I remember the last day of school and I remember the Fourth of July. Then I blinked, and summer is almost over. August is a bittersweet month for me. I could do without the hot, humid days, but I’m in no rush to start the back-to-school routine again. (I am, however, all about the back-to-school shopping — notebooks and pens and Post-Its, oh my!) As the last few weeks of summer slip away, here are a couple of my current favorite books. One of them is set during Christmas, which I’m not even mad about.

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Sparks fly in Melanie Sweeney’s Take Me Home (Putnam) when two students take a road trip back to their small hometown. 

When Hazel Elliot headed to college halfway across Texas, she put Lockett Prairie — and everyone in it — in the rearview mirror and never looked back. Now a grad student, she’s returning home for her father’s Yuletide wedding (to a woman she’s never met), and she doesn’t plan to stay any longer than she has to. But when she ends up with a last-minute passenger, Ash Campbell, her plans change.

Ash was in love with Hazel in high school, but she was dating his best friend and was, therefore, off limits. Even though they ended up at the same college, Hazel made it clear freshman year that she wanted nothing to do with him. Their interactions are superficial and sarcastic, and the only thing they have in common is Hazel’s favorite coffeeshop, where Ash happens to work. The drive home makes Hazel reconsider what she thinks she knows about Ash, but before she can contemplate what it all means, she’ll have to make peace with her past.

Sweeney’s debut is the kind of romance I love — with road-trip hijinks, small-town kitsch, family chaos, plenty of laughs, and some seriously steamy scenes. Even though it’s set during the winter holidays, Take Me Home turned out to be just what I needed in these dog days of summer.

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Jen DeLuca’s Haunted Ever After (Berkley), the first book in her Boneyard Key series, also features a small town, but this one is in Florida — and it’s haunted. Really haunted.

Cassie Rutherford feels like life is passing her by because all of her friends are settling down, getting married, and having kids. She makes the spontaneous decision to move away from her Orlando home and buy a house on Boneyard Key, a town on the Gulf Coast. She immediately begins to question her choice when she can’t charge her laptop and the magnetic poetry words on her refrigerator start spelling out ominous messages. The local barista, Nick Royer, mistaking her for a tourist would be the last straw if not for the fact that his shop has Wi-Fi and his coffee is better than Starbucks. It doesn’t hurt that he’s pretty cute, either.

Nick is a lifelong resident of Boneyard Key and owner of Hallowed Grounds. Not only is he well-versed in the town’s haunted history, he shares his upstairs apartment with Elmer, the coffeeshop’s ghostly original owner. Elmer keeps up a steady stream of communication via text messages, scolding Nick for putting cinnamon in the banana bread and advising him to ask out the new girl in town.

When all signs point to Cassie’s house being haunted, she is understandably freaked out. While Nick and the other residents of Boneyard Key may be able to assure her the ghosts are mostly harmless, the hard part is going to be convincing her to make the town her forever home. DeLuca’s quirky romance hits all the right notes, from the cozy beach-town setting to the personable locals both living and spectral. (And having grown up in Florida, I heartily agree with Cassie: Publix makes the best subs in the world!)

Kristina Wright lives in Virginia with her husband, their two sons, two Goldendoodles, a ginger cat, and a green parrot. She’s a regular contributor at BookBub and a lifelong fan of romance fiction. Find her on Twitter at @kristinawright or on Bookshop, where she features her book recommendations.

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