when one guest disappears. Then comes a series of mysterious nearby break-ins and the arrival of an unexpected guest, and the author's restrained style "heightens the ominous atmosphere." Dwyer Murphy's third novel is "truly special," said Dan Sheehan in LitHub. "If I were to tell you that there's a novel coming out this summer that reads like a Massachusetts mashup of The Big Chill, L'Avventura, and Patricia Highsmith's Deep Water, would you commit unspeakable crimes in order to get your hands on a copy?" The House on Buzzards Bay is "both a poignant meditation on the fraying bonds of friendship, and a deeply unnerving psychosexual thriller."

'The South' by by Tash Aw

(Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, $28)

"Imagine The White Lotus minus its narrative steroids," said Claude Peck in The Minnesota Star Tribune. The latest novel from former Booker Prize nominee Tash Aw drops a small cast of characters into a fresh setting and lets lust do its work, and the effect is "affecting, and sometimes mesmerizing." Jay, a 16-year-old from Kuala Lumpur, is visiting a farm in south Malaysia when he falls into an affair with a young man who's three years older, and "rather than piling on twists," Aw develops a story that's about youth, love, and "the shadings of class and ethnic difference." From its opening sex scene, The South "soaks us in bodily intimacy," said Lara Feigel in The Guardian. Told in a nonlinear style, it's "a story about people who are both waiting for life to begin and living with an intensity they will look back on forever."